Glen L. Carle knows about the threat America faces from Islamic extremism. He should; during his stellar 23-year career as a member of the CIA’s Clandestine Service he’s personally drafted many of the government’s most senior assessments of the threats we’ve faced by al-Qaeda and just about every other Muslim extremist organization in the world over the past two-decades.
Mr. Carle devoted his entire career to understanding and combating the jihadist threat. Perhaps that’s why he's taking such exception to the constant fear mongering promulgated by both the Bush administration and the campaign of the presumptive Republican nominee for president, John McCain. He felt the need to speak out now and he has done so in a very heartfelt and eloquent way.
First off, according to Mr. Carle, Americans shouldn’t simply accept McCain’s characterization of "radical Islamic extremism" as "the absolute gravest threat ... that we’re in against." Instead, we should closely examine the nature of the terrorist threat facing our country: for if we do so, we’ll see how we’ve allowed the specter of that threat to distort our lives and take our treasure. I would only add that through this fear-mongering, we’ve also lost our identity as Americans.
His story "Overstating our Fears" appears in Sunday’s Washington Post:
The "Global War on Terror" has conjured the image of terrorists behind every bush, the bushes themselves burning, and an angry god inciting its faithful to religious war. We have been called to arms, built fences, and compromised our laws and the practices that define us as a nation. The administration has focused on pursuing terrorists and countering an imminent and terrifying threat. Thousands of Americans have died as a result, as have tens of thousands of foreigners.
The inclination to trust our leaders when they warn of danger is compelling, particularly when the specters of mushroom clouds and jihadists haunt every debate. McCain, accepting this view of the threats, pledges to continue the Bush administration's policy of few distinctions but ruthless actions.
While honoring those who serve our nation in good faith and offer up their lives in order to protect us, we need to do so under leadership curious enough to learn about the enemy and understand what drives them to resort to such violence. And, much like our current leader, I believe John McCain lacks that intellectual curiosity necessary to achieve even a fundamental grasp of our enemy’s noesis.
In fact, Mr. Carle believes that our next commander-in-chief should base his counterterrorism policies on the following realities:
• we do not face a global jihadist "movement" but a series of disparate ethnic and religious conflicts involving Muslim populations, each of which remains fundamentally regional in nature and almost all of which long predate the existence of al-Qaeda.
• Osama bin Laden and his disciples are small men and secondary threats whose shadows are made large by our fears.
• al-Qaeda is the only global jihadist organization and is the only Islamic terrorist organization that targets the U.S. homeland. Al-Qaeda remains capable of striking here and is plotting from its redoubt in Waziristan, Pakistan. The organization, however, has only a handful of individuals capable of planning, organizing and leading a terrorist operation.
• al-Qaeda threatens to use chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons, but its capabilities are far inferior to its desires.
• even the "loose nuke" threat, whose consequences would be horrific, has a very low probability.
• for the medium term, any attack is overwhelmingly likely to consist of creative uses of conventional explosives.
Mr. Carle goes on to add that outside of al-Qaeda, no other Islamic-based terrorist organization targets America; nor do they target American assets abroad. These smaller groups do, however, identify themselves with a "global jihadist movement" and indeed with the name al-Qaeda whenever possible to invoke the most fear for the bang, so to speak.
Listen; there will always be a limited number of Muslims living in Western countries who seek to commit terrorist acts against us. And, there are even an infinitesimal number of those extremists who actually have contact with the leaders of al-Qaeda. But the vast majority of them act solo for their own imagined cause. They are the anarchists -- like those in the late 19th Century -- dupes of "true belief," the jetsam of revolutionary cultural change and destruction in Islam, and of personal anomie.
We definitely need to neutralize these people before they do us harm. But make no mistake about it; we do not face a bigger threat of being attacked here in the U.S. than we did before September 11, 2001. Furthermore, these extremists do not represent a global movement that’s a threat to our way of life.
The Bush administration has turned the above reality on its head. They’ve pressured the intelligence community to validate Cheney’s so-called "one-percent solution." They’ve undermined and sidetracked opposing voices of reason. And, by doing so guaranteed that the slightest of terrorist threats receive disproportionate weight.
We must not delude ourselves about the nature of the terrorist threat to our country. We must not take fright at the specter our leaders have exaggerated. In fact, we must see jihadists for the small, lethal, disjointed and miserable opponents that they are.
Thank you, Mr. Carle.
And, on a personal point, I think we should add to the list of small [minded], lethal, disjointed and miserable opponents -- the politicians in this country who have ulterior motives in promoting fear mongering.
Peace