'When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again, Hurrah!'

Pardon me for confessing that the bars of this Civil War era ballad were running through my head two days after the unforgettable tragedies in New York and Washington, upon hearing the press conferences of President Bush and Secretary of State Powell on Thursday. The President stated we are at war with the terrorists, and Secretary Powell declared that it would be a lengthy campaign in which the risk of casualties would be high, and the need for cooperation with our allies mandatory. Nonetheless, I heard in the voices of these two leaders a promise of action which would be swift, sure and comprehensive and would "whip" terrorism as well as those who have been supporting it. To me it sounded a bit like the jauntiness and optimism that accompanied young brigades of Americans into the early battles of the Civil War or into infantry training after Pearl Harbor. It sounded as if the President and Secretary of State were preparing the people of the United States for a conventional mobilization where our uncontestable military might and determination to win will triumph over the cowardly forces that killed so many unsuspecting and innocent citizens on Sept. 11, our most recent and horrific day of infamy.

Would that this could be so! Would that this were an enemy which is identifiable, quantifiable, locatable and capable of being destroyed by the extraordinary array of formidable weapons that we and our allies can bring to bear on any conventional enemy in a measurable period of time. I fear that if these are the expectations of the President and the Secretary of State, as admirable as their desire may be to demonstrate leadership and meet the natural demands of a grieving and angry American people that we must do something quickly to bring the terrorists to account, then they are destined to be sorely disappointed. They are likely to be as mistaken as those young Civil War and World War II volunteers that the matter could be resolved quickly by a generous amount of courage, overwhelming force and pluck.

I don't read our terrorist enemy this way. Secretary Powell never adequately answered Jim Lehrer's question on the Sept. 13 News Hour program when he asked why the terrorists hate the United States so much that they are willing to take their own lives to strike a blow at the "Great Satan." Secretary Powell replied with a list of "Don't likes": they "don't like" our way of life, our wealth, our friends and our power. "Don't like" is an order of magnitude different from driving a fuel-heavy 757 filled with passengers into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. The type of person (or group of fifty) which is able to pull off a highly coordinated attack of this kind and willing to die to do it is not going to be sitting around in a remote encampment somewhere in Afghanistan waiting for an American bomb or cruise missile to take them out. Nor is he going to chatter away unguardedly on a cell phone where we can overhear his conversation or allow his murderous band of zealots to be penetrated by a CIA-dispatcher agent without a full display of bona fides — which means participation in a terrorist act. And if we should finally determine that Osama bin Laden is the perpetrator of the New York and Washington attacks, and we should be fortunate enough to find him and destroy him and dry up the swamp from which he has been operating, will that end the war? I don't think so. The extremist cultural genesis of this holy war assures that there will be volunteers to carry on the work of Osama and his fallen comrades.

Are we then powerless to do something about this phenomenon of terrorists who HATE the United States and all we stand for? Surely not. What has disappeared from the American populace since Sept. 11, as utterly as the Trade Towers themselves, is complacency about this subject. This may not be a conventional war between contesting powers who occupy discrete blocs of territory as President Bush appeared to imply, but it is war in the broadest sense. It is a clash of cultures, not Islam vs. the West, but a virulent extremist strain of perverted religious dogma twisted to encourage suicidal attack against modern institutions, especially in the United States. And to fight it successfully in addition to bringing the perpetrators of these despicable acts to justice (and perhaps in order to), we shall have to understand what causes their hatred and try to dry that up.

To do anything about terrorism, we shall both have to understand its underlying causes in the Middle East and elsewhere and develop the intelligence information that will give us forewarning of attacks like that of Sept. 11. In the case of intelligence collection and analysis, the blame game has already begun. With roughly $30 billion being spent annually on U.S. intelligence, the question is already being asked, how could we not have had an inkling of the planning of this murderous attack? Many answers will doubtless be offered in a series of analytical pieces and Congressional hearings certain to follow the periods of initial grief. One might start with the difficulty of approaching this target. How do American spies get close to Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein or to whomever turns out to be the perpetrator of the Sept. 11 attacks? These terrorists don't even trust members of their own family.

With regard to the operatives engaged in preparations for the Sept. 11 suicide missions, we will need the cooperation of a wide range of informants who might have become suspicious of their movements — in South Florida where some of them trained to be pilots, or Hamburg, Germany, where some of them apparently also lived and prepared for this ghastly mission. In both instances, the U.S. intelligence will need the cooperation and support of ordinary citizens on the ground and allied liaison services abroad in what is very like a law enforcement operation as distinct from a classic tale of espionage. In order to secure the cooperation of these two groups of informants they have to see that it is to their advantage to help us. A certain amount of this is assured by sympathy for the tragedy we have suffered; the realization that it could happen to them; and our ability to make it worth their while with aid — but it can be squandered if we are not perceived to be judicious in our military response to these awful acts.

In addition, it must be noted that our intelligence officers serving overseas may be moving in law enforcement direction, but they have not yet acquired the mindset and the skills that are second nature to FBI agents. Further, our intelligence operatives will need Middle Eastern language skills — Arabic, in various dialects, and Farsi — which are currently in short supply, plus the cultural acclimatization which must go with it. We lost much of our linguistic talent and area experience at the end of the Cold War, and it has not been easy to replace.

As important as these tools are, the real benefit of calling this effort a war is the cooperation President Bush has been promised by our friends all over the world to help eradicate terrorism. The interesting aspect of this cooperation is that at least among our NATO allies, the offer was initiated by them. It is my view that if we pursue the war against terrorism as a joint venture with friends who are as affected by this plague as we — with an effort to understand and do something about the underlying causes of the hatred that has given rise to these suicidal acts — and with the military restraint and care that pursuit of an evanescent, will-o-the-wisp target demands, President Bush and Secretary Powell will accomplish the goals they outlined the other night. If we don't, we'll be like the marksman in the shooting gallery. Each time we demolish one target, a new one will pop up in its place. Professor Frederick P. Hitz served as Inspector General of the CIA from 1990-98. He is a Wilson School lecturer in public and international affairs. He can be reached at fhitz@princeton.edu.