Director of Central Intelligence, John Brennan, recently spoke at a Harvard question and answer session where he openly discussed the “War on Terror” with students. When asked when it would end, Brennan vaguely claimed that it has already been going on for a very long time, and that it would be with us for many years to come.
Between 19:07 and 29:25 in the video provided below, Harvard professor Graham Allison presses Brennan repeatedly about whether or not we are winning the War on Terror, and why the number of al-Qaeda-affiliated groups have only increased.
Allison: There seem to be more of them than when we started… How are we doing?
Brennan: If I look across the board in terms of since 9/11 at terrorist organizations, and if the United States in all of its various forms. In intelligence, military, homeland security, law enforcement, diplomacy. If we were not as engaged against the terrorists, I think we would be facing a horrendous, horrendous environment. Because they would have taken full advantage of the opportunities that they have had across the region…
We have worked collectively as a government but also with our international partners very hard to try and root many of them out. Might some of these actions be stimulants to others joining their ranks? Sure, that’s a possibility. I think, though it has taken off of the battlefield a lot more terrorists, than it has put on.
Vague enough for you? As those at the Council on Foreign Relations point out, “this statement is impossible to evaluate or measure because the U.S. government has consistently refused to state publicly which terrorist organizations are deemed combatants, and can therefore be said to have been ‘taken out on the battlefield’.”
John Brennan, Director of the CIA
Towards the end of the session, Brennan was posed another interesting question by a Harvard freshman addressing himself as Julian:
Julian: We’ve been fighting the war on terror since 2001. Is there an end in sight, or should we get used to this new state of existence?
Brennan: It’s a long war, unfortunately. But it’s been a war that has been in existence for millennia, at the same time—the use of violence for political purposes against noncombatants by either a state actor or a subnational group.
Terrorism has taken many forms over the years. What is more challenging now is, again, the technology that is available to terrorists, the great devastation that can be created by even a handful of folks, and also mass communication that just proliferates all of this activity and incitement and encouragement. So you have an environment now that’s very conducive to that type of propaganda and recruitment efforts, as well as the ability to get materials that are going to kill people. And so this is going to be something, I think, that we’re always going to have to be vigilant about. There is evil in the world and some people just want to kill for the sake of killing… This is something that, whether it’s from this group right now or another group, I think the ability to cause damage and violence and kill will be with us for many years to come.
We just have to not kill our way out of this because that’s not going to address it. We need to stop those attacks that are in train but we also have to address some of those underlying factors and conditions. I’m not saying that poverty causes somebody to become a terrorist, or a lack of governance, but they certainly do allow these terrorist organizations to grow and they take full advantage of those opportunities.
It appears the U.S. government has no intention of ending the so called “War on Terror”, not as long as there’s money to be made anyway. And as Brennan ambiguously suggests, terrorism can now take on many forms, essentially meaning that anyone who angers the government has the potential to be labeled a “terrorist”.
Those at The Fifth Column bring up an ominous statement made by George Orwell:
“The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.”
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Sources:
King, Justin. The Fifth Column. Apr 13, 2015. (http://www.mintpressnews.com/cia-director-war-on-terror-will-never-end/204322/)
Zenko, Micah. Council on Foreign Relations. Apr 8, 2015. (http://blogs.cfr.org/zenko/2015/04/08/cia-director-were-winning-the-war-on-terror-but-it-will-never-end/)
