Should Cops or Generals Spearhead the War on Terror?

An Associated Press article quotes Seth Jones, a RAND political scientist and author of a study on fighting terrorism, as saying that intelligence operations and police work, not military operations, are the most effective tools against terrorism.

terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors, and our analysis suggests there is no battlefield solution to terrorism. … The United States has the necessary instruments to defeat al-Qaida, it just needs to shift its strategy.

One component of that strategy would be to end the ‘War on Terror’ and transform it into a police action. The AP writes that “nearly every ally, including Britain and Australia, has stopped using ‘war on terror’ to describe strategy against the group headed by Osama bin Laden and considered responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001 suicide attacks at the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.” Why shouldn’t America do the same?

A closer reading of the RAND study shows it doesn’t wholly disparage military force. The monograph, How Terrorist Groups End, points out that terror groups often become susceptible to political reconciliation or police action only after the neutralization of their geopolitical and state sponsors, a process in which military force plays a preeminent role. ...

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