The Foreign Service Journal, September 2004

This month’s Foreign Service Journal deals with terrorism. From the perceptive arti- cles by our col- leagues, one un- mistakable message comes through: pseudo-tough and phony-macho policies don’t beat terror- ists; smart ones do. Our enemies are clever, and assuming otherwise is dan- gerous folly. Cynical, brutal, murder- ous and callous they may be. Stupid they are not. In my personal experi- ence, as individuals, terrorists can be almost rational. Many are well educat- ed, from well-off families, and their ranks include engineers, doctors, teachers and journalists. Not only are terrorist leaders not stupid, they also skillfully exploit what George Orwell, in 1984 , called “collec- tive stupidity” — the failure to see the most obvious contradictions in an argu- ment; the failure to apply cause and effect; and the willingness to swallow and regurgitate the most blatant clap- trap. It is this same collective stupidity that makes terrorists impervious to argument or reason. Al-Qaida and the most extreme of the so-called salafi (Sunni Islamist) groups, for example, feed their follow- ers a mixture of anti-Semitism, xeno- phobia, and bad history, such as the assertion that the Crusades did not end eight centuries ago. These groups also exploit the obvious shortcomings of existing governments in many Islamic countries, insisting that, “If your rulers are corrupt; if your country is weak and humiliated by foreigners; if your state cannot provide you education, health care or employment; and if you see no future for yourself and your family — then we have all the answers in a puri- tanical, zealous and intolerant version of Islam that admits no doubt or ques- tioning.” The appropriate response to this message is not to “dumb down” but to get smart. Smart diplomacy, security, military operations, law enforcement, public affairs, and intelligence-gather- ing will all work. And being smart starts with knowing what we are facing. How much did we know about Afghanistan, for example, before the events of 9/11? Did we know how freely the al-Qaida apparatus could operate there under Taliban patronage? Did we know that the terrorists had essentially bought themselves a country using money and fighters to help the Taliban fight a civil war? Or did we somehow think that we could separate al-Qaida from the Taliban and, with the weight of evi- dence, convince them to hand over bin Laden and his associates to justice? In those days we spoke of “draining the [Afghanistan] swamp” to catch the alli- gators. Like the shark-hunters of Jaws , however, we needed a much bigger boat! How do we start being smart? For one thing, we stop devaluing language and area expertise in our own ranks. We must ensure that our people — all of them— have the training they need to represent our country’s interests and protect its security. To do their job, the consular officers in Sanaa, for example, will need to talk to more than the minute percentage of Yemenis who speak English. So will their political and other colleagues. The 9/11 Commission Report (p. 371) notes that 15 of the 19 airplane hijackers were Saudi Arabians. Yet how much did we know about militant Islamist groups in Saudi Arabia before the attacks? How much did we know about the political and socio-economic undercurrents within that troubled society and elsewhere in the region? Besides taking training seriously, we also must offer a reasonable career path to those who choose to specialize in an area or a language. We in the Foreign Service respond very well to rewards and punishments. The person who goes deeply into Africa, China or the Indian subcontinent, for example, should be able to expect that 1) the Service will make good use of that expertise; and 2) all things being equal, he or she can expect promotions and assignments that recognize that hard- earned knowledge. One wishes that being smart — and following many of the excellent recom- mendations in the 9/11 Commission’s report —would guarantee that we will never again be caught off-guard by ter- rorists, either in New York or in Nairobi. Sadly, our being smart may not end terrorist outrages — but it is still the strategy with the best chance of success. P RESIDENT ’ S V IEWS Get Smart B Y J OHN L IMBERT S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 5 John Limbert is the president of the American Foreign Service Association.