Naval Institute: Proceedings Article
We Must Go After Them and
Eliminate Them
October 17, 2001
When Secretary Webb saw the Pentagon on fire, the 1983
bombing of the U.S. Marine base in Beirut—which killed 241
Americans—came to mind. The separate groups who perpetrated these
acts, he says, understand only one thing: the use of force.
When the terrorist incident occurred at the Pentagon on 11
September, I had just finished breakfast with General James Jones,
the Commandant of the Marine Corps. I had left the building about
ten minutes before the airliner hit it. When I reached my office,
which is relatively close by, I heard a loud noise and looked
outside. The Pentagon was burning. As much as I’ve loved to throw
darts at it from far away, I have a deep affection for the Pentagon.
I spent five years of my life in that building. I have a tremendous
admiration for the people, uniformed and civilian, who work there,
and my heart sank. Beyond how it hit me as an American, that sight
hit me personally.
Two things came to my mind in the days following the
attack. I remembered when I returned from Beirut in 1983. I had been
covering the Marines there for "The Mac Neil/Lehrer News Hour." I
came back to the country just before suicide bombers attacked the
base there. As I was riding from the airport to my house, I noticed
how quiet everything was. And it occurred to me how blessed we were
as a people; how few in this country ever had been under attack.
That was 18 years ago. Now, we can no longer say that.
I remember I was speaking at a book author dinner in
Houston soon after the attack at Beirut. I told the audience that we
knew who these people were, we knew where they trained, and we knew
that they understood only one thing: the use of force. And we needed
to get them. Gloria Steinem, the famous feminist, followed me to the
podium and looked at me like I was a lost child. She proceeded to
explain to me that violence has never solved anything in the world.
That was 18 years ago, and the Muslim extremists have
considered themselves to be at war with us ever since, whether we
considered ourselves to be at war with them or not. If nothing else,
I believe that distinction now has been clarified. At least I hope
so.
The second thing that came to my mind was my resignation as
Secretary of the Navy and the reason for it. One issue that had been
brewing was whether we were going to cut back the force structure of
the Navy. It’s always difficult to say where you’re going to draw a
line. But I drew a line. I decided I was not going to walk the
budget over, cutting the force structure of the Navy. I turned
around to my undersecretary of the Navy that morning and said—half
as a joke—"I do not wish to become the father of the 350-ship Navy."
Well, guess what! The last time I checked, which was several months
ago, we were at 272.
Now we are facing a situation that the sea services
understand, I think, better than anyone in this country. When you
must commit yourself to a war that is not a total war, you still
have to do all your other jobs. And the logic behind a larger force
structure for the Navy, in my mind, was always sustainability. How
do you sustain yourself when you have to speed up your tempo for a
long period of time? How do you do this and not wear out your
equipment and your people?
We know that with the situation in Afghanistan, we have
four carrier battle groups participating in current operations. The
good news is, the arguments over the validity of the aircraft
carrier seem to have passed away quickly. We could not do what we
are doing in that part of the world without carrier battle groups.
The bad news, or the worrisome news, is if we must sustain
ourselves for a long period of time, and meet other commitments
around the world, we are going to be—as a nation and as a
military—stretched very thin. Other future situations may require
the same kind of attention.
What do we do? First, I have a great deal of respect and
admiration for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and for the
people that President George W. Bush has in his national security
apparatus. I think the steps that have been taken have been smart
ones. They’re looking long-term. I have no day-to-day connection
with what’s going on, but from a distance I feel a great deal of
confidence.
What we need is a clear articulation of the national
strategy to the American people. When we commit to something like
this, which involves many unknowns, people need to know what the
endgame really is. In my view, there are two endgames.
The first is homeland defense. We must create an
environment here in the United States in which our intelligence
apparatus has been reinvigorated. So we can feel secure inside our
borders, we must find terrorist cells, penetrate them, and eliminate
them. And we must develop a capability to prevent similar groups
from entering and operating in this country. It’s sort of like rule
number one in any operational military environment: you cannot go on
patrol if your perimeter isn’t secure. This is our highest priority,
in my view.
Step number two is to convince every country in the world
to accept responsibility for policing and eliminating terrorist
training and other activities inside their own borders. In a way,
this is my reading of what this administration began when it told
several countries that have very bad records in this area, You have
the chance to demonstrate to us that you will do this.
In those countries that do not agree with us, I think we
need to do the policing for them for a while. And we need to start
with a basic premise: if fundamentalist Muslim terrorists want to
die for a cause, you are not going to stop them. The most important
thing you can do, if you are their adversary, is to kill them on
your terms, not on theirs. That makes some Americans—particularly
American media—squeamish. But that is the reality of the situation
we are in.
The Taliban is probably the most clear-cut example of what
might be called a prototype for looking forward into how we should
be addressing the situation. We have given those people clear
signals. They obviously are not complying, for a number of reasons.
As a result, we are taking necessary action to ensure elimination of
this cancer that has grown inside their country. We have the right
to do that, under the United Nations Charter. This is clearly
self-defense. And if we establish the right kind of management
prototype, so to speak, countries now sitting on the fence on the
issue will be much more likely to take responsibility for activities
inside their borders.
Who should we be going after? I’ve spent a lot of time
studying and thinking about the Vietnam War and what measures taken
by the Vietcong were successful against the Vietnamese people. We
talked about winning the hearts and minds. The Vietcong had a very
simple philosophy. Starting in 1958, they reintroduced assassination
squads into South Vietnam. And by the early 1960s, people asked, Why
did John Kennedy send in the first 15,000 advisors in late 1961,
which started the ball rolling on the Vietnam War? By that point,
the Vietnamese communists were killing, on the average, 11
government officials a day. Their message to the Vietnamese people
was: If you affiliate with the government of South Vietnam, in
contested areas, we will kill you. If you leave them alone, we will
not bother you.
When the United States entered the war in earnest, we
looked at the use of force in Vietnam principally as a military
tool. Most of us were militarily trained, and we used force
randomly. But we used too much supporting arms at different times.
In some areas—such as in central Vietnam, where I was—I think we
alienated a lot of the people and we killed a lot of people who
didn’t need to die.
Looking at these examples, you come to a conclusion about
the use of force in this situation. In my opinion, we need to
articulate clearly that we do not have a quarrel with the Muslim
world. But the part of the Muslim world that considers itself at war
with us must be on notice. Who are these people? They are the ones
conducting terrorist activities and those training and providing
logistical support to them. All those people, in my opinion, should
be fair game. Over time, we should see the people who are conducting
this international campaign of terrorism being cut away from their
support base. Many good people were cut away from the support base
of the South Vietnamese government. I think there’s a direct
parallel.
As we watch the diplomacy play out, we must keep our eye
also on the activities of China. I’ve been pushing my view for more
than 12 years that China has consciously pursued a strategic axis
with the Muslim world. And even though it has some problems with
activities on its western border, it gets a great deal of mileage
out of the relationships it has developed with the Muslim world.
China helped Libya. China has been trading or selling weapon systems
and invigorating its trade with Iran ever since I was Secretary of
the Navy. China enabled Pakistan to develop a nuclear capability.
Why this is so? Because China still has designs on
Southeast Asia, and it always has been heavily Muslim. But recently,
it has become more and more heavily fundamentalist Muslim. Look at
Malaysia, Indonesia, and the southern part of the Philippines. A big
training base for terrorist activity is on Mindanao, and it’s been
there for years. China is also becoming a net oil importer as it
modernizes its economy.
I spend a lot of time in Asia, and when I’m there I am very
rarely with Americans. It has been fascinating over the past ten
years to watch Asians in what we would call the second-tier
countries—Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines—adjust to the United States
receding from the region, as our military, and particularly our
Navy, has grown smaller. And they’ve watched China expand and, in
effect, fill the vacuum. Last summer I was in Vietnam, Thailand, and
Myanmar, formerly called Burma. My experience in Burma in particular
was an eye opener. Because the Chinese, just through an accretion
process of moving people across the borders into Northern Burma, are
affecting that country dramatically at a time when we have put up
barriers and embargoes on the issue of human rights. What is on the
southern end of Burma? The Indian Ocean. And many signs point to the
Chinese looking to build a naval base there.
The other part of this formula, of course, is that as we
have warmed our relationship with Pakistan, at least temporarily. In
doing so, we risk our relationship with India. And over the past
couple of years, India has started to become known as a natural
counterbalance to the Chinese. We’ve seen a healthy movement over
the past several years, as the Indians have started to position
themselves a little bit away from Russia. They had a very close
defense relationship with the Soviet Union when it existed. And as
we have started to reposition ourselves from the closer relationship
we had with China, we need to watch the situation very carefully.
My final admonition—and I got into some trouble with this
during the Gulf War—is that we are not in a position as a nation,
and particularly as a military, to occupy large pieces of territory.
The Wall Street Journal editorialized repeatedly during the Gulf War
that we should set up a MacArthurian regency in Baghdad. There has
been a lot of discussion about why we did not take Baghdad during
the Gulf War. I think as much as anyone in this country, I would
like to see Saddam Hussein go. To my knowledge, I was the only guy
in the Reagan administration who opposed the tilt toward Iraq, in
writing, in 1987. I do not think we had nor have the resources to
occupy Iraq.
If you think we have problems in Israel, try putting a
Judeo-Christian military system in the cradle of Muslim culture. And
when you think about a military of 1.4 million people, with other
responsibilities around the world, that is not a winnable situation.
I tried to say ten years ago, over and over again, that we must be
involved only to the extent that it directly involves our national
interests. These arguments have been going on for 3,000 years. And
when they do relate to our national interests, as this international
terrorist movement does, we must act with a great deal of specific
lethality. We must go after the people who are doing this and
eliminate them.
UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS