Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and FARC represent threats from ideologically motivated organizations, U.S. security will be increasingly threatened as well by sophisticated transnational groups that operate purely as criminal enterprises. The same forces of globalization that have helped spread dangerous ideologies have empowered criminal organizations to become far more adept at trafficking in narcotics and human beings, and also in other kinds of activities that threaten the stability of societies and their governments.
Perhaps the most lethal of such groups is Mara Salvatrucha, MS-13, formed in the early 1980s by immigrants in Los Angeles, some of whom were former guerrilla fighters in El Salvador. It began as a street gang, selling illegal narcotics, committing violent crimes, and fighting turf wars with other criminal entities. In January 2008, an FBI threat assessment noted that MS-13 is in at least forty-two of our fifty states, with 6,000 to 10,000 members nationwide. Over time, MS-13 has spread not only across our cities but back into Central America, engaging in human trafficking, assassinations for hire, assaults on law enforcement officials, and other violent activities that threaten the stability of countries in that region.
In 1997, in Honduras, MS-13 kidnapped and murdered the son of President Ricardo Maduro. In 2002, in the Honduran city of Tegucigalpa, MS-13 members boarded a bus, executed twenty-eight people (including seven small children), and left a handwritten message taunting the government. Two years later, the president of Guatemala, Oscar Berger, received a message tied to the body of a dismembered man, warning of more killings to come.
MS-13 is not now an ideological group, but it continues to bring death and disorder to our neighbors to the south. That will be even more disturbing should a day come when this criminal network gains the power to dominate a small state in our own hemisphere.
The Generational Challenge
From Al Qaeda to MS-13, over the next decade we will face a full spectrum of man-made threats that call for an array of preventive measures. These threats will derive from organizations that are networked, widely distributed, difficult to deter, and aided in their ability to commit acts of violence by globalization and technological advances in travel, communications, and weaponry.
How will we prevent such threats from being carried out against our country? In brief, we need to keep pursuing a broad-gauged strategy. First, we need to keep using our military and intelligence assets abroad to stop dangerous people from reaching us at home. Second, we need to secure those hinges of the global architecture that are being exploited by global terrorism and crime, and where these illegal global networks are also at their most vulnerable. This means intercepting the illegal networks' communications, stopping their flow of finance, and interfering with their ability to travel.
Third, wherever we face ideological threats, we must contend with them. We must give voice to those around the world who oppose them. From Iraq to Lebanon to the Western Hemisphere, wherever people stand for freedom against tyranny and terror, we must stand with them. And we must urge communities of moderation to have the courage of their convictions and take a similar stand. To do anything less is to cede the battlefield of ideas to extremists, enabling them to recruit the next generation of terrorists without a fight. Fourth, we need to encourage the free flow of people and ideas to and from our nation. That means outreach to encourage travel to the United States
Fifth, we must continue to send people and resources abroad to help meet humanitarian needs. When we help African nations fight malaria or HIV/AIDS, we are not only combating misery with compassion, but demonstrating our values through positive action. Hezbollah gained significant traction by providing social services to local communities. When we have provided aid overseas, as in post-tsunami Asia, we have seen our image strengthened. Engagement with health, education, and social welfare around the globe can be an important tool in strengthening global security.
Finally, enhancing our trade and security support for our international partners is critical in fostering the strength they need to resist dangerous global ideologies and criminal networks. Whether through free-trade agreements like the one with Colombia or capacity-building plans like the Merida Initiative aimed at reinforcing Mexico's campaign against narcotraffickers, we must seize every opportunity to inoculate our neighbors against international terrorists and crime organizations.
Unquestionably, the threats we face constitute a generational challenge to our nation—a challenge we can surely meet and overcome through patient and sustained resolve, a common-sense strategy, and a comprehensive set of intelligent policies and tools.
2
The Ideological Roots
of Terror
SINCE the September 11 attacks, the United States has continued to confront the threat posed by its terrorist foes. In the summer of 2006, for example, a major plot to hijack transatlantic airliners was disrupted in London. It served as a stark reminder of how our enemies continue to target this nation and its allies.
In response to this threat, the United States and its friends must maintain their vigilance against terrorism. But they must also combat the ideas that drive the terrorists. As Jonathan Evans, director general of the British Security Service, has said, “Although the most visible manifestations of this problem are the attacks and attempted attacks we have suffered in recent years, the root of the problem is ideological.”1 Al Qaeda and like-minded organizations are inspired by a malignant ideology, one that is characterized by contempt for human dignity and freedom and a depraved disregard for human life.
The terrorists claim that they are practicing Islam, but in the words of Bernard Lewis, one of the foremost Western scholars of Islam, “At no point do the basic texts of Islam enjoin terrorism and murder. At no point do they even consider the random slaughter of uninvolved bystanders.”2 Indeed, an increasing number of Muslim scholars and clerics have voiced the same objection to conflating Islam with extremists who claim to act in its name.
What, then, is the ideology of the terrorists who commit acts of mass murder against non-Muslims and Muslims alike? What is it that distinguishes the violent extremism of bin Laden and his fellow travelers not only from modern, Western democracy, but from normative, historical Islam? In large measure, this ideology is influenced by twentieth-century Western totalitarianism.
Modern Parallels: Radical Islam and Western Totalitarianism
There are at least four indicators that point to a connection between today's extremists and their early and mid-twentieth-century intellectual cousins who advanced totalitarian ideologies such as communism and fascism.
The first of these is the language used by today's virulent extremist leaders. To a remarkable degree, it mimics the radical rhetoric of the last century. Words like “vanguard” and “revolution” are used for self-definition, whereas “imperialist,” “capitalist,” “colonialist,” “reactionary,” and “establishment” are hurled at enemies, from the United States to mainstream Muslim leaders. To cite a relatively recent example, in September 2007 an extremist website posted links to a video message from bin Laden to the people of the United States. In that message, Al Qaeda's leader called U.S. officials “war criminals” and labeled the U.S. media a “tool of the colonialist empires.” He also railed against “the shackles…of the capitalist system” and implied that “big corporations” agitate for war, despoil the environment, and had President John F. Kennedy killed.3
This rhetoric is, of course, familiar as that of ideological extremists of the last century. And this use of the jargon of Western radicalism is not restricted to Al Qaeda or to other Sunni extremist groups. The Shi`a-dominated movement led by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which brought down the Shah in Iran thirty years ago, remains a case in point. To this day, Iran's ruling movement calls its own efforts “the revolution” and, through bestowing names like the “Revolutionary Guards” on its institutions, it advertises itself as a radicalizing force.
This is not to deny that these groups superficially deploy the rhetoric of conventional Islam as well. They certainly do, but they utilize a decidedly ideological and political framework. A noteworthy example is their distortion of the word “jihad.”