An unresolved question remains who in the U.S. Government is accountable for the wartime “war of ideas” against Jihadists. Last fall,
Sen. Joe Lieberman questioned the FBI, the DHS, the Director of
National Intelligence, and the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC)
about their organizations’ role in the “war on ideas” against
Jihadists. The answer was a giant shrugging of shoulders.

The Washington Times reported that: “FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III revealed during the hearing
that the FBI has no counterideology response other than its ‘outreach’
to Muslim-American communities so they ‘understand the FBI’ and address
‘the radicalization issue.’” Homeland Security Secretary Michael
Chertoff also said nothing is being done domestically to battle
Islamist extremist ideas. The department’s incident management team, he
said, is focused on civil rights or civil liberties – not fighting
terrorists’ ideology.” “Retired Vice Adm. Mike McConnell, director of
national intelligence, said the intelligence community does not conduct
any battle of ideas against terrorists in the United States unless
there is a foreign connection.”

Regarding the NCTC, the Washington Times reported:
“Retired Vice Adm. Scott Redd, [then] head of the National
Counterterrorism Center who has a strategic operational role in
countering terrorism, said one of the ‘four pillars’ of the U.S. war
strategy is the ‘war of ideas,’ but he noted that there is no ‘home
office’ for that effort in the United States.” Michael Leiter then
replaced Vice Adm. Redd a few months later in November 2007.

So on May 6th, when the NCTC Acting Director Michael Leiter had a confirmation hearing with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Mr. Leiter
brought up the issue of a “war of ideas,” a reasonable person might
have expected some discussion as to organizational responsibilities and
goals. Mr. Leiter stated “we must have an equally robust effort in what many term the ‘War of Ideas.’” But Mr. Leiter offered no organizational ownership or goals other than seeking to respond to
al Qaeda’s use of mass media and Internet technologies, “[w]e must
engage them on this front with equal vehemence – and we can do so in a
way that makes quite clear how bankrupt their extremist ideology is.”

Yet we have deafening silence from the NCTC in response to two Osama bin Laden messages in the past week encouraging Jihad as “a duty” by Muslims “from Indonesia to Mauritania”, and calling for action against “Westerners.”

While some suggest that bin Laden’s messages are worth ignoring,
two months ago Mr. Leiter’s NCTC recommended ignoring bin Laden as a
matter of policy in “communications.” In the March 18, 2008 NCTC
Memorandum “Words that Work and Words that Don’t: A Guide to Counterterrorism Communication”,
the NCTC Extremist Messaging Branch directed NCTC staff that “[w]hen
Osama bin Ladin or others try to draw the USG into a debate, we should
offer only minimal, if any, response to their messages.” This is the
NCTC’s real idea of a “war of ideas:” “minimal, if any, response to
their messages.”

But at Mr. Leiter’s May 6th confirmation hearing, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reportedly had no questions on this NCTC approach, nor did it have any questions on the NCTC Extermist Messaging Branch recommendations on not defining the enemy, such as “never use the term ‘jihadist’ or
‘mujahideen’… Calling our enemies jihadis and their movement a global
jihad unintentionally legitimizes their actions.” Mr. Leiter used such
terms himself in a speech that he gave at the Washington Institute a month earlier: “al-Qa’ida
associates are largely intact and continue to wage violent jihad” (p.
6, paragraph 1).

At Mr. Leiter’s confirmation hearing, there was little reported discussion of what “strategic operational planning” NCTC provides, or what NCTC’s role in the “war of ideas” is. ABC News described Mr. Leiter’s confirmation hearing “as warm and collegial as confirmation hearings get in Washington.” As Government Executive reported:
“‘If there were a single negative vote on you in this committee, I
would be very surprised,’ Senate Intelligence Chairman John (Jay)
Rockefeller, D-W.V., told Leiter. ‘You’re kind of an ideal of what a
public servant should be.’”

While under Mr. Leiter’s watch, the NCTC’s strategic contributions to such a “war of ideas” are to make a policy to ignore Osama bin
Laden’s messages and make certain that we don’t call them “Jihadists”
or use the word “caliphate.” Where was the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence on these subjects?

Most disturbing are Mr. Leiter’s comments to the Senate committee that it is his legal experience, not his Navy experience, that best qualifies him to serve
as director of NCTC during wartime: “my legal training and experience
as a law clerk to Associate Justice Stephen Breyer and then as an
Assistant United States Attorney is especially relevant to the NCTC’s
work”… as is Mr. Leiter’s “respect for civil liberties.” I am
reminded of Andrew McCarthy’s citation of the 1993 World Trade Center
investigator’s comments in his book “Willful Blindness” “imagine the liability.” As Mr. McCarthy points out in his book “Willful Blindness,”
“The enemy was at war. Jihadists had made that exquisitely clear, in
word as well as deed. Our response was to call in not the marines, but
the prosecutors.” And 15 years later, nothing has changed, except that
now we also judge our warriors based on their “respect for civil
liberties” as well.

In any war, one logically might assume that
the Commander-in-Chief would certainly have responsibility for a
wartime strategy. On May 12th, UPI offered an anonymous “senior administration official” who states the President Bush support the NCTC/DHS recommendations on terror lexicon issues to discontinue the use of the
word “jihadist”, “Islamist”, etc., in favor of “extremists”. But
President Bush remains as publicly off-the-record on this as UPI’s
anonymous source. So we continue to have any enemy whom we won’t define
and whose ideology we won’t understand.

With an unresolved
strategy towards an enemy that the U.S. political leadership refuses to
define as other than “extremists,” it is little surprise that “strategic operational planning” would leave something to be desired. But as some suggest bin Laden’s messages are sleep-worthy, key parts of the U.S. government are clearly asleep at the wheel in fighting Bin Laden’s message and ideology.

What will it take to wake them up?

 

Guest columns do not necessarily reflect the views of Accuracy in Media or its staff.

Share This

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

About the author

3 Comments for Unresolved U.S. Strategy on Jihad and the War of Ideas