Adam Serwer on the need to develop a strong counter-narrative on terror:
In a 2003 memo, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was clear that the fight against terrorist organizations could not be won solely by killing or capturing every terrorist.
“Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror,” Rumsfeld wrote. “Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?”
As Michael Jacobson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy pointsout in his recent report, a key part of “deterring and dissuading” potential terrorists is developing an effective counter-narrative to those propagated by extremist groups. Jacobson notes that in 2008, speaking at a WINEP event, then-undersecretary of Homeland Security for Intelligence and Analysis Charles Allen warned that “no Western state has effectively countered the al Qaida narrative.”
