The White House
National Strategy for Combating Terrorism
September 2006
[Excerpts]
Overview of America’s National Strategy for Combating Terrorism
America is at war with a transnational terrorist movement fueled by a radical ideology of hatred, oppression, and murder. Our National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, first published in February 2003, recognizes that we are at war and that protecting and defending the Homeland, the American people, and their livelihoods remains our first and most solemn obligation.
Our strategy also recognizes that the War on Terror is a different kind of war. From the beginning, it has been both a battle of arms and a battle of ideas. Not only do we fight our terrorist enemies on the battlefield, we promote freedom and human dignity as alternatives to the terrorists’ perverse vision of oppression and totalitarian rule. The paradigm for combating terrorism now involves the application of all elements of our national power and influence. Not only do we employ military power, we use diplomatic, financial, intelligence, and law enforcement activities to protect the Homeland and extend our defenses, disrupt terrorist operations, and deprive our enemies of what they need to operate and survive. We have broken old orthodoxies that once confined our counterterrorism efforts primarily to the criminal justice domain.
This updated strategy sets the course for winning the War on Terror. It builds directly from the National Security Strategy issued in March 2006 as well as the February 2003 National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, and incorporates our increased understanding of the enemy. From the beginning, we understood that the War on Terror involved more than simply finding and bringing to justice those who had planned and executed the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Our strategy involved destroying the larger al-Qaida network and also confronting the radical ideology that inspired others to join or support the terrorist movement. Since 9/11, we have made substantial progress in degrading the al–Qaida network, killing or capturing key lieutenants, eliminating safehavens, and disrupting existing lines of support. Through the freedom agenda, we also have promoted the best long-term answer to al–Qaida’s agenda: the freedom and dignity that comes when human liberty is protected by effective democratic institutions.
In response to our efforts, the terrorists have adjusted, and so we must continue to refine our strategy to meet the evolving threat. Today, we face a global terrorist movement and must confront the radical ideology that justifies the use of violence against innocents in the name of religion. As laid out in this strategy, to win the War on Terror, we will:
• Advance effective democracies as the long–term antidote to the ideology of terrorism;
• Prevent attacks by terrorist networks;
• Deny terrorists the support and sanctuary of rogue states;
• Deny terrorists control of any nation they would use as a base and launching pad for terror; and
• Lay the foundations and build the institutions and structures we need to carry the fight forward against terror and help ensure our ultimate success.
Today’s Realities in the War on Terror
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, were acts of war against the United States, peaceful people throughout the world, and the very principles of liberty and human dignity. The United States, together with our Coalition partners, has fought back and will win this war. We will hold the perpetrators accountable and work to prevent the recurrence of similar atrocities on any scale – whether at home or abroad. The War on Terror extends beyond the current armed conflict that arose out of the attacks of September 11, 2001, and embraces all facets of continuing U.S. efforts to bring an end to the scourge of terrorism. Ultimately, we will win the long war to defeat the terrorists and their murderous ideology.
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Today’s Terrorist Enemy
The United States and our partners continue to pursue a significantly degraded but still dangerous al-Qaida network. Yet the enemy we face today in the War on Terror is not the same enemy we faced on September 11. Our effective counterterrorist efforts, in part, have forced the terrorists to evolve and modify their ways of doing business. Our understanding of the enemy has evolved as well. Today, the principal terrorist enemy confronting the United States is a transnational movement of extremist organizations, networks, and individuals – and their state and non-state supporters – which have in common that they exploit Islam and use terrorism for ideological ends.
This transnational movement is not monolithic. Although al-Qaida functions as the movement’s vanguard and remains, along with its affiliate groups and those inspired by them, the most dangerous present manifestation of the enemy, the movement is not controlled by any single individual, group, or state. What unites the movement is a common vision, a common set of ideas about the nature and destiny of the world, and a common goal of ushering in totalitarian rule. What unites the movement is the ideology of oppression, violence, and hate.
Our terrorist enemies exploit Islam to serve a violent political vision. Fueled by a radical ideology and a false belief that the United States is the cause of most problems affecting Muslims today, our enemies seek to expel Western power and influence from the Muslim world and establish regimes that rule according to a violent and intolerant distortion of Islam. As illustrated by Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, such regimes would deny all political and religious freedoms and serve as sanctuaries for extremists to launch additional attacks against not only the United States, its allies and partners, but the Muslim world itself. Some among the enemy, particularly al-Qaida, harbor even greater territorial and geopolitical ambitions and aim to establish a single, pan-Islamic, totalitarian regime that stretches from Spain to Southeast Asia.
This enemy movement seeks to create and exploit a division between the Muslim and non-Muslim world and within the Muslim world itself. The terrorists distort the idea of jihad into a call for violence and murder against those they regard as apostates or unbelievers, including all those who disagree with them. Most of the terrorist attacks since September 11 have occurred in Muslim countries – and most of the victims have been Muslims.
In addition to this principal enemy, a host of other groups and individuals also use terror and violence against innocent civilians to pursue their political objectives. Though their motives and goals may be different, and often include secular and more narrow territorial aims, they threaten our interests and those of our partners as they attempt to overthrow civil order and replace freedom with conflict and intolerance. Their terrorist tactics ensure that they are enemies of humanity regardless of their goals and no matter where they operate.
For our terrorist enemies, violence is not only justified, it is necessary and even glorified – judged the only means to achieve a world vision darkened by hate, fear, and oppression. They use suicide bombings, beheadings, and other atrocities against innocent people as a means to promote their creed. Our enemy’s demonstrated indifference to human life and desire to inflict catastrophic damage on the United States and its friends and allies around the world have fueled their desire for weapons of mass destruction. We cannot permit the world’s most dangerous terrorists and their regime sponsors to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.
For the enemy, there is no peaceful coexistence with those who do not subscribe to their distorted and violent view of the world. They accept no dissent and tolerate no alternative points of view. Ultimately, the terrorist enemy we face threatens global peace, international security and prosperity, the rising tide of democracy, and the right of all people to live without fear of indiscriminate violence.
Strategic Vision for the War on Terror
From the beginning, the War on Terror has been both a battle of arms and a battle of ideas – a fight against the terrorists and their murderous ideology. In the short run, the fight involves the application of all instruments of national power and influence to kill or capture the terrorists; deny them safehaven and control of any nation; prevent them from gaining access to WMD; render potential terrorist targets less attractive by strengthening security; and cut off their sources of funding and other resources they need to operate and survive. In the long run, winning the War on Terror means winning the battle of ideas. Ideas can transform the embittered and disillusioned either into murderers willing to kill innocents, or into free peoples living harmoniously in a diverse society.
The battle of ideas helps to define the strategic intent of our National Strategy for Combating Terrorism. The United States will continue to lead an expansive international effort in pursuit of a two-pronged vision:
* The defeat of violent extremism as a threat to our way of life as a free and open society; and
* The creation of a global environment inhospitable to violent extremists and all who support them.
4 Comments
Images of self and enemy… hmmm.
Our current administration has bungled the so-called “War on Terror” to the extreme. Mainly, there is no war on terror, for as we know terror is a methodology, a strategy. To declare war on it only shows their stupidity. This image of “terror” is of course propaganda.
However, as this document above points out, the true struggle is against a “radical ideology…” Like it or not.
We and our allies do indeed face a serious threat by Islamic Totalitarian regimes such as Iran (and others).
Until we have an administration that is willing to do what it takes, and focus on our real enemies, we will continue to flounder in places like Iraq.
C
When will we win the war on terror?
When we get rid of every terrorist/radical on the planet.
When will this happen?
never
Why do these terrorists want to destroy America?
Are they born terrorists?
What fuels the radical ideology?
Jorge’s first three questions go to the heart of the issue in the current struggle. The problem is that these sound like reasonable and responsible questions when they are not. The second question (I assume he meant “When WILL we get rid . . . ?”) is a particular problem because so many assume it is the condition of victory. I can think of no war in which every member of the losing side was convinced of their loss, hopelessness, or the futility of ongoing conflict at a single moment. The U.S. Civil War and Germany’s actions after the First World War are but two examples of the flaws in this type of argument. The Southern way of life was perpetuated for another 100 years in the form of Jim Crow laws, but the violence was a shadow (no pun intended) of what it might have been without the Union Army’s occupation.
The U.S. need not wipe out every terrorist or find a way to get everyone in the world to love the U.S. in order to win the war. look at what is going on in Iraq today for an answer to how to win this war. Jomini indeed.
Skip, there’s a problem here. When the South lost, the confederacy stopped supplying armies. A southern army that didn’t give up had to fight without supplies, it became a small group of raiders. The yankee army could go anywhere it wanted — anybody they were looking for had to run, to go somewhere they weren’t, or get detained.
That’s what winning *meant*. We couldn’t keep small groups of guerrillas from operating in secret, and they did. We couldn’t keep small groups of assassins from killing people like Lincoln — they did. But the Confederate government was gone, Jefferson Davis was in prison, there were no supplies for a Confederate army, southern trains ran on yankee schedules, etc. That’s winning.
But for the WoT the conditions that are winning for any other war are what we *start* with.
The terrorists control no territory (unless you count some undeveloped mountain land that no one else particularly wants, that is useless as a base to attack elsewhere). They have no army, nothing that can stand up to our troops. They have no government, they collect no taxes, they couldn’t supply a modern army if they had one.
All they have is 1) engineering talent to find innovative ways to turn our own technology against us, 2) fanatics who are willing to die while carrying out their mission, which makes them somewhat harder to stop because it’s harder to make a plan with a credible getaway than a plan without one, 3) some small amount of funding.
By traditional definitions we’ve already won. What does it mean to win now? The way Bush described it, we win when we’re safe from terrorists.
So what’s the minimum size of terrorist cell that can hurt us? If you believe the investigation after the Oklahoma City bombing, the minimum size is one. If one single terrorist wants to attack us and he knows how, and he can borrow or steal some small amount of funding, then we have not won.
What is going on in iraq today gives us no indication at all how to do that. We are using our still-surged troops to attack one political faction — the Sadrists — apparently hoping that after they are bombed into submission they will vote for the victors in the next election. Is this worth $120 billion a year plus the major focus of attention for our army? Well, it’s an election year so of course we want to present it as some sort of victory, or at least make it look like things are getting better.
What does victory over terror mean to you? Don’t we have to be safe to win?