By Calvin Biesecker
Taking the fight to Al Qaeda and its affiliates has produced successes by putting them on the run and making it harder to train and recruit potential terrorists but the threat they pose is evolving to rely on less training and simpler attacks that are still deadly, the White House’s counter-terrorism chief said yesterday.
“We have made it harder for them for them to recruit and train so they are increasingly relying on recruits with little training,” John Brennan, assistant to the president for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, said at an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “We have strengthened our defenses against massive, sophisticated attacks on our homeland, so they are attempting attacks with little sophistication but with very lethal intent. They are seeking foot soldiers who might slip past our defenses by defying the traditional profile of a terrorist.”
And there are increasingly more homegrown terrorists. These persons have become “captivated by extremist ideologies,” Brennan said. There are also terrorist leaders who are American citizens operating in other countries that know how to exploit the vulnerabilities of the United States and plan attacks accordingly, he said.
The culture of freedom in the United States makes the threat from terrorists within the country even harder to counter, Brennan said.
“No nation, no matter how powerful, can prevent every threat from coming to fruition,” Brennan said. “And in America a free and open society of 300 million people the task becomes even more difficult as our adversaries increasingly rely on individual terrorists and lone individuals inspired by Al Qaeda’s hateful ideology.”
Brennan, who previewed part of a new national security strategy that will be released by the Obama administration today, said the strategy “explicitly recognizes the threat” from homegrown terrorists. He said that the new national security strategy is the first by any president that integrates homeland security into the broader context of national security.
Countering the enemy’s changing tactics requires that the U.S. “constantly adapt and evolve ours,” Brennan said. So the national security strategy focuses on how the country will remain “strong and resilient,” he said.
Brennan said decisions won’t be hasty and driven by fear. Instead, the changes the United States makes will not occur “in a mad rush driven by fear but in a thoughtful and reasoned way that enhances our security and further delegitimizes the actions of our enemy,” he said.
The Obama administration has been emphasizing resiliency as a key component of the nation’s homeland security strategy for more than a year and features it as one of the core concepts in the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review issued by the Department of Homeland Security in February (Defense Daily, Feb. 4, 2010).
“As a strong and resilient nation we will strengthen or ability to withstand any disruption whatever the cause,” Brennan said. “Instead of simply resigning ourselves to what appears to some to be the inevitable, we must improve our preparedness and plan for all contingencies.”
Obama’s national security strategy is “clear and precise” and notes that “Our enemy is Al Qaeda and its terrorist affiliates,” Brennan said. As such, the country is at war and the aim is to “disrupt, dismantle and ensure a lasting defeat of Al Qaeda and violent extremist affiliates,” he added.
To carry out the war against Al Qaeda requires a range of capabilities, “military and civilian, kinetic and diplomatic,” Brennan said. “And indeed, the value, the power of our values and partnerships with other nations and institutions,” he said.