Good News and Bad: We’re Preparing for Terror Combat Here

[BEER980]

Ed Offley
From The Editor


Two weeks before four British citizens on July 7 strapped bomb-laden rucksacks on their backs and set out to kill scores of London commuters and injure hundred of others – an attack that British security officials concede they had no inkling was in the works – the Pentagon formally adopted a new "Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support" that anticipates even grislier terror strikes here at home within the next 10 years.

Whether you are an active-duty soldier or Marine, or an ordinary civilian, the 40-page document is chilling to read and to contemplate. The good news is that as you read this article, at least a half-dozen combat-ready U.S. Army and Marine Corps battalions in the continental United States are on formal alert as Quick-Reaction and Ready Response Forces to respond, as one Pentagon official recently described it, in "hours, not days." They supplement other military forces already postured for operations here such as air defense fighters and a cadre of smaller technical units equipped and trained to detect, isolate and "render safe" various weapons of mass destruction should a terror attack be detected in advance.

The bad news is that DoD planners fully anticipate that "multiple, simultaneous mass casualty incidents" involving WMD weapons at the hands of al Qaeda or like-minded groups "represent the most immediate challenge to the nation's security" and will remain so for at least the next decade. Explicitly warning that the evolving al Qaeda threat may once again reach into the U.S. homeland to kill civilians on a massive scale, the new strategy for the first time bluntly states, "The Department of Defense maintains trained and ready combat forces for homeland defense missions." Signed into action by Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England on June 24, the strategy also warns:

"Should deterrence [against the terrorists] fail, we will seek to intercept and defeat threats at a safe distance from the United States. When directed by the President or the Secretary of Defense, we will also defeat direct threats within U.S. airspace and on U.S. territory [emphasis added]." There have, of course, been hints of this scenario since 9/11, particularly after the Pentagon in 2002 formally created the U.S. Northern Command as an operational headquarters to direct military operations in defense of the American homeland (see " 'Posse Comitatus' and The Military's Domestic Counterterror Role," DefenseWatch, July 24, 2002). But several recent defense journal articles have further fleshed out the nightmare that the DoD strategy acknowledges.

The online newsletter InsideDefense.com last month quoted Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense Paul McHale, whose office authored the new strategy: "It is now the established policy of the Department of Defense that we will train and equip for the mission requirement of multiple WMD [attack] response." And in an interview with Jane's Defence Weekly back in March, McHale noted that the preparations for combat on U.S. territory were but one element of "an integrated element of a global strategy" embracing military, intelligence and diplomatic assets. However, the defense publication Inside The Pentagon this week quoted several homeland defense experts as warning that much more needs to be done, particularly in girding the U.S. military to fight on its own soil for the first time since 1865:

"What if, for example, dozens of terrorists take over a chemical manufacturing plant near a big city and threaten to blow it up unless the Pentagon withdraws troops from Iraq?" "Over the past several years, Army and Marine Corps troops designated to respond to major incidents involving weapons of mass destruction on the U.S. homeland have prepared to take on terrorist groups numbering no larger than a platoon, or as many as 40 fighters, defense officials and experts tell Inside the Pentagon. Scenarios have envisioned terrorists potentially wielding light arms and traveling in SUVs, according to one former defense official."

"A larger band of 100 or more terrorists 'is a level of threat nobody is prepared to deal with,' says James Carafano, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. In fact, Carafano told ITP this week he doubts U.S. troops are truly ready to handle even a platoon-size terror threat in an American city or town." The new homeland defense strategy marks a substantial improvement in the Pentagon's long-observed reluctance to candidly discuss the implications of another major terrorist attack here at home. Certainly, airing such touchy issues as the rules of engagement for infantry soldiers battling terrorists in an American city, or the possible need to dispatch troops to maintain order after a massive terror strike inside the United States, is bound to stir public fear, emotions and controversy.

What is clear in the document's six terse chapters is that the Pentagon now realizes that the tactics espoused by the Islamofascists – asymmetrical attacks against civilians flouting any norms of civilized conduct – require a defense that significantly blurs the long-held distinctions between the military, the intelligence community and civilian law enforcement. Instead of "need to know," the strategy embraces the "need to share" of critical information among military, intelligence agencies and cops. Where once military planners talked of the "home" game (routine training and garrison duty) and the "away" game (overseas deployments), the strategy formulates "active, layered defenses" from the American heartland to the Sunni Triangle.

And in extremis, the strategy warns, the horrific images we have seen for decades from Beirut to Tora Bora to Fallujah could become news bulletins from inside America. The new strategy marks a real response – measured, but controversial – to the heart of al Qaeda's avowed goal of waging war against us all. This is a strategy of our government that all of us should carefully read and reflect upon. This is a crisis that neither the president nor secretary of defense can speak too much of.
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[banshee]

I wonder how many people will be shocked to read this article. Terrorist roaming here.... in the US..... why no, it cant be. Well yeah, it can and it is. The idea is divert and divide. Divert/divide the attention of LE & ES with low level targets then go for the gusto.

[BEER980]

Yea I have a bad feeling about 8/8 & 8/9 not to mention this whole month in general. Looking forward to Labor Day and a big whew. You would be amazed by how many really don't care.

[banshee]

I dont know if its they dont care or if they choose to be oblivious to reality. I'm around the mini van soccer moms all the time who are shocked when something happens. "I cant believe this or that" is typical. Well I can and they're headed this way, but you keep your head in the sand whilst you pop yer xanax and kiss the hubby goodbye each morning.

[feederband]

Their here, and it's only a matter of time.