MideastWeb Middle East Web Log

log  archives  middle east  maps  history   documents   countries   books   encyclopedia   culture   dialogue   links    timeline   donations 

Search:

French lessons: What America can learn about dealing with terrorism

04/18/2004

Lee Smith is hearing echoes. In a new article in Slate, he refers readers to an article from the Spring 2003 issue of Survival, the quarterly publication of the International Institute for Strategic Studies ("double-eye double-ess") in London. The authors, Jeremy Shapiro and Benedicte Suzan, chart the ups and downs of France's history of dealing with Middle Eastern terrorism during the last quarter-century.

Shapiro and Suzan sum up France's progress:

...in 1980, French authorities could not even identify a foreign terrorist attack in the middle of Paris after it had happened. In 1999, they possessed a detailed understanding of a terrorist cell in another country plotting attacks against yet a third country. This striking contrast reflects a more general increase in the French capacity to prevent and fight terrorism, both at home and abroad. Throughout the 1980s and much of the 1990s, France was considered a haven for international terrorists, both for those operating in France and those using France as a base for operations elsewhere. By the late 1990s, in contrast, France had scored notable successes in preventing planned terrorist attacks on the World Cup in 1998, against the Strasbourg Cathedral in 2000 and against the American Embassy in Paris 2001.
Smith sees U.S. counter-terrorism as starting from the same low base that France did in 1980. But he doesn't seem too optimistic that the U.S. will match the French turnaround:
In July 2002, long after 9/11, an Egyptian national walked into Los Angeles International Airport with a gun and killed two Israeli citizens at the El Al counter. On his application for asylum in the United States, Hesham Mohamed Hedayet had written that in Egypt he'd confessed to being a member of al-Gama'a al-Islameya, but apparently, unless a man has Osama Bin Laden's phone number in his PalmPilot or a big "AQ" tattooed across his chest, it takes the FBI almost a year to decide he is, in fact, a terrorist. And how did they finally determine this? "The investigation," said an FBI spokesman in April 2003, "developed information that (Hedayet) openly supported the killings of civilians in order to advance the Palestinian cause." This is incompetence and there is nothing to indicate our law enforcement agencies are getting better.

When CIA Director George Tenet says it will take five years to build a clandestine service able to serve the country, his over-optimism suggests that either he is lying or too incompetent to know that he is lying. When he says it will take that long for U.S. agents to take root, as the Washington Post reports, "in the rough societies where terrorist sources can be developed," he is telling us he thinks that the main point is to get our boys in those darned caves and mud castles. The Islamist student union at Cairo University is not a rough society, and it does not take five years to get admitted into the school's engineering faculty. When Tenet says that al-Qaida's influence is only recently spreading, he is telling us that no one in his office has briefed him on Sayyid Qutb's writings, the bible for a very widespread and potent ideological trend that declared war on Jews, Crusaders, and infidel Muslim rulers long before Osama Bin Laden first sprouted whiskers.

It's become truistic that we are engaged in a "war of ideas." But this phrase is almost too genteel, and in its connotations sanguine and self-congratulatory: what civilization is better positioned to win a war of ideas than the intellectual powerhouse of the West, what idea is more powerful than democracy, etc. At the same time, we've become fond of assuring ourselves that the enemy is merely a sort of fanatical froth, operating on the fringes of global Muslim society, destined for extinction.

How we conceive of the problem has implications for strategy. Without wishing to deny the appeal of Hollywood movies, the ballot box, or the Enlightenment, it seems to me that we are facing a problem more central, entrenched, and enduring than "the war of ideas" would imply. Yet if it is an enduring problem, it also may be more manageable than we normally assume -- so long as our attempts to quelch it do not have the opposite of the intended effects.

Terrorism has a long history and seems to come and go in waves. As Shapiro and Suzan note,

...because France has lived so long under the spectre of terrorism at home, neither state officials nor the public views the problem as transitory or fixable, but rather sees political terrorism as an inevitable and permanent feature of modern life. The French system therefore seeks to manage and minimise the problem rather than to solve it. In contrast, in the United States, the very notion of a 'war on terrorism' implies that the struggle will someday end.
But we, too, probably had better get used to it. If I were to name a sole "root cause" for the current wave of terrorism, it would be that Western and specifically American culture, political forms, economic models, and military might have conquered the world. This is the backlash. Conquering the world all over again in the name of the same things won't fix the problem.

Analyst

(The article by Shapiro and Suzan, "The French Experience of Counter-terrorism," is available in PDF.)

If you like this post - click to Reddit!
add to del.icio.usAdd to digg - digg it

Original text copyright by the author and MidEastWeb for Coexistence, RA. Posted at MidEastWeb Middle East Web Log at http://www.mideastweb.org/log/archives/00000246.htm where your intelligent and constructive comments are welcome. Distributed by MEW Newslist. Subscribe by e-mail to mew-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. Please forward by email with this notice and link to and cite this article. Other uses by permission.

by Analyst @ 08:12 AM CST [Link]

NEWS

Middle East e-Zine

Midde East News

Opinion Digest

Late Updates

REFERENCE

Middle East Glossary

Middle East Maps

Middle East Books

Middle East Documents

Israel-Palestine History

Israel-Palestine Timeline

Middle East Countries

Middle East Economy

Middle East Population

Middle East Health

Zionism History

Palestinian Parties

Palestinian Refugees

Peace Plans

Water

Middle East

  

Blog Links

OneVoice - Israeli-Palestinian Peace Blog

Bravo411 -Info Freedom

Israel News

Oceanguy

Michael Brenner

Dutchblog Israel

Dutch - IMO (Israel & Midden-Oosten) Blog (NL)

GulfReporter

Israpundit

Alas, a Blog

Little Green Footballs

Blue Truth

Fresno Zionism

Reut Blog

Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Blog

Simply Jews: Judaism and Israel

Jeff Weintraub - Commentaries and Controversies

Vital Perspective

ZioNation

Meretz USA Weblog

normblog

MIDEAST observer

On the Contrary

Blogger News Network- BNN

Google Sex Maps

Demediacratic Nation

Realistic Dove

Tulip - Israeli-Palestinian Trade Union Assoc.

On the Face

Israel Palestjnen (Dutch)

Middle East Analysis

Israel: Like This, As If

Middle East Analysis

Mid_East Journal

Z-Word Blog

Dvar Dea

SEO for Everyone


Web Sites & Pages

Israeli-Palestinian Procon

End Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: One Voice

Democratiya

ATFP- American Task Force on Palestine

Americans For Peace Now

Shalom Achshav

Chicago Peace Now

Nemashim

Peacechild Israel

Bridges of Peace

PEACE Watch

Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Z-Word

Zionism

Zionism and Israel

Zionism and Israel on the Web

Israel - Palestina:Midden-Oosten Conflict + Zionisme

Israël in de Media

Euston Manifesto

New Year Peace

Jew

Christian Zionism

Jew Hate

Space Shuttle Blog

Israel News Magazine

SEO


My Ecosystem Details
International Affairs Blogs - BlogCatalog Blog Directory

Link 2 us
We link 2 U.
MidEastWeb- Middle East News & Views
MidEastWeb is not responsible for the content of linked Web sites


Replies: 7 comments

The recent round of titles alleging that imperfection in a **** machine in Missouri resulted in indequete payouts is a fresh reminder of the ongoing public scrutiny our industry faces over the decency and ability to operate on of electronic gaming devices. As anyone who works in this industry knows, these concerns could not be more unfounded. Like every other aspect of our industry, development and maintenance of electronic gaming appartus is very controled . Very relevant to SlotMachine Standardization standardization indeed.

Posted by SlotMachine Standardization @ 05/01/2004 09:49 AM CST

plus size nursing bras

Posted by plus size bra @ 02/12/2006 12:53 AM CST

blue book kelly

Posted by kelly blue book @ 02/12/2006 11:11 PM CST

rolex watches

Posted by replica rolex watches @ 02/14/2006 09:05 AM CST

cheap online pharmacy

Posted by online pharmacy @ 02/17/2006 03:26 AM CST

Hello! Very good work! -gay men fucking

Posted by gay men @ 02/23/2006 01:26 AM CST

WOW!! GOOD WORK! LIKE IT -gay teen porn

Posted by gay teens @ 02/23/2006 05:22 AM CST


Please do not leave notes for MidEastWeb editors here. Hyperlinks are not displayed. We may delete or abridge comments that are longer than 250 words, or consist entirely of material copied from other sources, and we shall delete comments with obscene or racist content or commercial advertisements. Comments should adhere to Mideastweb Guidelines . IPs of offenders will be banned.

Powered By Greymatter

[Previous entry: "Israel kills Hamas head Abdel Aziz Rantissi - Celebrity Scrapbook"] Main Index [Next entry: "Post-Zionism: Requiem for an intellectual fad"]

ALL PREVIOUS MidEastWeb Middle East LOG ENTRIES

Thank you for visiting MidEastWeb - Middle East.
If you like what you see here, tell others about the MidEastWeb Middle East Web Log - www.mideastweb.org/log/.

Contact Us

Copyright

Editors' contributions are copyright by the authors and MidEastWeb for Coexistence RA.
Please link to main article pages and tell your friends about MidEastWeb. Do not copy MidEastWeb materials to your Web Site. That is a violation of our copyright. Click for copyright policy.
MidEastWeb and the editors are not responsible for content of visitors' comments.
Please report any comments that are offensive or racist.

Editors can log in by clicking here

Technorati Profile

RSS FeedRSS feed Add to Amphetadesk Add to Amphetadesk

USA Credit Card - Donate to MidEastWeb  On-Line - Help us live and grow