The War on Terror: When the Response is the Catastrophe

Dr. Ian S. Lustick

University of Pennsyvlania

ilustick@sas.upenn.edu

Paper submitted for the Emergency Management Higher Education Conference
\-- June 4-7, 2007; Emergency Management Institute, Emmitsburg, MD;
Federal Emergency Management Agency/Department of Homeland Security. For
more information see *Trapped in the War on Terror* (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006) and "Fractured Fairy Tale: The
Emperor's New Clothes and the War on Terror," *Homeland Security
Affairs,* Vol. III, no. 1 (February 2007) or
[http://www.trappedinthewaronterror.com](http://www.trappedinthewaronterror.com/)

It is fundamentally inaccurate and dangerously misleading to think of
the War on Terror as a strategy adopted by the United States to defend
itself. True, that is how the War on Terror is portrayed. Nevertheless,
for the most part, and certainly for FEMA, the War on Terror is not a
solution to a problem, or a rational response to a catastrophe. It is
itself an immense problem. Overall, the War on Terror is compelling
proof of the wisdom of Galen, the Roman physician, who laid down the
first law of medicine: *Primum non nocere.*---"First, do no harm." This
injunction, recognizing that misconceived cures are liable to be even
worse than the disease, is perhaps as valid for the treatment of threats
to the body politic, as it is for treatment of the human body.

We may usefully begin by considering examples of responses our nation
could have mounted to the 9/11 attacks that would have been more
suitable and effective than the one we chose. For instance, the national
leadership could have:

-   rallied the country to sacrifice in the solution of longstanding
    problems as a profoundly American answer to the barbarity of the
    attack;

-   exploited the tidal wave of international sympathy and
    identification with the United States to address and eliminate the
    root causes of discontent and desperation within the Muslim world
    via ambitious, multilateral but U.S. led programs of diplomacy
    (toward the Arab-Israeli conflict, for example) and toward
    democratic reform;

-   followed up obviously necessary reforms in our systems of
    intelligence and law enforcement with disciplined, but discrete work
    with our allies and friends through the world, pursuing
    behind-the-scenes efforts to hunt down and destroy, with military
    means as necessary, the specific networks and individuals within the
    *jihadi* wing of the *Salafi* movement responsible for planning and
    executing the 9/11 attacks;

-   focused all our national resources and international good will on
    the reconstruction of Afghanistan after the overthrow of the Taliban
    to demonstrate that even the most "backward" of Muslim countries
    could enjoy the fruits of a democratic regime consistent with basic
    Muslim values.

Instead of any one of these possible courses of action, or some
combination, the national leadership chose to mount a global "War on
Terror." What was particularly attractive about this formula to those in
a position to implement an American response was that it alone could
provide an all-encompassing formula to justify attacking Saddam's Iraq
even though that country was innocent (and known to be so) of any
connection to the 9/11 attacks. Thus, according to Bob Woodward, a mere
four hours after the attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfled had
already scrawled a question to an aide. How, he wanted to know, can we
use the attacks on the WTC and Pentagon to "\'hit S.H. @ same time---not
only UBL?\'\" He followed that up by asking the Pentagon lawyer to talk
to Paul Wolfowitz about the Iraq "connection with UBL."[^1]

In other words, the origins of the War on Terror lie with the
pre-existing agenda of a powerful and well-positioned group. Until
September 11, 2001 it had been a very frustrated group---a group of
officials and ideologues, who had for years tried but failed to effect a
radical change in American foreign policy. Centered around the Project
for a New American Century, leaders of this group, including Bill
Kristol, Robert Kagan, Richard Perle, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Don
Rumsfeld, Elliot Abrams, and James Woolsey, identified themselves with a
"neo-Reaganite foreign policy." Their objective was to recast the
post-Cold War United States as a global "benevolent empire," organized
to destroy the world's "monsters," endow foreign policy with a sense of
national destiny and glory, and imbue foreign policy and military
intervention with a sense of the "heroic."[^2] By exploiting American
economic and military ascendancy, they imagined, neo-liberal forms of
capitalist democracy could spread throughout the world while Arab and
Muslim threats against Israel would disappear. Most importantly, they
argued, such a policy would benefit Conservative Republicans by
dramatically returning issues of national security, patriotism, and
pride in U.S. military prowess to the center of American politics.

My point here is that the War on Terror arose, not as a natural,
inevitable, or logical response to the new requirements of defense that
may have arisen after 9/11, but to the exertions of a specific group
well-positioned to exploit the emotions and political capital created by
the 9/11 attacks for its own pre-existing purposes. My further point,
and the one that is of most importance for FEMA and others concerned
with the difficulty of focusing resources rationally on catastrophic
threats that face the country, is how the War on Terror, once launched,
has sustained itself. Understanding how it was able to do so means first
of all appreciating that the vast panoply of activities funded within
the rubric of the War on Terror is certainly *not* necessary to counter
actual threats of terrorist activity in the USA. Indeed, there is
virtually no evidence of any such threat. Even for War on Terror
managers it is puzzling why, despite the ease with which deadly attacks
could be carried out, no attacks have occurred. It is just as puzzling
why, despite the enormous efforts and staggeringly expensive efforts
devoted to finding any hint of terrorist activity inside our borders, no
preparations for attacks have been discovered. These facts just sharpen
the question: Why do we still have a War on Terror and why is it still
expanding?

The short answer to this question, to be elaborated below, is that the
War on Terror is sustained by the energetic adoption and promotion of
its slogans, fears, images, and expectations, by the media and
government agencies, politicians, interest groups, corporations, and
universities. In other words, it is sustained by the activities of
almost every faction in America as those factions search for, and
usually find, ways to advance their struggles for resources, profits,
attention, and support by recasting the agendas they were pursuing
before 9/11 as precisely the activities that should be considered more
important than ever *because* of the War on Terror.

Consider how Congress responded to the War on Terror. In the summer of
2003 a list of 160 potential targets for terrorists was drawn up,
triggering intense efforts by Representatives and Senators, and their
constituents, to find funding-generating targets in their districts. The
result was widening definitions and blurrier categories of potential
targets and mushrooming increases in the number of infrastructure and
other assets deemed worthy of protection: up to 1849 in late 2003,
28,364; in 2004; 77,069 in 2005; and an estimated 300,000 in 2006
(including the Sears Tower in Chicago, but also the Indiana Apple and
Pork Festival).

Across the country virtually every lobby and interest group recast their
traditional objectives and funding proposals as more important than ever
given the imperatives of the War on Terror. In exuberant press releases
the National Rifle Association declared that the War on Terror means
that more Americans should own and carry firearms to defend the country
and themselves against terrorists. On the other hand, according to the
gun control lobby, fighting the War on Terror means passing strict gun
control laws to keep assault weapons out of the hands of terrorists.
Schools of Veterinary Medicine called for quadrupling their funding. Who
else would train veterinarians to defend the country against terrorists
using hoof and mouth disease to decimate our cattle herds? Pediatricians
declared that more funding was required to train pediatricians as first
responders to terrorist attacks since treating children as victims is
not the same as treating adults. Pharmacists advocated the creation of
pharmaceutical SWAT teams to respond quickly with appropriate drugs to
the victims of terrorist attacks. Aside from swarms of beltway bandit
consulting firms and huge corporate investments in counter-terrorism
activities, Universities across the country created graduate programs in
Homeland Security, institutes on terrorism and counter-terrorism,
proposals for academic conferences, all raising catcher\'s mitts into
the air for the billions of dollars of grants and contracts just blowing
in the wind.

As these and other groups found counter-terrorism slogans effective in
raising revenue, they became even more committed to the War on Terror,
convincing those who had been slow to define themselves as part of the
War, to do so quickly or lose out.

The same imperative---translate your agenda into War on Terror
requirements or be starved of funds---and its spiraling consequences
surged across the government, affecting virtually all agencies.
Bureaucrats unable to think of a way to describe their activities in War
on Terror terms were virtually disqualified from budget increases and
probably doomed to cuts. At a conference I attended in the fall of 2006
organized by the National Counter-Terrorism Center and the Sheriff\'s
Department of a major US metropolitan area I heard a fascinating
presentation from an official from the NCTC. He was explaining his
agency\'s responsibility for producing the NIP (National Implementation
Plan). He was careful to say that his agency actually never thought
about what should be done, or how to plan. Instead, what was being done
was simply to add together all the plans that every agency and subagency
in the government that thought it had something \"to throw at the
terrorism problem\" submitted. And since, he said, there was lots of
money around, \"every agency was able to find something it could throw
at the problem, maybe except HUD.\" Then he stopped and said, \"but
actually, give me some time and I bet I could even think of something
HUD could do.\"

Imagine, if *he* could think of something for every agency, how much
bureaucrats in those agencies, whose futures and salaries and careers
are at stake, can figure out absolutely necessary things in the War on
Terror that only they are positioned to do.

Consider the Department of Homeland Security itself and the case of the
15 National Planning Scenarios. With billions of dollars a year in state
and local funding to disburse, the Department of Homeland Security
devised a list of 15 National Planning Scenarios to help guide its
allocations. To qualify for Homeland Security funding state and local
governments had to describe how they would use allocated funds to meet
one of those chosen 15 disaster or terrorist attack scenarios. What was
the process that produced this list? It was, in part, deeply political,
driven by competition among agencies, states, and localities who knew
that funding opportunities would depend on exactly which scenarios were
included or excluded---with anthrax, a chemical attack on a sports
stadium, and hoof and mouth disease included, but attacks on liquid
natural gas tankers and West Nile virus excluded. Most instructive of
all, in this process, was the unwillingness of the government to define
the enemy posing the terrorist threat. Why? Because if a particular
enemy was identified, certain scenarios, profitable for some
funding-competitors, would be disqualified. Thus the enemy, in these
scenarios, is referred to as \"the universal adversary,\" in other
words, as Satan. That is how the War on Terror drives the country from
responding to threats to preparing for vulnerabilities, producing an
irrational and doomed strategic posture which treats any bad thing that
could happen becomes a national security imperative.

Of course this entire cyclonic dynamic is accelerated by the hallowed
principle of CYA, Cover Your Ass. Each policy-maker knows that if there
is another attack, no one will be able to predict where and when it will
be, but after it occurs it will be easy to discover who it was who did
not approve some project or level of funding that could have prevented
it. This is not a criticism of you. It is not a condemnation of
patriotic and professional officials and bureaucrats throughout the
government. It is an analysis of a predicament. In many ways your
predicament resembles the problem that afflicts doctors with respect to
malpractice lawsuits. Whenever it is much easier to know why something
of catastrophic importance happened, after it happened, than to know
how, when, or if it will happen, before it happens\--and that is true
both for surgeons and for War on Terror managers\--the likelihood of
something seeming to be obvious *after* the catastrophe that was
essentially invisible *before* it is extremely high. This set of
circumstances creates incentives for doctors to run every conceivable
test known to medical science in order to prove, if something bad
happens, that they took every possible precaution. For War on Terror
managers the same predicament means always feeling pressure to support
options and recommendations for protecting against possible threats that
are the most expansive and the most expensive, just to be sure one does
not end up in the position, *after* a catastrophe, of being blamed for
not approving measures that, in retrospect, could obviously have
prevented it.

Finally, apart from the merciless competition among politicians posing
as War on Terror warriors---think of the bizarre public posturing about
Dubai control of our ports\--there is no more important energy source
for the War on Terror than the media. I don\'t mean just the films and
television shows thriving on exciting images of maniacal but brilliant
Middle Eastern terrorists ready to destroy the country if not for a few
heroes operating in an otherwise incompetent government. I am also
talking about the news media.

[]{.mark}

When a blizzard or hurricane bears down on a large American city the
local news media has a field day. Ratings rise. Announcers are barely
able to contain their excitement. Meteorologists become celebrities.
They warn of the storm of the century. Viewers are glued to their sets.
Soon, however, the storm hits and passes, or fizzles and is forgotten.
Either way the storm story ends. Ratings for local news shows return to
normal and anchors shift their attention back to murders, fires, and
auto accidents.

When it comes to the War on Terror, however, \"Hurricane Osama\" is
always about to hit, and never goes away. For the national media this is
as good as it gets. Officially, the terrorist threat level is always and
everywhere no less than \"elevated.\" Absent any actual attacks or
detectable threats, government agencies manufacture pseudo-victories
over alleged or sting-produced plots to justify hundreds of billions of
dollars worth of mostly silly expenditures. With every lost soul
captured by the FBI and presented as the latest incarnation of Mohammad
Atta, the news media and the entertainment industry fairly exults,
thriving on fears stoked by evocations of 9/11 and the ready
availability of disaster scenarios too varied to be thwarted but too
frightening to be ignored. Compounded by media sensationalism, these
fears then provide irresistible opportunities for ambitious politicians
to attack one another for failing to protect the terrorist target *du
jour*: ports, border crossings, the milk supply, cattle herds, liquid
natural gas tankers, nuclear power plants, drinking water, tunnels,
bridges, or subways. The result of such sensationalist coverage,
accompanied by advice from academic or corporate experts anxious to sell
their counter-terrorism schemes to a terrified public and a
cover-your-ass obsessed government bureaucracy, are more waves of
support for increased funding for the War on Terror.

These are the vicious circles, the self-powering dynamics, that have
produced an hysteria over non-existent \"sleeper cells\" and
vulnerability to bad things happening in America not seen here since the
anti-communist frenzy of the McCarthy era. It is indeed humiliating to
think of how the country that was able to adjust psychologically,
politically, and militarily to the real capacity of the Soviet enemy to
incinerate our cities on a moment\'s notice has been reduced to moaning,
wasting resources, and spinning in circles, by ragged bands of Muslim
fanatics.

For the country as a whole the War on Terror is a messy maelstrom of
waste and worry. For vast numbers of interest groups, agencies,
politicians, and inside-the-beltway hustlers, the War on Terror is
either a funding bonanza or the latest set of slogans and sound-bytes
that must be inserted into the boilerplate of all budget proposals if
those proposals are to have a prayer of success. Indeed the War on
Terror thrives because, as I've illustrated, it is so readily adaptable
to the needs of countless special interests and agencies able to recast.

FEMA, however, is one agency that is powerfully *disadvantaged* by the
rhetorical and political characteristics of the War on Terror. Its
disadvantage is associated with what appears to be a profound bias among
human beings---a natural and powerful inclination to attribute much
greater salience to threats perceived to arise from the malevolent
intentions of others than to threats perceived to arise from chance or
the unintended effects of natural forces. Hence, politically, it simply
does not seem to matter, for budgetary allocations or perceptions of the
relative urgency of the different problems, that no Americans have died
from domestic terrorist attacks since 2001 while hundreds or even
thousands have died as a result of natural disasters and the failure of
our responses to those disasters.

Thus, while most agencies are able to re-articulate their organizational
imperatives so as to correspond to the War on Terror's demand that
resources be devoted to countering the malevolent plans of the
terrorists, FEMA is largely paralyzed in this competition because its
"enemy" is nature, and nature can't be described as malevolent, only as
dangerous. To survive in this budgetary and political environment, FEMA
can often do no better than claim that capabilities for responding to
catastrophes are similar and overlapping, regardless of the etiology of
the disaster.

Accordingly, FEMA may pursue joint conferences, joint budgets, and joint
programs with agencies carrying counter-terror banners. Ultimately,
however, this strategy is bound to be frustrating at best, and an utter
failure at worst. Even if successful in partnering strategies under a
counter-terrorism rubric, professionals within FEMA and experts
genuinely interested in improving models, practices, training, and/or
readiness for hurricanes, floods, tornados, earthquakes, and blizzards,
will inevitably be frustrated and discouraged by the pressures they will
constantly face to limit their focus to those aspects of the problem
that make it somewhat similar to some kind of terrorist attack. At
worst, the ability of FEMA to operate on a stable and informative set of
institutionalized assumptions and standard procedures will be severely
undermined by imperatives to operate "as if" the actual problem is
countering terrorists.

This analysis implies that from the point of view of the real and
important mission of FEMA it is fundamentally irresponsible to pretend
to be fighting the War on Terror. Such pretences, in the name of
short-term pursuit of funding and attention, will make it impossible to
build the support necessary for the investments crucial to the
accomplishment of its real mission. Therefore FEMA and its supporters,
and first of all university based experts on catastrophe management,
have a responsibility to speak the truth against pretense, to publicly
question the rationale for the pouring of national resources into a
wholly misguided "War on Terror," and to say, against the grain of
public belief and private gain, that the Emperor has no clothes.

[^1]: Bob Woodward, *Plan of Attack* (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004)
    pp. 24-25. "UBL" stands for Usama Bin-Laden.

[^2]: William Kristol and Robert Kagan, \"Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign
    Policy,\" *Foreign Affairs*, Vol. 75, no. 4 (July/August 1996) pp.
    18-32.