On May 14, at a conference sponsored by terrorism-risk insuror Lloyds, Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of the Secret British Intelligence Service MI6, said the U.S. and UK had placed themselves in a "strategically weak" position due to having the wrong strategy against terrorism, and emphasized the importance of strengthening the counter-terrorism "brand" and of undermining the viability of Al Qaeda as a "brand."
Sir Richard described terrorism as an extreme act of political communication, and the Al Qaeda attacks on the United States of September 11 as an act of "branding" that successfully moved Al Qaeda to the top of the terrorist market, through suddenly giving it universal name recognition. Such recognition in turn leads to greater consumer purchasing power, here the ability to motivate and recruit, as well as to greater revenues from terrorist funding.
He suggested that to understand where Al Qaeda might be headed, governments needed to think about what it would want to do to maintain its brand. He also emphasized the importance of Western governments taking effective action to weaken its brand, and to strengthen their own legitimacy in countering the Al Qaeda brand, that making the Al Qaeda brand obsolete.
Sir Richard suggested that recent U.S. counter-terrorism policy was fundamentally wrongheaded in emphasizing rendition, extreme interrogation techniques (he did not use the "t" word), and holding terrorists and pututative terrorists at Guantanamo, as such actions weakened the counter-terrorism brand, damaging the long term goal of achieving the moral high ground and defeating terrorism and recruiting informants. He and others at the conference repeatedly empohasized the need for the U.S., U.K. and other governments to maintain the moral high ground to defeat terrorism, recruit informants and interact with muslim elites, rather than doing, as he views our existing strategy to have done, allowing Al Qaeda to become the mainstream resulting in easy recruitment for Jihadists.
When someone of the caliber of Sir Richard, in charge of the UK's counter-terrorism portfolio at the time of the September 11 attacks, makes such a fundamental critique of a core national security policy of his own government and that of the U.S., you would hope someone would begin to listen.
Aside from a one-sentence reference in an Associated Press piece, U.S. coverage has been nil.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times has cited the CIA as stating that Iraq has now indeed become the breeding ground and fund-raising haven for Al Qaeda following the U.S. invasion of the country that the Bush Administration had erroneously contended it was prior to the invasion.
According to the Times account, U.S. officials said that Al Qaeda's command base in Pakistan is increasingly being funded by cash coming out of Iraq, where the terrorist network's operatives are raising substantial sums from donations to the anti-American insurgency as well as kidnappings of wealthy Iraqis and other criminal activity.
The Times quotes the CIA as stating that the influx of money has bolstered Al Qaeda's leadership ranks at a time when the core command is regrouping and reasserting influence over its far-flung network. As stated by the Times, "the trend also signals a reversal in the traditional flow of Al Qaeda funds, with the network's leadership surviving to a large extent on money coming in from its most profitable franchise, rather than distributing funds from headquarters to distant cells."
According to the article, our strategic ally Pakistan has played a substantial role in facilitating the new strengthening of Al Qaeda, by withdrawing troops from the tribal areas where Osama bin Laden and his partners-in-evil are secreted.
The picture -- from Iraq to Iran to Afghanistan to Pakistan (leaving for now the scenes in Lebanon, Sudan, Algeria and Morocco) -- resembles more something out of Hieronymous Bosch than "A Charge to Keep."
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