Former Chair of National Terrorism Commission Speaks at Simmons Warburg Lecture Series

BOSTON, Oct. 17 (UPI) -- The war against terrorism won't be won using strategies developed before Sept. 11, the chairman of the National Commission on Terrorism said Wednesday.

L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer, who was President Reagan's ambassador-at-large for counter terrorism, said terrorism is not new, and the world has to accept the fact that eliminating terrorism is "not a realistic goal."

Bremer said there is a false impression that if "we can deal with Osama bin Laden, the problem will go away."

"The problem isn't going to go away," Bremer told an audience at Simmons College in Boston.

"We should not become transfixed by personalities," said Bremer, who was appointed chairman of the commission two years ago.

Doing so, he said, builds up that person in his own eyes "and worse, in the eyes of his followers, and paradoxically can actually make it easier for him to recruit people when we keep talking about him."

"It's quite clear we do face a new kind of terrorist" who is willing to kill thousands of people by flying jet airliners into buildings, he said.

"The problem is that the United States and allied strategy was set up for the old terrorists ... who tended to have rather narrow political motives" and whose attacks, while deadly and attracting the media, did not turn people off from their cause.

He said the three pillars of dealing with the old terrorists were that there would be no concessions to terrorists, that terrorists would be brought to justice, and that it be made very clear that state support of terrorists would not be tolerated.

Bremer said the problem is that new terrorists "render two thirds of the old strategies irrelevant."

He said there's no point in talking about making concessions to a person like bin Laden.

"He's not asking for something, other than we go out of existence. He hates us." He said people have asked how the 19 people who committed suicide by hijacking jet airliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon "could have come here and lived in the United States among us for so long, sent their kids to school, shopped at the mall, gone to the Friday night football games, have hated us."

He said, "My answer is, they hated us more every day they were here, they hated us precisely because they understood American society, hated what we stood for, they hated our freedoms, they hated our universal suffrage... they hated the fact we separate church and state, they hated our material success, and particularly they hated its attractions to other Muslims. They hated us for what we are."

Bremer said, "There's no concession, there's no negotiations, there's no bargaining with a person like that."

Concessions, he said, while still good policy, is just irrelevant.

He also said it is irrelevant to talk about bringing to criminal justice and sending to prison someone who is willing to fly an airplane at 500 miles an hour into a building.

What remains relevant from the old strategies, Bremer said, is addressing state support for terrorists.

"That's the one we have to focus on," he said.

"Our strategic objective in the battle we are entering now is really quite simple. We have to deny terrorists territory. The kind of attack we saw on Sept. 11 would be impossible if not for the fact that bin Laden and his group, and six or seven other terrorist groups, have free run in Afghanistan because the Taliban government welcomes them and lets them do it."

He said the "fundamental truth" is that the attacks would not have happened if there had not been a safe haven for the terrorists.

Bremer also said it is necessary to bring about a change of government in Afghanistan, "because no matter how successful we are against terrorist infrastructure in Afghanistan, the Taliban is still in office in Kabul" and "could reconstitute those (training) camps and have another terrorist cesspool facing us in six months."

The Bush administration is "quite right in saying the Taliban must go," Bremer said.

"There has to be a change in government there or we are not going to achieve our strategic objectives."

After Afghanistan, Bremer said the United States and its allies "have to turn our attention to other places where terrorists operative freely," such as the Sudan, Syria and the Palestinian territory.

"Basically, give them the kind of ultimatum that we gave to the Taliban: Get the terrorist camps and the terrorists out of their country, either kill them, expel them, dissipate them, whatever you want to do, now, or we will consider you are a hostile regime," he said.

He said if the action against the terrorists in Afghanistan is successful and decisive, "We will find that then moving on to the other states which are sponsoring terrorism, which is an absolutely necessity if we're going to be serious about this campaign, becomes easier because people then see we're serious."

As for the Palestinians, Bremer said nothing justifies the fact that Arafat allows terrorist organizations to operate freely in his territory and carry out attacks on Israel.

"We are going to have to deal with that, the double game of Arafat taking our money and allowing these terrorists to operate freely on his territory," Bremer said. "This game has got to end."

CONTACT

Diane Millikan
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