John Brennan, White House homeland security and counterterrorism advisor explains a new strategy

On August 6, eight years to the day that a CIA briefer warned President George W. Bush that Osama Bin Laden was determined to strike in the United States, John Brennan, the White House homeland security and counterterrorism advisor, assured  a high powered audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC., that the administration of President Barack Obama has not slackened or relaxed its fight against violent extremists and Al Qaeda but is taking a broader, more nuanced approach toward the threat of violent extremism, its partners and the Muslim world.

The clear policy of the United States remains "to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda and its allies" using "every tool in our toolbox and every arrow in our quiver," said Brennan.

The strategy that Brennan laid out has elements of continuity with the previous administration in that it continues to see violent extremism and Al Qaeda as threats to be fought but it also has significant differences in approach. Over the long term the new strategy will fight nuclear proliferation, promote food security to end cycles of poverty and hunger and bolster US cybersecurity while taking a holistic approach to extremists and the conditions that create them.

Drawing on his long experience as a counterterrorism veteran, CIA station chief, founding director of the National Counterterrorism Center, diplomat and one-time presidential intelligence briefer, as well as his extensive travels and studies in the Muslim world, Brennan said that after coming out of retirement he had personally been troubled by the "inflammatory rhetoric, hyperbole and intellectual narrowness" of the debate over terrorism as well as contradictory charges that  Obama was abandoning the fight against terrorism on the one hand and blindly following his predecessor's policies on the other. "Both are wrong," he said.

What was true, said Brennan, was that "the president rejects an absolutist approach or the imposition of a rigid ideology on our problems. Like the world itself, his views are nuanced, not simplistic; practical, not ideological." He also rejects a "false choice" between "our national security and upholding civil liberties."

The Al Qaeda threat

Nonetheless, Brennan did not dismiss the threat presented by Al Qaeda, which he characterized as "adaptive and highly resilient" as well as "dynamic and evolving." 

"Al Qaeda and its affiliates are under tremendous pressure. After years of US counterterrorism operations, and in partnership with other nations, Al Qaeda has been seriously damaged and forced to replace many of its top-tier leadership with less experienced and less capable individuals. It is being forced to work harder and harder to raise money, to move its operatives around the world, and to plan attacks."

Still, "The group’s intent to carry out attacks against the United States and US interests around the world—with weapons of mass destruction if possible—remains undiminished, and another attack on the US homeland remains the top priority for the Al Qaeda senior leadership."

To counter this, the United States is acting around the world in partnership with its allies to pursue its strategy against Al Qaeda and this prompted another personal observation by Brennan: "Over the past six months we have presented President Obama with a number of actions and initiatives against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Not only has he approved these operations, he has encouraged us to be even more aggressive, even more proactive, and even more innovative, to seek out new ways and new opportunities for taking down these terrorists before they can kill more innocent men, women, and children."

When it came to homeland security, Brennan put particular emphasis on the need for bio-defenses and the work that has been done to date. "Our homeland security efforts include working aggressively to prevent and prepare for bio-terrorism, which is why the president’s budget makes major investments in our public health infrastructure, including new technologies to detect attacks and new vaccines to respond in a crisis," he said. "And I would note that our coordinated response to the H1N1 virus—across the federal government, with state and local governments and with the private sector and the public—and our extensive preparations for the coming flu season will ensure that we are better prepared for any future bio-terrorist attack.

The five pillars

The president's new policy is based on five new approaches to the issue of extremism, terrorism and Al Qaeda, according to Brennan.

"First, and perhaps most significantly, the fight against terrorists and violent extremists has been returned to its right and proper place: no longer defining—indeed, distorting—our entire national security and foreign policy, but rather serving as a vital part of those larger policies. President Obama has made it clear that the United States will not be defined simply by what we are against, but by what we are for—the opportunity, liberties, prosperity, and common aspirations we share with the world." The US government is no longer judging other governments through a "narrow prism" that views them as either favoring the United States or terrorism, he said.

Next, the administration is redefining the problem. "the President does not describe this as a 'war on terrorism.' That is because 'terrorism' is but a tactic—a means to an end, which in Al Qaeda’s case is global domination by an Islamic caliphate. Confusing ends and means is dangerous, because by focusing on the tactic, we risk floundering among the terrorist trees while missing the growth of the extremist forest. And ultimately, confusing ends and means is self-defeating, because you can never fully defeat a tactic like terrorism any more than you can defeat the tactic of war itself."

This redefinition of the conflict also avoids playing into Al Qaeda's hands. "Why should a great and powerful nation like the United States allow its relationship with more than a billion Muslims around the world be defined by the narrow hatred and nihilistic actions of an exceptionally small minority of Muslims? After all, this is precisely what Osama Bin Laden intended with the Sept. 11 attacks: to use Al Qaeda to foment a clash of civilizations in which the United States and Islam are seen as distinct identities that are in conflict." The United States will no longer validate Al Qaeda's "twisted worldview."

A third approach is to attack the conditions that fuel extremism, what Brennan termed "the upstream factors" like frustration over community security, the availability of education, a secure income and the lack of a sense of dignity and worth that find their outlets in extremist organizations and ideologies.

The fourth approach is to expose Al Qaeda as "as nothing but the death cult that it is and isolating extremists from the people they pretend to serve," and breaking the bonds between the organization and ordinary people as the latter realize that Al Qaeda does not represent hope but holds them back and offers nothing but "violence and despair."

Lastly, the new approach is seeking to use all forms of American power to "ensure that those 'upstream' factors discourage rather than encourage violent extremism." This includes fighting poverty, hopelessness and despair with prosperity, hope and the promise of a better life--and setting a moral example that upholds "the values of justice, liberty, dignity and rule of law that make people want to work with us and other governments want to partner with us."

Analysis

It was impossible not to detect a strong sense of relief in Brennan's remarks as though he were suddenly free, not only of previous restraints, but more, free of a narrow, ideological, one-dimensional approach to the issue of counterterrorism that was self-defeating and of which he had long disapproved.

It also seemed clear that he had a major hand in shaping the new approach but could do so because he was working with a president with a sense of nuance and subtlety similar to his own. Although not intended as a head-on attack of the previous administration's approach to the war on terror, the very fact that the Obama administration is taking such a different tack in its prosecution of Al Qaeda was an inherent criticism of the previous eight years, as expressed in Brennan's speech.

The significant anniversary of the speech brought to mind an account of the Aug. 6, 2001 briefing at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas as detailed by author Ron Suskind in his book, The 1 Percent Doctrine.

In Suskind's account, on that day the CIA was deeply concerned about an imminent terrorist attack. "The analytical arm of the CIA was in a kind of panic mode at this point," Suskind wrote. "Other intelligence services, including those from the Arab world, were sounding an alarm. The arrows were all in the red.They didn't know the place or time of the attack, but something was coming. The President needed to know."

And so a briefer was dispatched to Crawford where he sat down with Bush. But while face-to-face briefings were very important to Bush, he also tended to judge them less on the content than on the context: Was the briefer unsure or nervous? Was he fudging? And what did the briefer think of Bush himself? On such factors Bush would make his decisions, wrote Suskind.

"And, at an eyeball-to-eyeball briefing during this urgent summer, George W. Bush seems to have made the wrong choice.

"He looked at the panicked CIA briefer.

"'All right,' he said. 'You've covered your ass, now.'"

After Brennan's presentation, one had the distinct impression that such a scene was not about to be repeated with this president or in this administration.