Terrorism and Intelligence Failures Essay Example for Free

terrorism and Intelligence Failures EssayTerrorism by vocabulary definition is described as the unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against large number or airplane propeller with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or g e reallyplacenments, often for ideological or governmental reasons. Terrorism comes from decades of histories of robust national pride, religious disputes and what is seen as an intrusion upon Moslem holy grounds. Terrorist groups try to gain influence and power in order to affect political change on either a local or an multinational level. They make this possible through the publicity and fear that is generated by their violent typifys. Throughout archives terrorist groups have caused much devastation and damage, leaving a huge imp map on the sphere. Terrorism is one(a) of the leading problems in todays society. The terrorist tone-beginning against the United States, on family lin e 11th, 2011, clearly exhibit the power and strength that terrorist groups possess.The causes of these acts come from the instability, oppression, poverty and political alienation that the citizens of many Islamic-Arab nations face. As a termination, the people of Afghanistan and many early(a) Arab nations have generated a deep hatred for the United States going back over a hundred old age. The the Statesn government and discussion agencies, much(prenominal) as the Central Intelligence Agency, nowadays work harder than ever to prevent such horrifying acts of terrorism from re occurring, since they failed in the prevention of 9/11. Terrorism is a complex problem Its origins atomic number 18 diverse and those who engross in it, even more(prenominal)(prenominal) so (Reich, 1). The actions of terrorist groups, as well as terrorists as individuals, are complex. One must recognize that in that respect is not only a single explanation for the act of terrorism.The subject is very intricate and involves a huge diversity of causes and reasons that aid in the explanation and cause of terrorism. In the book, Origins of Terrorism, Walter Reich examines the psychologies, ideologies, theologies, and the pleads of mind of terrorists in an exploit to recrudesce understand the realms of terrorism. Reich does not only work with terrorism studies itself but instead works inside the realms of political science, Islam, history and social psychology to gain a more well rounded spirit of terrorism. Through recognizing the knowledge of these realms, Reich and other scholars state this information can contribute to the understanding of the ways in which terrorists view the world and behave in it. Terrorism can be explained as an expression of political strategy. Meaning that terrorist behavior is a go awaying choice made by an brass instrument for specific strategic reasons.These organizations are very cornerstone political groups that determine that terrorism is the best take to the woods of action in accomplishing their political goals. The practitioners of terrorism often claim that they had no choice but terrorism, and it is so true that terrorism often follows the failure of other methods (Reich, 10). Failure to mobilize support from masses, lacking of manipulation of military power, time constraints and unrealistic expectations cause radical political organizations to turn to terrorism. By choosing terrorism, group members and leaders, willingly accept the risks of challenging the government. The origin of terrorism is as old as human races willingness to affect authorities through the use of violent acts. Terrorism dates back to firstborn-century Palestine when a Jewish group fought and dispatch the Romans and their collaborators who ruled over them. Terrorism went on to be classified as a modern phenomenon.In the twentieth century terrorism was associated with the Italian Red Brigades, the Irish Republican army, the Palestine Liberation presidency and Pervs shining paths among many others. Terrorism moved outdoor(a) from being based on state action and moved further into a larger aspect of attack against existing political orders. The result of this was due to the growing amount of ethnic nationalism within countries. Groups with strong ethnic nationalism were forming passim the entire world. Then in the late 1960s international terrorism became a prominent issue. Terrorism progressed from random killings to massive plans of attacks. Hijacking and bom storeg had become the favored and popular methods of attack. Organized groups had specific political goals that they carried out through theatrical, symbolic acts of violence. As the twenty-first century came around terrorism started becoming very religiously motivated.Groups like nucleotide, Hamas and Hezbollah come to mind as they justify their acts of violence on Islamic grounds. Terrorism was now not only being used for political reasons but for re ligious reasons as well. Religiously motivated terrorist groups are the about alarming terrorist threats in todays world. The rise of Islamic radicalism and militancy began during the 1970s in the Middle East region of the world. Islamist terrorism is based on the precept that U.S. foreign policy has killed, oppressed and harmed Muslims throughout the Middle East. This belief resulted in a tense kinship between the West and the Arab and Muslim nations, creating a great amongst American society. Osama bin stiff was the founder of the most well known Islamic militant organizations called Al-Qaeda. His goal was to remove and end American military forepart in the Middle East and Arabian Peninsula, end American support for Israel, return East Timor and Kashmir to Muslim rule and overthrow any Arab regimes that he considered corrupt and insufficiently religious.Al-Qaeda is the most innovative and chancy terrorist group that has ever existed according the American government and all other countries that have been victims of terrorist acts. It has been known to engage in suicide attacks, kidnappings, hijackings and recruiting parvenu members through the Internet. Al-Qaedas operating network consists of a multinational, roofless army, and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for Jihad. Jihad is an important religious duty of Muslims that involves the security and keeping of the Islamic faith. In the book, The Age of Sacred Terror, authors Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon provides essential insight into the thinking of bin Laden and his followers. Benjamin and Simon talks about bin Ladens first televised interview with woodpecker Arnett in March 1997. During his interview he complained and stated, the truth is that the whole Muslim world is the victim of international terrorism, engineered by America at the United Nations. We are a nation whose sacred symbols have been ransacked and whose wealth and resources have been plundered. put in Laden continued to s tate, If their people do not wish to be harmed inside their very own countries, they should seek to elect governments that are truly representative of them and that can nurture their interests (Benjamin, 147). Bin Laden gave the people of America a clear warning that he is planning an attack and a war against them. Osama bin Laden issued and signed his second fatwa on February 23, 1998, as the leader of Al-Qaeda. A fatwa is a legal pronouncement in Islam, issued by a religious law specialist on a specific issue. Through the issue of bin Ladens fatwa, he gave the USA an bill of indictment on the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq and the Middle East. He blames America for occupying lands of Islam and intervening in Middle Eastern affairs. Bin Ladens goal was to get rid of any Americans getting in the way of his radical Sunni movement. By issuing his second fatwa, bin Laden declared was on the West and Israel.Al-Qaeda in like manner released a video later that year declaring war on the United States and the West as well. subsequently bin Laden had declared war, bombings were carried out on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. There was also an seek bombing of Los Angeles International Airport and then the USS Cole bombing occurred in October 2000. On September 11, 2001, Al-Qaeda attacked the United States once again. This attack not only crushed American ideologies, but also took away the feelings of security that had taken hundreds of years to build. To plan and victoriously execute the September 11th attacks, Al-Qaeda terrorists worked for years within the United States using Islamic organizations to form and build their networks. In the book, American Jihad, Steven Emerson tells the story of the terrorists who desire to destroy the United States from the inside. Emerson states, Operating in our open society, with freedom of speech and assembly and with only quotidian oversight from the FBI, the CIA, and the in-migration and Naturalization Service, the worldwide network of militant Islamic organizations has finally been able to coordinate (Emerson, 3).The idea that terrorists were working within the United States seemed unimaginable, but the attacks of 9/11 proved that it was possible. Bin Laden organized and set up a network of cells in Tucson, Arizona Brooklyn, New York Orlando, Florida Dallas, Texas Santa Clara, California Columbia, molybdenum and Herndon, Virginia. He understood that if he recruited U.S. citizens it would help him in his terrorist efforts because they would be allowed to travel freely throughout the world. By having an American passport his followers would not be detected or read/write headed whether they were a part of or members of a terrorist group. Bin Laden made efforts to recruit United States citizens in order to utilize the American citizens for travel throughout the Western world to deliver messages and engage in financial transactions for the improvement of Al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups and to help ca rry out operations (Emerson, 153).Bin Laden was obviously successful in his attack on America, which demonstrated not only to Americans, but also to the rest of the world what great threat terrorism can be to humanity. The success of terrorism depends on the existence of a mass media, which will create and spread the feeling of fear throughout the world. As a result, the attacks of September 11, threw America into a full waged war against terrorism. Military efforts were sent to abroad to Afghanistan and the Bush administration change magnitude domestic efforts in order to prevent future attacks. New ideas and reforms use uped to be put in place. American citizens did not understand why the CIA, the biggest intelligence agency in the world, could not prevent such a large scaled terrorist attack from happening. The CIA was designed to Connect the dots. Yet it failed to penetrate sufficiently with human intelligence agents or to fathom analytically with sufficient clarity the Al-Qae da 9/11 conclave that lead to the slaughter of some 3000 individuals on U.S. soil (Russell, 18).The terrorists that intelligence must uncover and track are inert objects they are living, conniving strategists. They, too, fail frequently and are sometimes caught before they can select (Hoge, 146). The intelligence system failed and in order to understand this failure one must understand that the strategic role of intelligence in decision making of foreign policy has been a neglected force field of study. The outrage of the intelligence failure forced the Bush administration to fall to political pressure. The administration genuine the 9/11 Commissions recommendation to the create DNI post. This post was to serve as the professorships chief intelligence advisor and oversee the entire intelligence community, including the CIA. The foundation cause of the failed brainstorm of Al-Qaedas 9/11 plot, by the CIA, has to do with their failure to marshal the resources that work against Al-Qaeda, which were corresponding with the threat.The CIA did provide the president with a strategic warning about the attacks but it would have been much better if they had gate to the Al-Qaeda related information that the FBI had collected. The CIA has also failed to produce spies that are needed to reveal the plans and intentions of Americas enemies. The focus should be put on what can be done to improve intelligence rather than recap evidence of what the CIA did and did not do. Spending more money on intelligence agencies will not necessarily improve American security. Intelligence could be improved by the appeal of more important information, the building up of human intelligence throughout the world and recruiting more and better spies. If the American government wants to protect its citizens, property, liberty and interests from attacks of terrorist groups then dramatic reforms need to happen. These reforms would hopefully give the president access to the enemy plans and tactics.The systematic failures of American strategic intelligence and the CIA since its inception have been obscured by the political and randy impulse to examine each and every incident of intelligence failure in isolation and not to put them together into a larger context with other intelligence failures that shared the same root causes (Russell, 27). Nonetheless, America was in an overall agreement that changes in the American intelligence systems were necessary. The United States segment of motherland security was created in November 2002 as a new cabinet level agency. This department was responsible for the reorganization of the U.S. federal government. Government bureaucracies dealing with military functions and security were also reorganized. In October 2001, the USA Patriot act was signed into effect reducing the restrictions on law enforcement agencies ability to search medical, financial, telephone, e-mail communications and other records.It also eased the restrictions on gathering foreign intelligence within the United States. The Patriot act also gave the Secretary of the Treasury more authority to closely regulate financial transactions, involving foreign persons. Immigration authorities and law enforcement could now detain and deport immigrants that were suspected of being affiliated with acts of terrorism more easily. Author Richard K. Betts suggested, The National Security Agency (NSA), the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), and associated organizations can cast up technical collection satellite and aerial reconnaissance, signals intelligence, communications monitoring by buying more platforms, devices, and effect to exploit them (Hoge, 148). A Terrorist Finance Tracking Program was actually created to in order to monitor the movements of terrorists financial resources. However, the New York Times newspaper leaked this information, which ended the project.The National Security Agency instead set up an electronic surveillance pr ogram that studied telecommunication use by suspected and known terrorists. entirely the laws and reforms that removed restrictions on governmental authority are notionally good for the overall prevention and protection against terrorism. In certain perspectives the removal of governmental restrictions is advantageous to American security. However, political interest groups have stated that because these new laws remove restrictions on governmental authority, they violate the civil liberties of the American citizens. The American Civil Liberties Union filed the first legal challenge against the Patriot make up. It claimed that the Patriot act violates the rights of the First Amendment, Fourth Amendment and the right to due process. It is a violation because the Patriot act grants the government the right to search a persons nonpublic property without having to inform them that they are being investigated. Former President Bush stated that the Patriot Act helped convict more than two hundred suspects of being involved with acts of terrorism.On the other hand, the figures of the Justice Department show that there have been complaints of abuse of the Act from about 7000 people. The real question one must ask oneself is if the governments unknown investigations are worth the price of freedom and protection from terrorism. The deaths of 3,000 people on American soil at hands of a ruthless adversary along with the CIAs profound read of Iraqs weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capabilities are the latest and greatest and in a long take up of U.S. intelligence failures (Russell, 149). The United States government has heavily concentrated on improving intelligence through bureaucratic approaches. Fighting the war on terrorism became a huge challenge for the United States. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 caused enormous devastation and damage to all the citizens of America.September 11 will never be forgotten as it has left a huge impact on the world. Al-Qaeda is a ve ry overserious threat to the United States but there will most likely be many more in the next generations to come. The United States needs to rectify the substantial shortcomings in human intelligence collection operations if it is to deal successfully with issues of war and peace in the future (Russell, 168). The protection of America is in the hands of the government and the intelligence agencies. Terrorism will not end on its own, therefore Americans need to be prepared for what the future has to bring. Terrorism has been around for centuries and will probably always be around. The question is how to handle it and keep it in check. There will always be extremists working against the governments in the world.