Stop Bush's War on Terror: Analysts

Stop Bush's War on Terror: Analysts


By; IOL

"The approach this administration took is breaking down," Lewis said. (Google)
WASHINGTON — With the Bush administration near the end of its term, demands are picking up steam to change Washington's anything-goes approach to the "war on terror".
"Things are starting to come a little unglued," James Lewis, a national security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Sunday, October 12.
"The approach this administration took is breaking down. Some of it is, as it loses its political steam and its credibility, people are willing to speak out."
Seizing on the public fear of terrorism following the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration invaded Afghanistan and Iraq under its "war on terror" campaign.
Coercive interrogations, indefinite detentions, secret overseas prisons, and warrantless surveillance of phone calls and emails were among the tools used by the administration.
"If it proves to be true, I think you'll see further demand for oversight and further demand for control," said Lewis.
The Bush administration has long resisted calls for radical changes in its "war on terror" approach.
Last year, it amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to permit the government to monitor communications that begin or end overseas.
Attorney General Michael Mukasey this month signed new guidelines on FBI operations to give it broad new powers to conduct surveillance and use other intrusive investigative techniques on Americans.
The administration has blocked a court order to release 17 Chinese Muslim Uighurs from Guantanamo into the US, and has plodded on with trials by military trial of detainees at Guantanamo Bay despite repeated legal setbacks.
"The sense that what they are doing is right and necessary is very strong still in the Bush administration," said Lewis.
New Approach
Analysts say that the new administration should craft a new approach on fighting terror.
"Every democratic nation that has had to grapple with a terrorist threat has been obliged to alter some of the rules -- the rules of intelligence collection, police powers and so on," said Brian Jenkins, a terrorism expert at the RAND Corporation.
"And that's okay so long as you modify the rules and work within the rules.
"Where things begin to go wrong is where people assert that the rules don't matter," he said.
The RAND Corporation said in a recent study that the US should stop using the "war on terror" label and shift its strategy against terror groups from the current heavy dependence on military might to greater use of policing and intelligence work.
Jenkins believes that the new administration should shore up international support against terrorism by acting in ways that reflect US values.
"I think as a first step we should close down Guantanamo. It is a symbol of things that are wrong," he said.
Calls for closing the notorious camp have gone nowhere despite a broad consensus that Guantanamo has been a costly mistake.
The US has been holding hundreds of detainees at its notorious Guantanamo detention center for years.
It declared them "enemy combatants" to deny them legal rights under the American legal system.
"We need to promptly identify and release those who are wrongly held, we need to develop a patently fair (legal) procedure," said Jenkins.