by Anna Mulrin

Moving Beyond Bush's War on Terrorism: Obama Changed Tone, But There is Some Surprising Continuity
By Jennifer Kohnke

President Obama changed the tone, but there is some surprising continuity in Afghanistan

It didn't take long for President Obama to drop the once ubiquitous phrase "global war on terrorism" from Washington's lexicon.

The moniker, which seemed nearly inescapable for most of the Bush years, had come to represent not only two ground wars and a host of shadowy counterterrorism missions but also an aggressive and controversial assertion of America's rights to go after, detain, and interrogate terrorism suspects.

The Obama administration quickly adopted the intentionally generic phrase "overseas contingency operations," a symbolic reflection of the tectonic shift in tone between the two presidents.

The new tone has helped to ease tensions with some of America's key allies even as Obama continues to refine his strategy for fighting terrorism, which has included a wider unmanned drone campaign against targets inside Pakistan's tribal regions and a more concerted effort against cyberthreats.

Even as Obama is trying to slowly wind down the war in Iraq, he has added resources and troops to Afghanistan. But perhaps the most dramatic shift when it comes to terrorism is simply that it is not dominating the White House agenda in the same way it did for the past seven years. Intelligence officials warn that al Qaeda remains a persistent national threat, but the terrorist network has been overshadowed in Obama's early months by the global economic crisis, among other challenges.

One of the most dramatic new threats came in the form of Somali pirates who attacked a U.S.-flagged ship off the coast of the East African nation. The president's first major international crisis was over in a few days, after Navy snipers killed three of the pirates and rescued the American hostage they were holding.

Consistencies.

Behind the scenes, however, a series of thorny lingering counterterrorism issues -- from the fate of detained terrorism suspects to the secret government wiretapping program -- has revealed unexpected consistencies between the Obama and Bush administrations.

Some of these moves have strained the support of Obama's liberal backers while doing little to assuage his conservative critics. "There's a surprising continuity in many policies, more than most people would have predicted, but they've also made some sensible changes as well," says Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert and Georgetown University professor.

Just days into office, Obama announced that he would close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, trying to heal what had become a lingering black eye for the United States overseas. Obama gave government officials a year to work out the details, but he has to navigate through a minefield of legal and political challenges. Ever since Obama's announcement, members of the House and Senate have rushed to decry the possibility that suspected terrorists could be jailed in their home states. "The best place for these dangerous terrorists is Guantánamo, not in our communities they so despise," said Republican Sen. Pat Roberts, whose state, Kansas, has a large military prison.

Senior U.S. officials have acknowledged not only that some detainees may be innocent or no longer a threat but that they could even end up as free men inside the United States. "If we are to release them in the United States, you can't just sort of put them on the street," Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence and Obama's top intelligence adviser, told a group of reporters. "We need some sort of assistance to them to start a new life and not return to some of the conditions that may have inspired them in the first place."

European countries, once eager for the prison's shuttering, are leery of hosting even clearly innocent Gitmo inmates. Seventeen Turkic-speaking Muslims from western China remain in jail at Guantánamo Bay despite having been cleared of all terrorism charges. China considers the men terrorists because they oppose the Chinese government. Albania accepted a few of the prisoners in 2006 under U.S. urging, but Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, France, and Portugal have gotten cold feet over accepting some former prisoners after China warned of diplomatic repercussions.

The Obama Justice Department has also found itself in the awkward position of defending in court some of the same Bush administration assertions of executive power that Obama railed against as a candidate. Less than a month into the new president's term, the Justice Department invoked the so-called state secrets privilege to quash a case brought by a group of terrorism suspects against their Central Intelligence Agency captors, who allegedly sent them to third countries where they were tortured. The Obama administration used the same state secrets tactic in trying to dismiss suits over the government's wiretapping program. Separately, there was a fierce debate between the White House and the CIA over the release of four Bush administration legal memos. The documents, which were eventually made public, detailed controversial interrogation measures that the Bush White House considered legal treatment of prisoners but the Red Cross described as torture.

In one of the world's most remote areas, meanwhile, the intensified post-9/11 search for Osama bin Laden heads into its eighth year, as forces and CIA drones scour the tribal regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Since Obama took office, the White House has ordered 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and has widened the battlefield by expanding the number of unmanned aircraft strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas. There have been more than 35 reported missiles fired from those CIA-operated drones since August, killing a reported 340 people -- including a handful of suspected midlevel terrorists along with numerous civilians -- and enraging the local Pakistani population.

The targets of those strikes have moved well beyond the core of al Qaeda's traditional leadership.

A March drone strike targeted camps run by Pakistani tribal militant leader Baitullah Mehsud. The Bush administration had refrained from going after Mehsud, who is the prime suspect behind the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, according to senior U.S. counterterrorism officials. Only days after the March missile strikes, Mehsud called the BBC to say that his forces were planning to attack Washington. Senior U.S. counterterrorism officials acknowledged the threat but are dubious about the militant's ability to follow through.

Asymmetric battle.

To help the military refocus its efforts on Afghanistan, which Obama has called ground zero in the battle against terrorism, the Pentagon is trying to slowly wind down operations in Iraq. While Obama has ordered a drawdown of forces in Iraq, a substantial deployment of about 50,000 soldiers will remain to perform training, support, and other functions. To get around the status-of-forces agreement that President Bush signed in the waning months of his presidency, the Pentagon refers to the legacy troops as "advisers," although critics charge that there aren't any noncombat soldiers in an asymmetric battlefield like Iraq. The residual force was received warmly by Republicans, but it rankled Obama's allies in Congress.

Even as that conflict recedes, the national security community is looking ahead to the next generation of potential threats. The National Intelligence Priority Framework is a secret government chart that outlines the country's intelligence priorities. A color-coded matrix of 70 columns and 70 rows, it is the spy world's master strategy document and is updated every few months to reflect the changing nature of national threats. Al Qaeda and rogue nations like North Korea are regularly included, but these days, intelligence officials speak as often about cybersecurity as they do about terrorism. Online crime is an increasing concern, from identity theft to espionage, and much of it originates in countries like Russia and China.

On the whole, the Obama administration's approach to the threat of terrorism has been noticeably muted. The Department of Homeland Security, for instance, has found itself playing a far less public role, at least in the early months of the administration. "Some homeland security work is best done off the front pages, which may be easier these days," says Frank Cilluffo, who heads the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University. "But threats remain, so keeping the public's attention and support is a challenge." In February, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano testified for the first time before a congressional committee and never uttered the word terrorism.

Of course, the terrorism threat could still become a dominant concern for the Obama administration, particularly if al Qaeda does manage to pull off another terrorist attack inside the United States. "There's no question this is a war," CIA Director Leon Panetta said shortly after taking the helm of the country's spy apparatus. "Nothing has changed our efforts to go after terrorists, and nothing will change those efforts."

 

Receive our political analysis by email by subscribing here



 

Moving Beyond Bush's War on Terrorism

© Tribune Media Services