Transnational Terrorism After 9/11," sponsored by the New America Foundation and the New York University Center on Law & Security, was a gift to those wanting an update on informed opinion on the subject. The event also proved to be as highly instructive for what was not addressed as for the issues that were. The elephants known to be present remained largely unnoticed.
The cavernous Caucus Room of the Russell Senate Office Building was full to the gunnels. Panel after panel of distinguished presenters from near and far, from right to left – including authors Peter Bergen, Michael Scheuer, Jessica Stern, and Col. Pat Lang – exuded and freely shared their expertise. But there was myopia as well.
The mosquitoes of terrorism were dissected and examined as carefully as biology students once did drosophila, but typing the generic DNA of terrorism proved more elusive. Worse, no attention was given to the swamp in which terrorists breed. Were it not for a few impertinent questions from the audience, the swamps might have avoided attention altogether.
The first panel featured two experts from RAND, both of whom touched – very gingerly – on the need to drain the swamp. The first closed his remarks with a 30-second observation that less attention might be given to kill/capture metrics than to addressing the causes of terrorism and breaking the cycle of terrorist recruitment.
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