One of Barack Obama's earliest acts as president was todiscard the phrase "war on terror," yet he has been waging just such a campaignthese past four years -- with a skillful mix of subtlety and ferocity. Severalmajor al Qaeda plots have been thwarted by aggressive, innovative intelligenceprograms, often conducted in a deeply networked fashion with our allies. Inaddition to the killing of Osama bin Laden, many other operatives in the lateterrorist capo's organization havefound themselves on the receiving end of commando raids or Hellfire missiles,from Waziristan to Yemen -- and beyond. Those not yet in the crosshairs havegone to ground, or dare to move about only sparingly, furtively.
More... Obama's counter-terrorism strategy has extended to othermalefactors as well, from madmen like Joseph Kony and his Lord's ResistanceArmy to the Libyan state terrorist, Moammar Qaddafi. Kony is being hunted bylocal African forces of order, which are themselves being assisted by about ahundred American special operators. Qaddafi was taken down when Obamaengineered and enabled a NATO air campaign that began by preventing a slaughterof innocents in Benghazi, then went on to effect regime change in Tripoli -- ina far less costly manner than was undertaken in Iraq by George W. Bush.
Indeed, the difference in the approaches taken by our twomost recent presidents really speaks to there being two different wars onterror. Bush chose to attack other nations in his attempt to create a lesspermissive international environment for terrorist networks. Obama has decidedto take the more direct approach: going straight after the networks.
Bush's strategy proved exceptionally costly and highlyproblematic in Iraq, and even his initial success in "going small" inAfghanistan was all too soon overtaken by a stalemate-inducing impulse to sendlarge numbers of troops there. Obama's concept of operations, on the otherhand, has been working well, and will never break the bank or exhaust ourmilitary -- especially in the wake of his realizing, and reversing, the follyof surging more troops into Afghanistan, as senior military leaders persuadedhim to do early in his presidency.
It is tempting, on the eve of the 11[SUP]th[/SUP]anniversary of 9/11, to believe that the problem posed by terrorist networks isat last well on its way to being solved -- and this may be the case. But thisis a moment to remember, in a cautionary way, that there was an earlier war onterror, crafted by Ronald Reagan and his close advisers in the mid-1980s, thatbegan subtly and skillfully, too -- yet which soon foundered.
In the weeks and months after the October 1983 bombing ofthe Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 242 Americans, Reagan and his teambecame deeply concerned about the terrorism problem. But it was the abductionand torture of the CIA's Beirut station chief, William Buckley, in March 1984that truly brought matters to a head. Secretary of State George Shultz called aSaturday meeting of terrorism experts, led by Brian Jenkins of the RANDCorporation, and the team brainstormed until a strategy emerged, one thatcalled for something that strongly resembles the kind of campaign that Obama isnow pursuing. Rather, the resemblance is in reverse, as Reagan's plan camefirst.
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