In the wake of the worst terrorist attacks ever on US soil, Tufts professors are stressing the need to avoid knee-jerk responses and to instead find long-term solutions. Some experts within the University feel that while a military attack is imminent, America must ultimately overhaul its stance towards terrorism.
The US and its allies should proceed carefully, political science professor Tony Smith said, so as to not exacerbate resentment among potential fundamentalist aggressors.
"The dislike of the US is fairly widespread in popular circles in the Muslim world," Smith said. "It's important that innocent people don't suffer, friendly regimes not be destabilized, and that action is as surgically precise as possible."
Discussion surrounding military strikes is centered around Saudi multi-millionaire Osama bin Laden. Afghanistan's ruling Taliban government has sheltered bin Laden since 1996; today, a Pakistani delegation is expected to instruct the Taliban to hand over bin Laden or face military action.
Whether or not the use of force is necessary, Smith said that the US must act with the cooperation of the international community.
"The key is going to be the reaction of the Taliban government to demands that bin Laden be dealt with," Smith said. "There's no reason to suspect that they will react as positively as the Serbian government recently has to demands that indicted war criminals, like Milosevic, be sent to the Hague for the war crimes tribunal."
Political science department chair Jim Glaser compared the American "rally around the flag" reaction to similar responses to the Bay of Pigs, the Gulf War, and the Korean War. Glaser said that Americans will not be accustomed to a war on terrorism.
"It may be a war, but I don't think it will be a war like anything we've experienced before," he said.
Though an immediate response would help Americans feel a sense of closure, an attack in itself will not solve America's terrorist problem, Glaser said.
"My feeling is that this will continue whether we respond militarily or not," Glaser said. "The reasons that they attacked us haven't gone away, whatever those reasons are. And I don't think we really know what they are."
Smith agreed that severe action in the next few weeks will only help in the short term and may ignite stronger negative feelings towards America by terrorist groups. "We don't want extremism to feed extremism," he said. "You can see an extremist minority provoke extremist reaction, and that isn't going to solve this problem."
What makes this an untraditional war, according to Smith, is that "it's not headquartered in a state with which one can have traditional state to state relations. It's a popular movement," he explained. "It's not traditional because of the character of these states which have divided governments and relatively weak control over their populations."
Michele Malvesti, a former defense department Middle East terrorism analyst and a Fletcher Ph.D. candidate, said that fighting terrorism is a large task because it requires international cooperation and long-term covert actions.
"In order to disrupt, to undermine, and dismantle a terrorist organization, it takes action on all fronts," she said. "It takes working with our allies, bolstering the counter-terrorist capability of other countries, and a political concerted effort to maintain the support of our allies."
Difficulties arise because terrorism is characterized as both a national security threat and a crime; responses can vary from diplomatic, economic, and law enforcement actions, to overt military strikes or covert operations.
"Unfortunately, in recent years we have begun to rely more and more on technical intelligence, but the human element is critical," she said. "We're going to have to approach [terrorism] now, from a different direction. There's going to have to be increasing cooperation between federal law intelligence community."
Malvesti stressed that any immediate military actions must be supplemented by long-term security measures in order to avoid future attacks.
"The roots of terrorism, why they gravitate toward those organizations and methods to rectify their perceived grievances - those are other issues that need to be resolved," she said. "The bottom line is that, though it looks like we may conduct a military retaliatory strike, ultimately that type of reaction isn't going to be effective."
Though measures to guarantee security might impinge on certain liberties in both the US and other countries, Malvesti said that such limits will be necessary to fight terrorism in the long run.
"What we saw on Tuesday was an example of a low probability, yet high consequence action," Malvesti said. "While we can't turn America into a fortress, we need to improve our security measures but yet strike a balance between constitutional liberties and what a free, open, democratic society will tolerate."
