Leon Panetta is setting the mother of all goals for himself at the Pentagon. He began his first tour of Iraq and Afghanistan as defense secretary with an earthquake of a declaration: the U.S. is thisclose from finally destroying al-Qaida.
It sounds almost hysterically optimistic. But to understand why Panetta might make such a sweeping statement, and to figure out what it means for an endgame for the war on terrorism, follow the money.
The terrorists are behind the eight ball, Panetta told reporters on his way to Afghanistan. "We're within reach of strategically defeating al-Qaida," he said on Saturday, "and I’m hoping to be able to focus on that, working, obviously, with my prior agency as well."
So fuel up the drones and prepare the CIA-Joint Special Operations Command task forces. Delivering the final blow to the U.S.' main adversary of the last decade is a matter of taking down "somewhere around 10 to 20 key leaders," Panetta said, lurking in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and North Africa.
Notice that's much further than White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan would go during a similar boast. Brennan said two weeks ago that killing Osama bin Laden makes it possible to envision an end to al-Qaida, but never that the terror network was fewer than two dozen operatives from extinction.
Panetta has to know he's flirting with an epic fail. The U.S. doesn't have a great track record at judging progress against al-Qaida by pointing to terror leaders taken off the board. Somehow al-Qaida soldiers on even after the U.S. repeatedly kills whomever becomes its number-three leader. If Navy SEALs do another 20 double-taps and there's another al-Qaida strike afterward, Panetta's getting his face Photoshopped onto George W. Bush aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln in front of a "Mission Accomplished" banner.
But here's a theory for what Panetta's on about. (Yes, I'm being cheeky in calling this a "doctrine.") Remember two of the most important aspects of his resume that got him his new job. As White House budget chief under Bill Clinton, he learned how to cut a budget, and as CIA director under Barack Obama, he learned how to hunt al-Qaida. A killing stroke against al-Qaida, goes one counterterrorism argument, requires doing both. And it just so happens to be a very politically convenient argument for the Obama administration.
A forthcoming book from Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a terrorism analyst with the conservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, contends al-Qaida's primary strategy against the U.S. is economic. Provocative attacks like 9/11 don't just kill Americans. They goad U.S. leaders into doing counterproductive things like overspending on endless, bloody wars, like Mohammed Ali patiently baiting George Foreman into exhaustion.
Want to actually defeat al-Qaida? Start looking for cheaper, more sustainable counterterrorism. Gartenstein-Ross argues in his Bin Laden's Legacy for a "nimble, flexible and relatively inexpensive system of homeland defense" and to keep "the battlefield as small and focused as possible." It's also a good idea not to overhype the impact of rinky-dink terror plots, as the outgoing director of the National Counterterrorism Center urged last year.
Enter Panetta. Saying that bin Laden's team is practically through makes it easy to justify drawing down troops in Afghanistan, a war currently costing $120 billion annually, plus whatever's in the classified "black" budget. It also means that the U.S. can live with practically any outcome in Afghanistan. (No more al-Qaida to worry about returning, right?) In its place come shadow wars -- ostensibly limited global operations against Panetta's ten or twenty residual terrorist leaders, driven by commandos and drones, not big troop commitments. It's like clipping counterterrorism coupons.
But don't for a second think Panetta's talking about ending U.S. military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, he visited Baghdad on Sunday to tell the Iraqi political leadership to figure out if it wants a couple thousand U.S. troops to stay after the December withdrawal deadline. Current planning for Afghanistan calls for at least some troops to remain until 2017, and use of Afghan bases as staging grounds for a drone war beyond that -- apparently, to keep hunting those final terrorist leaders.
Panetta, in other words, wouldn't be bringing the 9/11 Era to a close. He'd be guiding it for more of a soft landing. The U.S. slowly -- verrrry slowly -- pulls back from Afghanistan and Iraq; keeps small units, intelligence and strike capabilities there as insurance; and pots up the cheaper shadow wars to deliver the knockout punch. Counterterrorism will never be as cheap as terrorism, but at least under this model, it'd get more affordable.
Ex-Defense Secretary Robert Gates had an "efficiencies initiative" to transfer cash saved by wasteful spending on overhead or crummy programs into the military's core functions. Panetta might be hinting at an efficiencies initiative for the war on terrorism. That has the benefit of helping Obama argue during his reelection bid that "the tide of war is receding," as the president said in announcing the Afghanistan drawdown, while still hedging against a regrouped al-Qaida.
So, so, so much can go wrong. Panetta's whole theory could come undone with one major terror attack after he declares al-Qaida "strategically defeated." A vengeful country could demand to invade Yemen or Somalia or wherever the terrorists hatched this hypothetical plot. Even without an attack, a residual U.S. presence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen or wherever could end up too small to actually affect deteriorating security conditions but big enough to provoke a replenishment of al-Qaida's local proxies.
Most importantly: what if Panetta's wrong? What if al-Qaida is more resilient than he believes? What if frustrations with the pace of Arab Spring revolutions give al-Qaida another lease on life? Can a cheaper, more targeted counterterrorism war withstand a setback like that?
Panetta's boast also left out a final reckoning with the 9/11 era. Say he's right and al-Qaida's about to be rolled up. At what point can the U.S. actually end the wars prompted by the terror group -- not draw them down or relegate them to the shadows, but actually end them? al-Qaida may be on the verge of a strategic defeat. But these wars have lasted so long that no one's thought through what a U.S. victory actually looks like.
Photo: DoD
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