Remarks by U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission Richard LeBaron

United States Embassy
Israel

71 Hayarkon Street,
Tel Aviv, Israel

"The War Against Terrorism:
America's Objectives in the War and Beyond"

Remarks by U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission Richard LeBaron
Ben-Gurion University Conference on The War Against Terror
Beersheva, Israel
November 28, 2001

Thank you for the invitation to join you for this conference today and for your kind introduction. I just want to offer a word of thanks and congratulations to President Braverman; Dr. Dror Ze'evi, Chairman of the Herzog Center; and Conference Coordinator Dr. Yossi Amitay. I know you put this conference together under some difficult circumstances and I hope it won't discourage you from doing it again on other interesting topics.

This is my first visit to Beersheva but I hope to get back, in particularly to visit Ben Gurion University and meet some of the distinguished scholars at the University. We feel a special link to the University since we are sponsoring some important joint research activities and also have a some Fulbright students studying with you. The university's links with American institutions and scholars are of course active and deep.

I am honored to participate in a conference on the war against terrorism, organized by the Chaim Herzog Center for Middle East Studies and Diplomacy. President Herzog helped, in the establishment of this center, to foster the advancement of knowledge on the histories and cultures of the region's peoples. He was a great leader and a great diplomat, and since his passing, the activities of your center have served as a living heritage.

We all have our own personal lenses through which we view the events of September 11. I can only imagine what David Ben-Gurion, a one-time New Yorker, would have said. He of course lived in New York from 1915-1917, and he met and married his wife there.

On that fateful day in September, I had just completed my home leave in the United States after serving for three years at our Embassy in Cairo and was sitting down for my first morning of consultations at the State Department in anticipation of my assignment to Tel Aviv. It was not long before we were told to leave the building immediately as there was a threat of a car bomb. Even as we walked down the stairs, the story changed to a fire in the building. It turned out that the State Department was not attacked and I joined my wife next to a television for the rest of the day to try to learn about and absorb the tragic events.

Very few of us have been able to put into words the sentiments felt in the United States on September 11 and in the days and weeks afterward. Just has been the experience in Israel, it sometimes is our writers of novels and poetry who help us interpret events of this magnitude. The renowned American writer Don DeLillo wrote an essay in this month's Harper's Magazine that helped me think about the events. I'll read a short passage:

When we say a thing is unreal, we mean it is too real, a phenomenon so unaccountable and yet so bound to the power of objective fact that we can't tilt it to the slant of our perceptions. First the planes struck the towers. After a time it became possible for us to absorb this, barely. But when the towers fell. When the rolling smoke began moving downward, floor to floor. This was so vast and terrible that it was outside imagining... But it was real... and there was the huge antenna falling out of the sky, straight down, blunt end first, like an arrow moving backward in time.

Indeed it was extremely difficult for Americans to comprehend these acts of massive terror. But as the reality of their evil sunk in, the American people responded with a unity of purpose and resolve that is incomparable to anything I have witnessed in my lifetime. They know the task of defeating terror will not be easy or quick. The American people have joined the front lines against terror and they are prepared to fight for our values and ideals.

What I will do this evening is review the actions taken by the United States since September 11th to marshal support for global efforts against terrorism, and then sketch out briefly where we are going.

Let me begin by laying out the U.S. objectives in Afghanistan:

- First, the elimination of the al-Qaida network.

- Second, the termination of Taliban rule in Afghanistan and destruction of its leadership; and

- Third, elimination of a safe-haven for terrorists.

While we have made progress on these objectives, considerable work remains to be done in eliminating the al-Qaida network in Afghanistan and defeating the Taliban. This will be the principal focus of the U.S. military activities in the coming weeks.

The military campaign, however, is just one of the elements to deal with the threats. We need to get at terrorist financing in a much more vigorous, international effort. Let me describe those efforts so far.

Immediately after the terrorist attacks the Administration mounted an aggressive strategy to track and disrupt the financial networks that sustain international terrorism.

On September 24, vowing to starve terrorists of their funding, President Bush issued an Executive Order which directed the Treasury Department to freeze the assets of and to prohibit financial transactions with 27 individuals and organizations known to be linked to al-Qaida and suspected of funding terrorism. He called on foreign banks to follow suit, and I am gratified to report that over 150 countries have joined the effort to disrupt terrorist assets.

On October 5, the State Department issued its biennial list of groups designated as foreign terrorist organizations. The list includes al-Qaida, Hamas, and Hizballah. On November 2, we added 22 additional foreign terrorist organizations to the Assets Freeze List, including Hizballah, Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Palestine Islamic Jihad. The United States has had the authority to freeze the assets of organizations like Hamas, Hizballah, the PFLP and PIJ since 1995. What the Executive Order did was also to allow us to block the assets of anyone who associates with these terrorist groups. It also allows us to sanction the financial institutions or other organizations that support or provide services to the terrorist organizations.

And on November 7, the United States froze the assets of 62 organizations and persons with suspected terrorist connections. Most were offices or affiliates of Al-Barakaat and Al-Taqwa, financial exchange institutions linking the U.S. with the Middle East and Somalia. FBI and Customs raided their offices, and similar raids took place in Liechtenstein, Austria, the Netherlands, Italy, and Switzerland.

On October 25 a new U.S. multi-agency task force was launched, entitled "Operation Green Quest," whose mission is to deny terrorist groups access to the international financial networks which they had previously used.

In late September, the United States Congress passed a 40 billion dollar spending package in response to the September 11 attacks. Congress earmarked additional funds to finance investigations and prosecute domestic and international terrorism.

Following the money trail is going to be a critical element of the long-term campaign against international terrorists. I would note that we cooperate closely with Israeli authorities in this area, but we need to work hard to maintain sustained, systematic efforts.

The most visible aspect of our war on terror is of course the military campaign. Even as we take strong actions, it bears repeating President Bush's pledge that, unlike our enemies, we seek to minimize the loss of innocent life.

We haven't pursued our actions alone. Because this is a global confrontation, the United States has also led an effort to establish a sound international legal basis for proceeding. On September 12th, the United Nations Security Council unanimously condemned the terrorist attacks. On September 28th the Security Council, acting under Chapter Seven of the UN Charter, directed states to criminalize the financing of terror, to freeze the assets of terrorists, and to deny safe-haven to those who finance, plan, support or commit terrorist acts.

On the basis of these Security Council Resolutions, the United States set out to build a tangible basis to act. This has required the construction of several coalitions, to prosecute the war, to follow up on financial matters and to assemble the intelligence and information necessary to proceed.

From the outset, the United States worked to build a coalition that could help us overcome the complex military challenges associated with fighting a war ten thousand miles from our borders. The response of the world community has been overwhelmingly positive. Some 40 countries have offered air transit or landing rights. Forty-six multilateral declarations of support have been obtained. Over 100 countries have offered increased intelligence support and the United States has intensified counter-terrorist operations with over 200 intelligence and security services world-wide.

In addition, for the first time in NATO's history, our NATO allies invoked Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. This article states that an armed attack on one or more of the allies in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all. NATO allies have since provided the United States with a wide range of assistance, including unlimited use of their air space, basing facilities, seaports, logistics, early-warning aircraft, increased security for U.S. forces in Europe and intelligence sharing.

Though our military operations, we have paved the way for Northern Alliance Forces to tighten the net around the Taliban. Taliban forces, as we've been seeing, have been in retreat. On November 13, they abandoned Kabul; since then, we've seen several other northern provinces liberated, including Mazar-e-Sharif, and now Kunduz, as well.

As opposition forces consolidate their control in various regions of Afghanistan, we have made clear our expectation that they will assist us in whatever way they can in continuing the campaign against al-Qaida and the Taliban leadership. To this end, we are providing financial and political incentives for cooperation.

The U.S. will also endeavor to keep the footprint of its presence in the country small and as unobtrusive as possible. And indeed we expect other countries who join us on the ground in Afghanistan to similarly observe this principle and to coordinate their presence with us.

As I have said, military operations are only part of the campaign. They cannot work in isolation. The United States has also been working to address the humanitarian disaster facing the Afghan people. The United States has air-dropped over 1.9 million packages of food rations into Afghanistan. We have also been providing other humanitarian relief supplies, including medicines and blankets to the Afghan people. On October 4, the President announced an additional $320 million in humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, bringing the calendar year total to over $500 million of committed funds. Since mid-October, the U.N.'s World Food Program - through U.S. assistance - has delivered enough foold in to Afghanistan to feed six million Afghans for one month.

The structure of the post-Taliban Afghanistan will be for the Afghan people to determine. But we will provide strong diplomatic and economic support to the aspirations of Afghan parties committed to an inclusive democratic political structure. They should be committed to the welfare of all Afghan men and women, and provide for substantial local autonomy. This is a structure in which all Afghan ethnic groups can participate and find their rightful place.

The United States has lent its support to the UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, who brought together representatives of Afghan factions in Bonn this week to begin discussions about post-war governance in Afghanistan.

On November 21, the United States and Japan co-chaired an international conference to begin the process of planning for Afghan reconstruction. The World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the UN Development Program are hosting a follow-on meeting in Isalamabad this week.

Let me also outline a few of the major steps we have taken in Homeland Defense. On October 8th President Bush signed an Executive Order establishing the Office of Homeland Security and the Homeland Security Council. He appointed former Pennsylvania Governor Thomas Ridge to head this office and to coordinate all security related activities among U.S. federal, state and local government agencies.

On October 10, President Bush released a list of 22 "Most Wanted Terrorists," who were linked to events as far back as the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847. The list included Usama bin Laden and 12 members of al-Qaida. The State Department offered multi-million-dollar rewards for information leading to their capture.

On October 26th President Bush signed into law anti-terrorism legislation that will give law enforcement agencies broad new powers to track down and to jail suspected terrorists.

On November 13, President Bush issued a directive authorizing the establishment of military tribunals to try foreign terrorist suspects and their accomplices. The same day, the State Department announced that it would institute stricter screening program for those seeking visas to enter the United States.

To be sure, there are significant dilemmas posed by some of this recently passed legislation. We in the United States, as you in Israel, are a society that strongly values personal and civil liberties and fundamental freedoms. We believe in the presumption of innocence, and we are not favorably disposed toward government intrusiveness. As such, our society will need to grapple with the inherent tension between the requirements of security and our values relating to civil liberties.

The topic I was asked to address was U.S. objectives in the war on terror and beyond. I have sketched out our objectives and described what we have been doing to achieve them. This has been about what has come to be known as "Phase I" of our anti-terror campaign. I would now like to turn now to talk about the "and beyond" part. Many people, certainly many in this country, have been asking about what "Phase II" has in store. By "Phase II," of course, we are referring to what President Bush promised - to extend the campaign "until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated." I cannot tell you with precision where the United States is going to take the war on terror after Afghanistan. What I can tell you, is that there will be a Phase II, and a sustained effort against terrorism will be embedded and emphasized in U.S. foreign and domestic policies for many years to come.

The war on terrorism is not just about defeating Usama bin Laden and dismantling his al-Qaida network in Afghanistan. We are hunting down the entire network - not just in Afghanistan -- but in 59 other countries where we believe they have burrowed in. Keep in mind, that, in launching the military campaign, the United States informed the UN Security Council that, it was acting in self defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter. In doing so, we stipulated that, "we may find that our self defense requires further action with respect to other organizations and other states." As I have described, military action is only one instrument in our arsenal of tools against global terrorism.

As President Bush said in addressing the United Nations: We must oppose all terrorists, not just some of them. There is no such thing as a good terrorist. No national aspiration, no remembered wrong can ever justify the deliberate murder of the innocent. Any government that rejects this principle, trying to pick and choose its terrorist friends, will know the consequences. We will isolate and apply pressure on countries that support or sponsor terrorism - that includes harboring, funding, housing terrorists. As the President reiterated this week, those that develop weapons of mass destruction that will be used to terrorize nations will also be held accountable.

Some commentators have spoken about the need to remedy the underlying grievances that drive people to terror. It is important not to confuse the legitimacy of a cause with the means chosen to pursue it. In choosing terrorism as a means, those claiming to support legitimate causes actually cheapen them, and undermine the aspirations of those in whose names they claim to act. It is one thing to address the conditions that terrorists exploit. The United States will continue to pursue policies that help address such grievances in conjunction with our most cherished values: democracy, human rights, the rule of law, and economic opportunity for all. But the United States has been clear: We will make no concessions to terrorists. We will not strike any deals. We are not interested in negotiating with terrorists. We will pursue them, and we will defeat them. And we will bring them to justice for their crimes.

The specifics and the detailed actions against international terror will evolve over time and address themselves to specific situations. At the moment the United States is focused on the efforts I have described. For the future, we will consult and work with our friends and allies to root out those organizations and individuals that use terror as their instrument. We're in this for the long term.

As President Bush told the world on November 9, "We cannot know every turn this battle will take. Yet we know our cause is just and our ultimate victory is assured."

Thank you very much.

Return to US Embassy Home Page