SMITH: What are we doing wrong in the global war on terror?

PHAM: Two things in particular stand out: At home, I am not sure we have effectively communicated to the American people that we are at war.

If terrorism is an existential threat to our way of life, then we have to make suitable adjustments to defend ourselves. As my friend, Nikolas Gvosdev, editor of The National Interest, said in a recent co-authored article, we want a 99.9 percent guarantee but are only willing to pay the costs, fiscal and otherwise, for a system that will protect us up to 40 percent of the time.

Abroad, I often fear that our overall approach to date is somewhat akin to Whac-A-Mole: we run reactively to wherever the enemy crops up, essentially allowing him to pick battlefields. We need to proactively pick him off as well as deny him the opportunity to establish himself where he has set his sights, but has not decamped to. An example: our steady pressure in the Middle East has clearly led al Qaeda and its ilk to look at Africa. Although there is some movement in that direction, they haven’t yet made the move. Shouldn’t we invest a little in denying them that new theatre rather than wait to fight them there?

SMITH: Do you personally believe – as some Americans do – it was a strategic mistake for us to invade Iraq in 2003?

PHAM: Strategy is all about setting priorities. In 2003, Iraq was – based on all the evidence then available – a danger to American security.

Incidentally, I do not place great store to the embarrassingly sloppy research that produced the recent so-called report from the Select Committee on Intelligence of the U.S. Senate discounting the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. In 2003, Saddam was defying the international community. So, the U.S. was well within its rights to take action. However, just because you can do something—legally, tactically, and otherwise—does not mean you should. Prudentially, I would have preferred that we had adopted a more vigorous containment strategy than then in force, deferring the confrontation with Saddam until we had more thoroughly concluded operations in Afghanistan and, as necessary, in Pakistan. That was where the central front in the war on terror was. Afterwards, we could have turned our full attention to Saddam who, threat though he was, was not an imminent threat.

All that said, however, there is no denying that our invasion of Iraq has shifted the dynamics of the war on terror. Iraq is now the central front in the war on terror. The long-term consequences of allowing the terrorists and radicals to even claim “victory” are too awful to contemplate.

SMITH: What do we need to be doing a better job of in terms of domestic security?

PHAM: We need to appreciate two realities: First, we are at war. Second, we do not have unlimited resources.

From this follows the imperative that we allocate such resources that we have at our disposal in a way that maximizes their real effect, rather than according to the canons of political correctness. This includes reconsidering who and what should be on the receiving end of the preponderance of our attentions. The key operating principle, as I suggested in a somewhat controversial column published on the morrow of the foiling of the London-based plane bombing conspiracy, must be “smart”: Do our policies, inasmuch as possible, increase public security by concentrating efforts where they will most likely result in the identification and apprehension of terrorists? Or are they dictated by “political correctness” and effectively decrease security by wasting resources on haphazard “feel good” procedures that do nothing but breed cynicism?

SMITH: What regarding the global war on terror keeps you awake at night?

PHAM: We have become victims of our own relative success on the battlefield and grown complacent, forgetting the lessons of 9/11 about failed states and terrorist infiltration. Al Qaeda and its allies are reconstituting territorial bases of operation to replace what they lost in Afghanistan in places like Iraq, the Caucasus, and elsewhere.

They are no doubt watching with great interest the establishment of the new Islamist regime in Somalia, which offers interesting possibilities for penetration of both the Arabian peninsula and Africa as well as sitting astride vital sea lanes. And what resources are we devoting to counter this rising threat? Will future years judge the present in the same manner that the present judges the missed opportunities of the 1990s?

Let me add that our enemy is very patient, taking a long-term view. Remember, eight years passed between the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 and the catastrophic attack of 2001. So far, only five years have gone by since 9/11. Even as our shock fades and our memories get blurred as we go about our everyday lives, the enemy is ever vigilant, waiting for the opportunity to strike. We are still at war.