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Journalist Thom Shanker Makes Case For Managing, Mitigating Inevitable Terrorist Attacks

The New York Times' Pentagon correspondent Thom Shanker interviews Defense Secretary Robert Gates aboard an aircraft headed for West Point, New York, April 21, 2008.
Cherie Cullen
/
U.S. Department of Defense
The New York Times' Pentagon correspondent Thom Shanker interviews Defense Secretary Robert Gates aboard an aircraft headed for West Point, New York, April 21, 2008.

Thom Shanker took a job as the Pentagon correspondent for The New York Times in May 2001. Four months later hijackers crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the western wall of the building during the September 11 attacks, and he spent the next 14 years covering the war on terror.

“Terrorism is not going away. It’s going to be with us,” Shanker told KGOU’s World Views. “I don’t want to alarm people, but there is going to be another attack here because the American law enforcement, intelligence [and] military have to be good and lucky every day. Whereas terrorists only have to get lucky now and then.”

The now-Assistant Washington Editor of The New York Times spent time embedded with U.S. Army Special Forces in Afghanistan, and he co-authored the book Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America’s Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda. In the book, he writes the strategies developed to fight terrorism after 9/11 evolved out of methods developed 50 years ago to thwart Soviet influence.

“A lot of smart thinkers looked back to Cold War deterrence and Cold War containment strategies, and realized that terrorists require money to operate. So let’s go after the financial networks,” Shanker said. “That is not a military effort – that is lawyers and treasury department officials. Let’s identify the enablers who support terrorist activities – the people who rent the safe houses, the people who make the bombs – because a lot of these people are very involved in terrorism, but they themselves do not want to make the ultimate sacrifice and die.”

Read an excerpt from Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America’s Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda.

Shanker says 9/11 forced the U.S. to break down barriers that separated law enforcement, intelligence, diplomacy, and the military. That hasn’t necessarily been the case in Europe, even with open borders between European Union members.

“While we can never say for sure that the Brussels attacks could’ve been prevented, we are now learning that a lot of puzzle pieces to what was going to happen were held by different institutions and different countries. They just didn’t share,” Shanker said.

But the bigger problem, according to Shanker, is solving the underlying issues that cause terrorism, like poverty, unemployment, and a lack of educational opportunities in both the Middle East and the West.

“The Islamic community in Belgium arrived poor, and has stayed poor. Here in the U.S., sure, there are still problems of race relations and integration, but Muslim-Americans as a demographic are completely integrated. Their median income is the same as everybody else,” Shanker said. “It sounds so old-fashioned and Sunday school-ish, but until we start treating our fellow man better and expanding opportunities, the pool of disenfranchised angry young men is going to continue.”

Shanker also points to Vietnam, and the widely-promulgated idea of “winning hearts and minds.” He calls that condescending, and says the goal of U.S. policy should be to earn respect and trust.

“The problem is Americans can’t do it. When Americans speak about Islam to the Muslim world – especially Americans of a Judeo-Christian background – it sounds patronizing and insulting,” Shanker said. “The people who have to carry that message of tolerance and moderation to the Muslim world are Muslims themselves who live there.”

He said the terror attacks in Paris, Brussels, and San Bernardino are tragic, but don’t threaten the western way of life. But he again cautioned against overreacting out of fear, and handing terrorists a strategic communications victory.

“To talk about resilience is an admission by a political leader that there will be another attack,” Shanker said. “And as important as that conversation is, no politician can use the R-word, resilience, because it makes them sound as if they’re giving up.”

If terrorist attacks can’t be stopped, Shanker argues they can be managed. He says the best way to do that is to show terrorists their fear-inspiring tactics didn’t work, and he draws inspiration from his hometown of Oklahoma City after the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building that killed 168 people.

“They buried the dead, they mourned, but here, the capital of one of the reddest states in America – anti-big government, anti-taxes – passed all these city taxes year after year after year to rebuild Oklahoma City into one of the most lovely and delightful middle-sized towns in America,” Shanker said. “And if there’s any way to say to Timothy McVeigh in his grave, and to other want-to-be terrorists, to say, ‘You didn’t win,’ look at how resilient and beautiful Oklahoma City is.”

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

SUZETTE GRILLOT, HOST: Thom Shanker, welcome to World Views.

THOM SHANKER: It's a great honor to be here Suzette. Thank you very much.

GRILLOT: So Thom, you've written a very interesting book about the untold story of America's secret campaign against Al Qaeda. Counterstrike is the title. But let's just start from the beginning, actually, and talk about terrorism today. What is the biggest threat today? So we can kind of then work our way back a bit and talk about how things have changed, and bring it back to what we're doing about terrorism today. What is the biggest threat today?

SHANKER: Sure. I think Al Qaeda Central is something that the U.S. government always has to be aware of. But I think that the offspring and step-offspring and cousins - let's call it a spreading cancer - of some of the other organizations are far more active and deadly today. First, of course, is the Islamic State, which is holding territory in both Syria and Iraq. Very unusual terrorist group, because they're actually trying to establish a real-life state, or a caliphate, by holding territory and collecting taxes and all that sort of stuff while also maintaining overseas goals of terrorism. I guess I have to say though that on the ground in Syria and Iraq they're being rolled back. The American and Coalition military effort is very effective. Unfortunately, like a cancer that has spread, ISIS is now not just having followers in Europe, but really established cells as we've seen in Paris and Brussels. And even if ISIS on the ground in the Middle East is somehow really rolled back and circumscribed, I fear the threat to Europe is going to be with us for a while.

GRILLOT: Well, I want to get to what we're going to do about that here in a second, but in your book Counterstrike you talk about the effective new strategies that have been developed to fight terrorism. And you actually referred to them as being quite successful. And in some ways an adaptation of previous strategies during the Cold War period. Can you tell us a little bit about what you mean by that? What those strategies were? How it was we were able to combat Al Qaeda? How it was we were able to kill Osama bin Laden? And then how those things have changed so that we can bring it up to what we're going to do today?

SHANKER: Sure, thank you very much. You know, after 9/11, really the U.S. government chose just a military option. Drop a lot of bombs, fire a lot of weapons. There's a bit of a cliché in the military that if all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. And they were just hammering on Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and in Pakistan and elsewhere. But over time they realized that you can rack and stack terrorists fighters like cordwood and that's just not going to solve the problem. You really have to get to how these terror groups operate. So a lot of smart thinkers looked back to Cold War deterrence and Cold War containment strategies, and realized that terrorists require money to operate. So let's go after the financial networks. That is not a military effort. That is lawyers and treasury department officials. Let's identify the enablers who support terrorist activities that people who rent the safe houses, the people who make the bombs. Because a lot of these people are very involved in terrorism, but they themselves do not want to make the ultimate sacrifice and die. So there are ways to bring pressure on them, especially the financial networks and some of the other enablers to really constrict their behavior, and in that way constrict the terrorist activities.

GRILLOT: So in terms of the kinds of multiple strategies that we're having to take, how is it though that when you've gone from an organization like Al Qaeda - which was fairly identifiable - to an organization like ISIS, which as you mentioned has lots of cells. Now, you noted that they've been rolled back, that they're the attacks by multiple parties in Iraq and Syria to try to combat ISIS on the ground there. But they've proliferated. They're now very diffuse. That is one thing that we've learned about terrorists, is that they're diffuse organizations and individuals, and intent to include others and incorporate others on a regular and daily basis. So identifying enablers, containing, working on the financials - that seems to work on kind of the larger structure. But what kind of law enforcement or other activities - because it doesn't seem to be military really helps with those types of problems, the diffuse nature of terrorist organizations - what is it that we can do about that? What are we doing about that?

SHANKER: Yeah, it's an absolutely fabulous question, and I think that the recent attacks in Paris and in Brussels have shown what works and what hasn't worked, and what's needed. After 9/11 here in the U.S., there was a learning period, because traditionally diplomats don't really like talking to spies, the spies distrust the military, the military's in its own world. But after 9/11 the U.S. government really broke down a lot of the traditional laws that separated law enforcement, intelligence, diplomacy, and the military. Europe, despite the European Union and open borders, those governments still do not share very well. And while we can never say for sure that the Brussels attacks could've been prevented, we are now learning that a lot of puzzle pieces to what was going to happen were held by different institutions and different countries. They just didn't share. So it needs to be done in Europe. They need to share a lot more information to perhaps be able to detect these attacks in advance. But the bigger question, and you of course being an academic professor and looking at things broadly, we're never going to really solve the terrorist problem until societies solve the underlying problems - poverty, poverty of education, poverty of jobs, especially poverty of hope. And the Islamic community in Belgium arrived poor, and has stayed poor. And before coming to the show I looked up these statistics just to be sure. Belgium has sent almost 500 of its citizens of Muslim faith to Iraq and Syria where they've learned, and come back. As a percentage, that's the highest in the world. Here in the U.S., sure, there are still problems of race relations and integration and all of that. But Muslim-Americans as a demographic are completely integrated. Their median income's the same as everybody else. The asterisk on that is the Somali-American community, which hasn't adapted. So it really is, it sounds so old-fashioned and Sunday school-ish, but until we start treating our fellow man better and expanding opportunities, the pool of disenfranchised angry young men is going to continue.

GRILLOT: Well, I just had here to ask you about this disenfranchisement that I think many have suggested. The fact that young people in particular, and we have a very young population in many of these parts of the world, they're marginalized. They don't have the opportunity. They don't have the education. And we keep seeing this not only growing but just kind of repeating. This pattern repeating. So addressing things like poverty and education, as you suggest. But I want to go back to what you said about solving the problem. Is this just something, terrorism that we've been living with for a long time? International terrorism maybe not so much, but terrorist activity in general is really not all that new. So solving it - are we really talking about minimizing it? Managing it? Mitigating the negative consequences of this thing? And that requires tools from all these different angles, not just the military and law enforcement tools, not just trying to deal with the supply of terrorists, if you will, but trying to manage, minimize this disenfranchisement and the fact that you're creating demand, I guess. Someone once said recently that it's about belonging. It's almost like gang warfare in inner city America years ago when they would talk about belonging. You had to belong to something, and that these young people don't belong to something. So they end up belonging to these types of organizations and being encouraged to and participating in these types of activities. Is this how you see it? Is this really what you think we should do? And if so, how are we going to get ourselves to that point? To where we see it more as that kind of problem than as a military or a law enforcement one?

SHANKER: Yeah, it's an utterly...

GRILLOT: Huge question, sorry.

SHANKER: No no no, it's an utterly fascinating point. And I'm so glad you underscored my use of the word "solve," because that really was not the best phrase. Your use of the phrase "manage the problem." That's an absolutely, and from our side it's the point that we make in the closing chapter of our book, which is as relevant now when it was published, is the need for Americans to become so resilient? I mean, when did we become such a fearful place? And just as you say, terrorism is not going away. It's going to be with us. I don't want to alarm people, but there is going to be another attack here, because the American law enforcement, intelligence, military has to be good and lucky every day. Whereas terrorists only have to get lucky now and then. So it is going to happen. So the most important thing for Americans to do is to be resilient. And here we are in Norman, just south of Oklahoma City, and when I travel the country or the world talking about terrorism, I say, 'You know, my hometown for Oklahoma City really set the standard for how you should respond to a terrorist attack.' After the horrific bombing of the Murrah building, what did Oklahoma City do? They buried the dead, they mourned, but here, the capital of one of the reddest states in America - anti-big government, anti-taxes - passed all these city taxes year after year after year to rebuild Oklahoma City into one of the most lovely and delightful middle-sized towns in America. And if there's any way to say to Timothy McVeigh in his grave, and to other want-to-be terrorists, to say, 'You didn't win,' look at how resilient and beautiful Oklahoma City is. And that's how we, again, manage terrorism. By responding in ways that show terrorists that they haven't terrorized us.

GRILLOT: And perhaps even in a collective way, right? We don't necessarily overcome these things individually and on our own. That is a big part of it, but that goes back to your comment earlier about her need to cooperate and share information and see terrorism as the problem that it really is, and that it's a collective one. Many of us, not just the United States, not just Europe, many of us around the world are experiencing these types of attacks. Look what's happened recently in Pakistan and other parts of the Middle East. In fact, I saw something recently that said that overwhelmingly, 90 percent or so, of the victims of terrorism are Muslims from other parts of the world. They're not Europeans. They're not non-Americans. So this is a collective problem that requires collective reaction, collective response, and a collective resilience, right? But the challenge is convincing everyone that it's a collective issue and a collective response, and a collective resilience needs to emerge.

SHANKER: Right, again, if I was president, I would make you National Security Advisor, because you're exactly right. And your point about the majority of victims of militant terrorism being Muslims is absolutely right. But what's important is to relay that message to the Muslim world. And the problem is Americans can't do it. When Americans speak about Islam to the Muslim world, especially Americans of a Judeo-Christian background, it sounds patronizing and insulting. The people who have to carry that message of tolerance and moderation to the Muslim world are Muslims themselves who live there. And at most, what the U.S. can do, to your collective point, is help amplify those voices and spread that word. But if we try and do it ourselves, it will be insulting. It goes back to that phrase from Vietnam, about how we tried to win hearts and minds. How terribly insulting and condescending. The goal of U.S. policy should be to earn respect and trust.

GRILLOT: Well, I have to end on this note, because someone recently asked me as I was giving a talk about turbulence around the world, how sustainable is terrorist activity anyway? How sustainable is something like ISIS? Now you've already admitted, and I think we all agree, these things are going to happen. We can manage, minimize, mitigate. Solving? Probably not. But organizations like ISIS - is this a model for the future? I mean, are we going to be dealing with that type of thing from here on out? To that extent? To this degree? Or is this really something that's all that sustainable for them? Can they really do anything other than, for lack of a better way of doing it, just kind of bite our ankles every now and then, off and on?

SHANKER: Right. I think the model we see today is, of course, an evolution from the old Al Qaeda Central that was just operating in hiding places in Pakistan. Again, ISIS holds territory. Boko Haram in West Africa holds territory, cells in the Maghreb and Libya are trying to hold territory. So the terrorist model is evolving, and will continue to evolve. We just need to stay ahead of that. But I think this kind of violence is sustainable. And as you said, whether you call it biting your ankle, whatever, every terrorist death above zero is too many. But we also have to keep in mind that as tragic as those small number of deaths are, efforts need to be done at the strategic level to keep true weapons of mass destruction out of their hands. And at the more tactical level, we have to understand that those sorts of attacks, like what we've seen in Paris and in Brussels, and even in San Bernardino here, however tragic is every loss of life are not real threats to our existence. And we have to respond calmly and in a measured fashion and not so overreact out of fear that we actually hand terrorists a strategic communications victory.

GRILLOT: So let's end on that note. How hopeful are you that we can pull that off and not overreact in the future?

SHANKER: Well, it's interesting. I think I'm more optimistic that combined efforts will keep terrorist attacks to a sustainable, if tragic, level. I am not completely optimistic about the resilience question, because to talk about resilience is an admission by a political leader that there will be another attack. And as important as that conversation is, no politician can use the R-word, resilience, because it makes them sound as if they're giving up.

GRILLOT: Well, Thom Shanker, thank you so much for being here on World Views and sharing your insight. Thank you very much.

SHANKER: It was a great honor. Thank you for asking me in.

Copyright © 2016 KGOU Radio. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to KGOU Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only. Any other use requires KGOU's prior permission.

KGOU transcripts are created on a rush deadline by our staff, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of KGOU's programming is the audio.

Brian Hardzinski is from Flower Mound, Texas and a graduate of the University of Oklahoma. He began his career at KGOU as a student intern, joining KGOU full time in 2009 as Operations and Public Service Announcement Director. He began regularly hosting Morning Edition in 2014, and became the station's first Digital News Editor in 2015-16. Brian’s work at KGOU has been honored by Public Radio News Directors Incorporated (PRNDI), the Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters, the Oklahoma Associated Press Broadcasters, and local and regional chapters of the Society of Professional Journalists. Brian enjoys competing in triathlons, distance running, playing tennis, and entertaining his rambunctious Boston Terrier, Bucky.
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