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December 30, 2009

Terrorism as Law Enforcement

Posted by Greg Scoblete at 5:27 AM

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Peter Feaver makes a rather striking claim:

There are all sorts of questions about who knew what, when, and what they did about it. But I am most interested in what the investigation will reveal about the bureaucratic mindset, and here I am not talking about a zero-defect mentality but a potentially more pernicious mindset. One of the more important revelations of the 9/11 Commission investigation was the pervasiveness of what Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called the "pre-9/11 mindset." The mindset led the Clinton administration to view al Qaeda as merely a law-enforcement problem and, as a consequence, to limit themselves on what they might do to counter the threat.

The Obama administration has likewise made a big point of seeking to reinstate the law enforcement mindset throughout the counterterrorism enterprise.


That certainly must come as a surprise to Afghanistan, which is about to host 30,000 more American police officers soldiers, and Pakistan, whose tribal areas are being subjected to a stepped up American bombing campaign, and Somalia, whose Transitional Government is receiving weapons and cash from the U.S. and Yemen, where the U.S. has reportedly participated in two military strikes.

Is it really accurate to say that the Obama administration has embraced a "law enforcement" paradigm with respect to counter-terrorism? Instead, it looks more like a hybrid approach that discards a few of the counter-terrorism policies of their predecessors with respect to how terrorists are interrogated, detained and tried. If they're not blown to pieces first.

(AP Photos)

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