[Northern Virginia Daily] Who are terrorists?

Why do they do what they do?

And how should the United States respond to acts of terrorism?

These are complex questions, but Edinburg resident Terry Arnold has a better idea than most of what the answers might be.

Arnold, a retired senior foreign service officer, has been active in crisis management and counterterrorism since the early 1980s.

During his career, he has served as international affairs adviser to the commandant, chairman of the Department of International Studies at the National War College and deputy director of the Office of Counterterrorism at the U.S. State Department.

He was a chief emergency management trainer for the State Department in the 1980s and early 1990s and has also worked as a crisis management consultant for private and federal agencies.

So when the events of Sept. 11 began to unfold, Arnold saw the contingency plans he had helped to develop acted on in real life.

While many Americans were distressed by President George W. Bush’s “disappearance” following the attacks, Arnold said the situation was handled just as it should have been.

“That is the correct response,” he said. “The object is to protect national leadership.”

Arnold’s job in the Office of Counterterrorism was to put together a plan of action for all eventualities. To do this, he tried to pinpoint areas where terrorist attacks were likely, and what form those attacks might take.

“You usually ask yourself what would happen if somebody stole a nuclear weapon and tried to detonate that somewhere,” Arnold said. “What kind of strategies and tactics would you use to deal with that kind of event, to clean up from it and to recover from it?”

The scenarios examined what could go wrong and what to do if it did go wrong. They analyzed where the incident might happen, who might be involved and what the realistic outcome of the event might be.

“A good dose of reality is important for everybody to have,” Arnold said.

He said since the events of Sept. 11, Americans have been asking if they can still have the kind of open and free society they enjoyed until Sept. 10.

“The answer is obviously no,” he said.

Being unprepared for unexpected attacks – or even natural disasters – means recovery will be slower and more difficult, he said.

But he thinks the United States’ foundation of preparedness is strong.

“We have in place close to all of the elements of preparedness,” he said. “What we have not had is the sense of urgency.

“One of the things I hope we will have learned from these events is you must stay ready for this kind of contingency at all times. But in being absolutely ready, you must be prepared to fail sometimes.”

It is unrealistic, he said, to maintain the kind of high alert needed to anticipate and counterterrorist activity at all times.

But it is extremely important to be aware of the social and political climates in countries around the world – including America – that breed terrorism.

In the mid-1980s, Arnold wrote “The Violence Formula: Why People Lend Sympathy and Support to Terrorism,” and co-wrote “Fighting Back: Winning the War Against Terrorism,” and “Terrorism: The New Warfare,” a high school textbook.

Following the attacks in New York City, Arlington and Pennsylvania, he has decided to update the textbook, which was co-authored by Moorhead Kennedy, an Iran hostage.

The book defines terrorists and terrorism and covers topics such as the role of the media, whether or not to negotiate with terrorists and the best way to respond to terrorist attacks or threats.

How should the United States respond?

“We do meet force with force,” Arnold said. “It has to be understood by groups like Osama bin Laden’s – and he’s not unique – that they don’t have the justification to do this.”

But Arnold cautioned that global terrorism is largely not in Afghanistan, and that hot spots could easily arise in other countries.

“Whatever we do in Afghanistan, and however successful that might be, large parts of the problem are still going to be on our global landscape,” he said.

So, who are the terrorists?

Arnold said that for the most part, terrorists come from “out groups.”

These are groups of people who either want to be left alone by society or whom society does not want to assimilate, he said.

Genuine injustices often exist among the out groups, and government policies are generally not focused on dealing with these issues, he said.

In international relations, the leaders of nation/states deal with the leaders of other nation/states, and the concerns of dissidents within those places are often overlooked, he said.

But at a price – the failure of nation/states to recognize these grievances can result in terrorism if the out groups feel they have no other voice, Arnold said.

“Terrorists are not born full-blown on the global scene,” Arnold said. “They grow up in communities.”

Communities need to be aware of the groups that exist in their midst and have a responsibility to keep the balance within the community, he said.

And each community’s dissidents have different concerns: In the Islamic world, one of the primary motives for terrorism is fear, Arnold said.

“They don’t hate us: They are afraid of the impact of our values and system on their values and system – and that’s a genuine concern,” he said. “One of our responsibilities is to make the fear go away.”

This responsibility is what Arnold feels is the missing piece in the State Department’s policy on terrorism.

As it stands, the policy states that no concessions should be made to terrorists; they should be captured, confined or killed wherever possible; and that the United States should help nation/states who further this goal and sanction those who help terrorists.

“What we have clustered in these various terrorist groups are our failures on those fronts: Our failure to assimilate. Our failure to listen. And they’re ‘out’ and they’re mad,” he said.

“One of the key things we can do is make it clear to people with these long-standing and deeply embedded grievances that somebody’s listening,” he said.

But that doesn’t mean terrorists should get their way.

Not everything can be fixed, Arnold said, and people in out groups need to be brought along to manage disappointment and contain and control anger.

At the end of the hypothetical scenarios Arnold developed, “we always had a hot wash, where we looked back at the experience and figured out what we learned,” he said.

He knows the U.S. leadership has done just this in the aftermath of Sept. 11 and feels some lessons have been learned.

“The message delivered by Sept. 11 is that there is no turning back from balancing our Middle East policy,” Arnold said.

“The next big thing we’ve got to do is rebuild our overseas presence.

That whole presence now is inadequate to meet our requirement. We’ve got to recognize that, put money into training and development and rebuild eyes and ears.”