Not a Magic Bullet
WEST POMFRET, Vt. — At the U.S. Special Operations Command in Florida, two new interagency centers, one for operations and one for intelligence, are up and running. Under Gen. Bryan D. "Doug" Brown, the SOCOM commander, they oversee a growing cadre of clandestine anti-terrorism commandos and intelligence operatives.
A highly classified field unit called Joint Task Force 121 has been activated to coordinate the hunt for "high-value targets." Its organization and structure have been streamlined to improve its ability to concentrate on real-time hunter-killer missions against terrorist leaders and cells. A three-star command is also being designed to oversee the most clandestine elements of U.S. special operations, according to senior officers close to the community. And everywhere, final preparations are being made for the much-whispered-about "spring offensive" to kill or capture Osama bin Laden along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
This is the heart of the Bush administration's strategy for the war on terrorism -- centered in the Pentagon, and on the deadly magic of special operations. "Hunt them down and kill them one at a time" is the strategy in a nutshell.
It's an approach that has born fruit. It is also deeply flawed, not least because it offers neither a comprehensive strategy nor a long-term solution to a problem that is unquestionably both broad and deep-rooted. Beyond better airport screeners, tighter monitoring of border crossings and other such "homeland security" measures, the administration's principal response has been to develop ever-faster, ever-more-lethal special operations capabilities to destroy individual terrorists and terrorist organizations.
Enormous effort has gone into transforming the Pentagon's Special Operations Command -- which was little more than a low-profile training and coordinating operation prior to 9/11 -- into the lead force for conducting anti-terrorism operations worldwide. Information now flows faster from intelligence gatherers to analysts to strike forces. Decision times are shorter. Strikes can be launched in hours or minutes, not days or weeks as before.
Saddam Hussein was rooted out of his spider hole in Iraq as a result of improved intelligence capabilities and new levels of coordination between Joint Task Force 121 and the regular occupation troops in Iraq. Yet despite high-profile success, the administration's approach is a ticket to nowhere. For one thing, despite all the reorganization and improvement, despite better tools and a lot more money, special operations have serious limitations in just how much they can cover and do. For another, U.S. officials have labored to perfect an instrument that will almost certainly prove insufficient.
