During a brief session with the press following his speech at the Brennan Center for Justice today, White House Counterterrorism Czar John Brennan acknowledged the elephant in the room with regards to military intervention in Libya -- that, as in Iraq, these sorts of intrastate conflicts provide fertile seeding grounds for terrorist groups.
There are clearly individuals throughout that region, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, has a presence, in Libya, Algeria, other areas. We need to make sure that in light of this turbulence that's going on...The counterterrorism community is mindful of how terrorist elements may try to take advantage of this situation. But there are clearly individuals within Libya who are trying to come out from the yoke of authoritarian rule and the violence that's been perpetrated by the Qaddafi regime. We're determined to work with them to help them realize their aspirations. At the same time we realize that in this area that are [people] dedicated to violent extremism, al Qaeda certainly has a presence there.
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Al Qaeda has a demonstrated track record of trying to exploit either political vacuums, or political change, or uncertainty in a number of countries throughout the world. Libya, and the situation in Libya now will be no exception. They may try to do certain things, we are cognizant of that, we are formulating our policies appropriately, we're not disregarding that, we're addressing that fully...at the same time we believe we have approaches that will help us address that.
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We've had numerous interagency meetings, taking into account the change, asking what can we do to make sure that nothing's going to percolate out there that might lead to attacks on U.S. interests or the interests of our partners.
You don't have to go too far back in American history to find dated pop-culture references that portray as heroic people who ultimately became enemies of the U.S. -- the most egregious example I can think of is probably the romanticized Afghan mujihadeen in the 1987 James Bond film, The Living Daylights. Back then, of course, they were fighting the godless Soviets, so it was all good. The point is, one of the big X factors here is that, if and when Moammar Gadhafi is gone, we aren't necessarily sure who we'll have empowered in the process.
Nevertheless, Brennan was confident that ultimately, the political upheaval in the Middle East was diminishing al-Qaeda's influence.
"What has been happening in a number of countries in the Middle East, it has really belied al-Qaeda's narrative about how to bring about change, how to realize aspirations of people throughout these countries. It's discrediting al-Qaeda's agenda," Brennan said. "It doesn't mean al-Qaeda's not going to try to take advantage of the situation, but we're staying as vigilant as ever to make sure al-Qaeda doesn't exploit the circumstances."
