Force alone can't beat terror, Rumsfeld says
WASHINGTON -- Nearly three years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, US officials are uncertain whether efforts to combat terrorism are reducing the pool of recruits for militant groups or appealing to moderates in the Islamic world, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld acknowledged yesterday.
Rumsfeld, speaking to reporters shortly before the 1,000th US military casualty in Iraq was recorded, portrayed the US counterterrorism effort as a global operation that has been largely successful, while conceding that ''it's almost impossible to have metrics" that determine whether Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups are being drained of support around the world.
He also acknowledged concerns that the war on terrorism is too dependent on military resources to track down terrorists, and that not enough emphasis is being placed on using diplomatic, economic, political, and other means to spread democracy and win over the populations from which most terrorists come.
Rumsfeld raised concerns last year in a memo to his senior staff that the war on terrorism wasn't emphasizing winning hearts and minds in the Islamic world, pointedly asking at the time whether ''we are capturing, killing, or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the religious schools and the radical clerics are recruiting, training, and deploying against us."
Yesterday, Rumsfeld said he believes there is a greater appreciation in the US government that long-term success in the war on terrorism will ultimately come from nonmilitary efforts.
''It is not a military problem alone, to be sure," Rumsfeld said. ''It is clear that the political, the economic, and the military have to proceed apace. I think that there's a better, deeper understanding of the fact that this is not a one-dimensional, military-only conflict; this is something that is multidimensional."
Rumsfeld offered no specific policy proposals yesterday. Administration critics, including Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry, say that the United States' approach to the war on terrorism has been too heavy-handed because the use of force is not sufficiently balanced with what one specialist calls America's ''soft power" to attract the vast majority of the Islamic world to its side.
The United States, in large part because of the war in Iraq, continues to get pilloried on a daily basis in the Arab press and polls show that a majority of the Middle East sees the US in a negative light.
''Rumsfeld [and Vice President Dick] Cheney have followed the Machiavellian precept that it is better to be feared than to be loved," said Joseph Nye, assistant secretary of defense in the Clinton administration and author of ''Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics," in which he advocates greater use of foreign aid, cultural exchanges, and the media to spread American ideals and win allies. ''The real answer is it is better to be both.
''What we have seen is so much emphasis on hard power that we have helped create more recruits for Osama bin Laden," Nye, now a professor of government at Harvard University, said in an interview yesterday.
Rumsfeld opened his press conference at the Pentagon yesterday by talking about the success the United States has had by going on the offensive against potential terrorist threats.''Taking the offense, however, of course has its cost, just as staying on defense has its cost," Rumsfeld said. ''And soon the American forces are likely to suffer the 1,000th casualty at the hands of terrorists and extremists in Iraq. When combined with US losses in other theaters in the global war on terror, we have lost well more than a thousand already. And we certainly honor the courage and sacrifice of every man and woman in uniform who has served in Iraq and who is currently serving there."
Later yesterday afternoon, the Associated Press reported that the number of US military deaths in Iraq reached 1,002, including 999 troops and three civilians working for the Army and Air Force.
Kerry called the milestone ''tragic" and said it underscored the nation's obligation to ''make the right decisions in Iraq" and bring the troops home ''as soon as possible." A White House spokesman said the best way to honor the fallen would be to ''continue to wage a broad war and spread freedom throughout a dangerous part of the world."
Rumsfeld also said yesterday that the United States anticipated an increase in violence by insurgents in the months leading up Iraqi elections in January.
The effectiveness of the wider war on terrorism, not merely the military component, has become a point of debate in the US presidential race in recent weeks.
Last week, President Bush told an interviewer that he did not think the war on terrorism could ever be won in the traditional sense, suggesting that the United States and its allies could only persuade the Islamic world to embrace democratic ideals so that new generations do not opt to use terrorism as a weapon.
Kerry quickly attacked those comments, forcing Bush a day later to maintain that the war on terrorism could and would be won.
Yet Kerry, too, has been criticized for his take on the war on terrorism. When he called for a fight that relies on economic and political tools as much as military solutions, Cheney attacked him for referring to his approach as more ''sensitive."
Still, Rumsfeld yesterday displayed a growing sensitivity to the need for the ''soft power" that Nye writes about.
The United States and its allies have to ''make sure that the effort is directed at the problems -- plural, not a single problem," Rumsfeld said. ''I know there's an effort to cut off funding to the more radical madrassa schools and to convert a number of those schools, for example in Pakistan, to schools that teach things that are useful to a life, such as languages and mathematics and science."
Bryan Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com. 