Griffith-Dickson, who is also the parent of a Fordham senior, said that her past role as an adviser to the British and American governments in their counterterrorism efforts prevented her from writing a tell-all book. But in writing fiction, she was able to explore political and theological dilemmas inherent to the “War on Terror.”

She said she found it strange that many novels on the subject belittle the reality of terror. Most are paperbacks intended for airport purchases and a quick read. Such books often portray Muslims in a negative light and exalt heroes from the West.

“These are some of the most serious issues of our day,” she said. “Why are we taking the really serious stuff and making it trivial?”

Patrick Hornbeck, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Theology, which hosted the event, called Griffith-Dickson’s novel an intellectual book that had much to do with a clash of ideas, things not usually featured in a mass market thriller.

“This is the first novel I read with footnotes,” he said.

A native of Hawaii, Griffith-Dickson has formed a nonprofit organization called the Lokahi Foundation. (Lokahi means harmony and balance in Hawaiian.) She said she has been worried about foreign fighters coming home radicalized. In particular, young, male adolescents growing up in the West since 9/11 have been ostracized, even if they do well in school and come from financially stable homes. Groups like ISIS often recruit them through social media, sometimes direct-messaging about 40 times a day.

“People are attracted to violent groups because core needs are not being met, it’s not always about a need for spiritual meaning,” she said.

The foundation works with both the Muslim community and the government to help prevent terror attacks.

As such, she said, her work has helped her gain alternate perspectives in the anti-terrorism fight. In fact, her novel’s three primary protagonists—an ayatollah from Iran, a former Al Qaeda strategist, and a Russian spy—are all characters who fall outside the stereotypical Western point of view.

Griffith-Dickson said that financial motives for war, propagated by the West, often undercut peace efforts at home.  She called it a perfect storm “where there are huge profits to be made” by companies to keep the war effort going. Even the “most dove-like” members of Congress “are under pressure not to cut budgets while our young people are in harm’s way,” lest they be labeled unpatriotic, she said.

And while privatization of certain militaristic options is acceptable, the same governments don’t consider outsourcing community relations, she said.

“[Lokahi] didn’t work with a single young man who didn’t have father issues,” she said. “Police and government officials don’t always get that it’s the people in the community that know how to deal with their young.”

Al-Bayati is no stranger to terrorism; during the reign of Saddam Hussein, he was imprisoned and tortured, and his brother was killed.

His response to fighting counterterrorism is outlined as a 12-step strategy in his new book, A New Counter Terrorism Strategy (Praeger Security International, 2017), and it takes a compassionate approach.

“The human family is one family, according to all holy books,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if there’s an attack in Florida or London or Germany, we have to care about all our brothers and sisters.”

Al-Bayati said that he understands the roots of extremism because he was born in an area where such thinking was fostered, and because he has faced terrorism himself. In order to diagnose the problem, leaders need to understand the mentality of the perpetrators and “how to deal with their views of violence.”

Joining the ambassador was Karen Lynne Kennedy Mahmoud of the U.N. Secretariat. Kennedy Mahmoud outlined some results of the war between the Iraqi government and ISIS. She described the malnutrition of infants, the existence of some 100,000 orphans, and an education system in such shambles that some children haven’t been to school in years.

“As they return to their homes, children, some of whom have not been in a classroom for three years, will need to restart formal education—or we risk losing an entire generation,” said Kennedy Mahmoud.

It’s within these depleted environments that terrorists find safe haven, said Al-Bayati.

Other speakers at the event touched on more intangible ways to address distress in Iraq and other areas devastated by war, terror, and natural disasters: Working toward emotional and psychological well-being.

Psychologist Judy Kuriansky, Ph.D., adjunct professor at Columbia University Teachers College, who provided psychological first aid after bombings in Jerusalem, the tsunami in Asia, and after the attacks on September 11, said well-being in one’s life can be a counter to choosing terrorism.

“There are certainly psychological dynamics as to why someone wants to be [an]extremist,” said Kuriansky, who singled out the need for happiness. “We need to understand the importance of psychology.”

Harold Takooshian, Ph.D., professor of psychology and director of the Organizational Leadership program, said that it is unfortunate that the American Psychological Association does not allow psychologists to “even be in the same room as terrorists,” but he credited behavioral scientists for continuing research into what causes people to become terrorists.

“On one level, policies can help reduce terrorism,” he said. “But on another level we can prevent terrorism in the first place by understanding why people turn their backs on their nation.”

I was in the Pentagon on 9/11 and lost 85 teammates from the Army Headquarters (among the 125 people killed in the Pentagon and the 59 passengers who died on Flight 77), including a dear friend, Lt. Gen. Timothy J. Maude, a three-star general. My secretary lost five friends she had known for more than 20 years. We sent a general officer to every funeral. Terry, my wife, and I attended scores of funerals. Most were buried in Arlington, all together at a site selected in view of the Pentagon.

On that fateful day, I was in my office when one of my staff rushed in to turn on the TV and advise me something terrible had happened in New York City. I saw that a plane had hit the World Trade Center (WTC). I am a born and raised New Yorker. I noticed it was a blue-sky day and you could not hit the WTC by accident. I knew in 1993 terrorists had tried to bomb the WTC and bring it down from an underground parking garage. I knew instinctively it had to be a terrorist attack and said as much. I ordered the Army Operations Center (AOC) to be brought up to full manning (which was fortuitous because many who occupied it came from the blast area where the plane would eventually hit the Pentagon). The Pentagon is five stories high and five stories below ground level. It houses on a normal day about 25,000 people, most of them civilians. Up until the time the Sears Tower was built in Chicago, it was the largest office building in the U.S. The AOC was on the lowest floor.

We watched the second plane hit the WTC. My operations officer, a two-star general, called me to confirm that the AOC was fully manned. He also advised me that he was monitoring FAA communications. All planes were being grounded, he said, but a plane that took off from Washington, D.C., had turned around in the vicinity of Ohio and approached D.C. from the south along I-95 before turning east, short of the city, and then south again. We know now that the terrorist flying that plane likely believed he was too high. The general and I were discussing procedures for evacuating buildings in D.C. when the plane hit us. My office shook violently and eventually began to fill with smoke. I asked the general if he felt the impact. He said no (he was five stories down under the ground floor). I told him we were just hit and advised him to tell the U.S. Army around the world what happened and that, given the status of the AOC, which was unharmed, we would still maintain command and control of the Army. I told my immediate staff to call home and to evacuate. I kept my executive officer, a colonel, and my aide, a major, with me. I gave them my shirts from my office bathroom, and we soaked them in water and wrapped them around our nose and mouth and headed toward the blast site.

We were about a hundred yards away when the smoke became thicker. People were running from the blast area, and we were ensuring that everyone was getting out. At some point, my executive officer tapped my shoulder and said: “Sir, I think we need to leave this to others and go to the AOC and take command of the Army.” Of course I knew immediately that he was right, and we joined my staff in the AOC. As other officers joined us who were outside the building, we noticed that their shirts were full of blood; some had used their ties as tourniquets to assist the wounded.

We heard the report that five planes inbound to the U.S. were unaccounted for and that fighter aircraft were mustered to engage them. Vice President Cheney had given permission to shoot them down if necessary. I can remember thinking, what must be going through the mind of the pilots knowing they would kill hundreds of innocent people to save thousands. Fortunately, the pilots made visual contact with the airplanes and eventually radio contact, and all five planes were safe. The AOC has very large screens, floor to ceiling, where we monitored activities. The Secretary of the Army was taken by helicopter to our classified alternate site. He did not want to go, but he had no choice.

That night, before I visited the wounded in the hospitals in D.C. and Virginia at about 11 p.m., I told my officers that the Pentagon and the WTC represented the first battle of a new war. “The days of treating terrorists as criminals and bringing them in to the justice system are over. Today’s attack is an act of war, as all terrorist attacks are. The Army will bear the brunt of this fight, and we intend to go find them and we will kill and destroy them by the thousands.” We took one step toward the enemy that night by putting a work plan together to support CENTCOM, who we knew would be in charge of the war. I ordered the 82nd Airborne from Fort Bragg to secure the Pentagon. They were there when people came to work.

We visited five hospitals, seeing all the wounded. The worst had horrific burns. We heard stories of extraordinary heroism. We saw the first responders, many who never left, even though another shift had come on. They told me that because it was the Pentagon, so many of the wounded were initially treated by military people who are trained to treat injuries. In many cases, the bleeding had been stopped, and the wounded were being treated for shock when they arrived. The first responders indicated that lives were saved as a result. Some of the wounded would stay in the hospital for weeks.

The next day, we knew we had a number of people killed because they were unaccounted for. The Army team in the Pentagon showed up for work, on time, mostly civilians. I was so proud of them as I traveled the building to provide reassurance. They knew we were at war and they were a part of something much larger than self. I also knew as I spoke to survivors that many were hurting mentally and emotionally. I ordered the Army surgeon to bring doctors and counselors over to the building to help our folks cope. I also told the Army chief historian to document what took place, it’s part of our history now, and also to record the heroism that took place. When appropriate, I said, we would recognize those involved.

I visited the crash site on 9/12 with the chief engineer, and what I saw was quite remarkable. The upper floors at the plane’s point of entry had collapsed due to the blast and heat from the fire. The Pentagon is actually five independent rings separated by an alley between each ring. The plane entered at the ground floor, knocking down outside lampposts on the approach, and penetrated three of the five rings, with the nose of the aircraft penetrating the inner wall of the third ring. I was looking at what appeared to be a blackened multistory parking garage. I asked, “Where are all the desks, the computers, the walls, the plane?” He said all was consumed in the fire of the jet fuel, likely 2,000-degree heat. He showed me the strut of the plane which held the front tires, and it was in the alley between the third and fourth wing. The whole fuselage had entered the building but nothing was left. I realized that our dead teammates and the remains of the passengers were all around us and had been consumed by the fire.

We ordered the Old Guard, 3rd Infantry from Fort Myer, to the site. They are infantry soldiers. They would come with body bags, and when the fire department recovery teams spotted remains, we asked that all work stop. Everyone on site would stand in place. A four-man team of soldiers would move to the remains and recover them to a tent set up in the parking lot where a chaplain prayed over them with a two-man honor guard at attention. After honors, we turned the remains over to the FBI. They were later returned to us and flown by CH47 helicopter to Dover, Delaware, for identification by their families. We were determined to properly honor our dead as we would on any battlefield.

The engineer indicated that we were standing in the first renovated wedge of the Pentagon, which had not been fully reoccupied as all the new furniture had not arrived. Normally 5,000 people would have been working in that part of the building; at the time the plane hit, however, he estimated that only 2,000 people were there. Moreover, when the building was built during World War II, due to the iron shortage, no rebars were used in the cement beams holding up the floors. As part of the renovation, rebars were inserted. As such, the only part of the Pentagon that had iron rebars in the beams was the area where the plane hit, and that part was less than half occupied. He said the rebars held for 45 minutes, allowing people on the upper floors time to get out. If the plane had hit any other wedge containing approximately 5,000 people, the building would have collapsed immediately, and the casualties would have been on the same scale as the WTC or greater.

A few weeks later, we had the most extraordinary award ceremony I ever participated in. We had to create a new medal for civilians wounded in action because they are not authorized to receive the Purple Heart. The Secretary of the Army and I decorated many people that day for heroism and for their wounds, as they represented everyone who was part of the Army team. They were young and old, men and women, soldiers and civilians, officers and enlisted, black and white. Some were in great physical condition; some were not. It reminded me once again that heroism does not have a gender, a race, a religion, a size, or shape. Anyone willing to give up their life for another, acting instantaneously, has all to do with heart and character. This is about true honor. I was so proud to be among them at the largest and most unique award ceremony of my career.

A few days later, I visited Ground Zero as a senior military leader from New York City representing the Department of Defense. The fire chief in charge of the recovery walked me over the WTC complex of smoldering ruins. It was a macabre and overwhelming experience, as we had all witnessed on TV. I attended the mayor’s evening brief on a pier along the Hudson River. I was impressed; it was as organized as any military operations center. The people were steady, firm, and determined. I offered the mayor the assistance of his military, which had been already offered to him on the phone. As I left, with sirens blasting to take me back to my aircraft, there were hundreds of New Yorkers along the West Side Highway cheering and waving American flags. I was proud of my city, its leaders, and its people. I knew we would never be the same again.

—General Jack Keane, a four-star general, completed more than 37 years of public service in December 2003, culminating in his appointment as acting chief of staff and vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army. General Keane is a 1966 graduate of Fordham’s Gabelli School of Business.

While the cause of ISIS continues to attract a wide range of individuals, trends can be observed in terms of motivations, personal context, and intent. Among the report’s findings are the following:

• 80% expressed dissatisfaction with the United States in some respect
• 90% were drawn to the caliphate
• 42% were charged with plotting against American targets
• 50% were involved in discussing, procuring, or possessing firearms
• 26% expressed a desire for martyrdom
• 87% of the charged individuals are male
• 77% are U.S. citizens
• 89% use social media
• One-third lived with their parents at the time of arrest

Center on National Security Director Karen Greenberg was quoted in a New York Times article that featured the report.

“These individuals seemed to be looking to attach to something that can help define them as well as give them a cause worth fighting for,” said Karen J. Greenberg, the director of the center.

Read the full article.

Read the report (PDF).

Anyone who thinks the United States has settled the security versus liberty debate in the War on Terror should turn his or her gaze to a U.S.-run prison on the south shore of Cuba, said Karen Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law.

“There are five people in Guantanamo who are charged with the 9/11 attacks, and we’ve never tried them in court. We have not figured out a way to try them, because we did not focus on justice—we focused instead on security,” she said.

“We have a situation where our country was tragically and devastatingly attacked [and]we think we know who did it—we have the perpetrators in custody. [But] we can’t do anything about it, because we allowed a weakening of our court system after 9/11.”

This failure of military commissions to adjudicate prisoners at the Guantanamo prison, coupled with the refusal of Congress to allow them to be tried in civilian courts, is one issue Greenberg explores in Rogue Justice: The Making of the Security State (Crown 2016), released on May 24.

The book details ways in which previously unthinkable “rogue policies,” like the NSA’s spying on U.S. citizens, indefinite detention, and torture, were embraced and implemented in secret. And it’s not just freedom that Americans have given away to feel safer; it’s justice, too.

“The people who created this country and who wrote the Bill of Rights knew what they were talking about,” she said. “Compromising those protections—for whatever reason—is a threshold we shouldn’t have crossed. It’s a mistake that’s hard to recover from.”

There are some areas of national security where Greenberg is hopeful. The ineffectiveness of torture has been documented in a recent Senate report, and there has been significant pushback against mass surveillance by tech companies.

But she is still concerned about the issue of indefinite detention, particularly as the country’s armed forces engage with ISIS and the Obama administration prepares to leave office.

“Guantanamo has taken us down so many bad roads in terms of our relations with other countries and our reliance upon our own legal system—it’s just been an intractable problem in so many ways. It’s something that former President Bush wanted to close, its something Obama has wanted to close,” she said.

“Keeping it open at this point would prove dangerous, given we’re entering a new phase of the war on terror.”
She said that when Americans allow fear to drive the nation to ignore its laws, Americans actually endanger themselves more.

“We talk about the injustice to the detainees, to those who were tortured, to those who were rounded up in the war of terror, but the injustice of not trying people for 9/11 is an injustice to the American people,” she said.

Greenberg will discuss Rogue Justice at Fordham Law School on Wednesday, June 1 from 6 to 7 p.m. For more information, visit the center’s event page.

In the aftermath, however, it is crucial that the global community avoids acting on xenophobic fear and instead prioritizes the protection of human rights—the most ethical and effective response to ensure global peace and stability.

The panel consisted of a Rwandan genocide survivor, the UN assistant secretary-general for human rights, a Columbia law professor, and a Fordham ethicist, all of whom weighed in on subjects including terrorism, torture, and capital punishment at a discussion, “In Good Conscience: Human Rights in an Age of Terrorism, Violence, and Limited Resources.”

“Human rights abuses like genocide don’t happen overnight,” said Consolee Nishimwe, a human rights activist whose family was murdered during the Rwandan genocide. “It [first involves]a systematic discrimination of a particular minority group or groups within a society with the encouragement or participation of the government or authorities.”

The global spike in human rights abuses is alarming, said Ivan Šimonović, PhD, the UN assistant secretary-general for human rights. Between 2014 and 2015, the number of refugees and displaced persons increased by 20 percent, reaching a record high of 60 million. Between 2013 and 2014, the number of people killed in conflicts around the world increased 33 percent.

“A lot of [these]conflicts can be attributed to the clash between aspirations and opportunities,” Šimonović said. “Access to information has never been better, which means people are aware that life can be better than how they’re living. This leads to frustration, dissatisfaction, and demand for change.

“If regimes do not want to change . . . what does that lead to? Rebellion, extremism, and terrorism.”

With the number of violent incidences climbing, interventions such as Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter—which allows the UN Security Council to take military and nonmilitary action to restore international peace and security—need to happen once red flags appear, and not after mass atrocities and widespread abuses have already occurred, Šimonović said.

One of the earliest signs of impending mass violence is dehumanizing language, he said. In the case of the Rwandan genocide exactly 22 years ago, the country’s radio station Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines broadcasted racist propaganda to incite hatred against the Tutsi ethnic group, calling them “cockroaches” and “snakes,” and accusing them of being witches.

“Genocide doesn’t come out of the blue. Not even sexual violence comes out of the blue—sexual violence in conflicts is a reflection of the treatment of women during peacetime,” Šimonović said.

“There are patterns and symptoms of human rights violations that can predict that we’re heading toward potential mass atrocities… One of these is dehumanization—saying that this group isn’t human. It was the case for Jews, the same for the Tutsis, and it is happening now with the Yazidis [an Iraqi ethnic and religious minority].”

Other presenters included Matthew Waxman, the Liviu Librescu Professor of Law at Columbia University, and Celia Fisher, PhD, the Marie Ward Doty University Chair in Ethics and director of Center for Ethics Education.

Waxman, an expert on national security law who worked at the White House during George W. Bush’s administration, spoke about the use of torture in counterterrorism efforts and how we might structure laws to clarify interrogation policies in the event of national crises.

Fisher discussed the ethical dilemma that psychologists face when called upon to do diagnostic assessments in death penalty cases. According to the American Psychological Association’s ethics code, psychologists must uphold ethical standards and protect human rights even when these standards conflict with the law.

Death sentences are disproportionately given to poor and disenfranchised people, because these populations often lack equal access to due process, Fisher said. Because the law is inequitable and thus immoral, psychologists should refuse to participate in the process, she argued.

The panel was moderated by Andrea Bartoli, PhD, dean of the School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University.

Raymond Kuo, PhD, an assistant professor of political science who joined Fordham in September, focuses his scholarship on international relations, with a focus on security and grand strategy. Before working in academia, Kuo worked for the National Democratic Institute as a program officer overseeing political party development projects in the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, and Africa. He also worked for the United Nations and the Democratic Progressive Party of Taiwan as a foreign policy analyst and organizational strategist.

We asked Kuo to share his thoughts on what The Intercept‘s findings mean for the U.S. drone program.

Fordham News: The first drone was used by the U.S. military in 2000. Why hasn’t the targeting technology improved much?

Kuo: The technology has definitely improved since 2000. In addition to arming the MQ-1 Predator (the drone we commonly associate with these strikes) with Hellfire missiles, the U.S. has upgraded its sensor and targeting platforms. But the U.S. military has stopped acquiring Predators and is focusing more on the MQ-9 Reaper, its bigger, badder cousin. It is significantly faster and larger, able to carry a larger payload, and has a substantially longer operational range and loiter time (i.e. the time it can monitor an area before it has to refuel).

However, we could think that unintended civilian deaths or “collateral damage” are a sign that the program needs improvement. But the issue is not technology, but targeting: Are we hitting the right people and avoiding killing innocent bystanders? And that requires good intelligence. The MQ-9 and other strike vehicles have impressive signals intelligence collection capabilities. However, human intelligence is just as, if not more, important in effective targeting.

But developing human intelligence is not easy nor cheap. The U.S. would either need boots on the ground or rely upon local governments and informants to provide us the targeting information, which they may not have or may not be equipped to acquire.

You should always evaluate policy in comparison to other alternatives, never in isolation. Are we as Americans willing to pay the cost of a more accurate, but costly and assertive strategy? If not, are we willing to walk away and let terrorist networks potentially grow in power and membership? If we decide that the drone program is the best way to balance these costs and benefits, then we need a clear understanding of its actual effects, as I’ll address in the next question.

FN: Aside from more accurate intelligence, and stealth technology, despite the Intercept’s report, and the ongoing protests against the usage of drones, will the U.S. stop using them?

Kuo: The short answer is no. The U.S. will continue to use drones in battlefields or countries where it has already established air superiority (either militarily or through agreement with a host government) and does NOT want to commit troops in a direct combat role.

But the deeper answer is no, the U.S. will continue the program because it seems to work. Both the Pakistani Defense Ministry and the U.S. Army War College claim that a relatively small number of civilians have been killed by the strikes. Somewhere around 3-4 percent of those killed are civilians. Now, the Intercept is correct that America’s targeting rules are far too loose. The “signature strike” policy – where we target people simply because they are male and seem to be of a certain age group – is counterproductive and ultimately harmful to our interests.

Moreover, overall the program seems fairly successful, at least in Pakistan. C. Christine Fair of Georgetown University has described how locals in that country’s tribal areas come outside when they hear drones overhead. They consider the drones to be accurate and generally targeting foreign fighters, allowing them to reassert control over their villages and get on with their lives.

So the policy is widely popular in the Pakistani districts in which it operates. Christopher Swift makes a similar finding in Yemen, and I would hope that other operations in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula are also successful. However, the program has created enormous public backlash within the wider Pakistani public. This is a significant strategic headache for the U.S., but one which I think can be partially addressed, as I’ll discuss later.

FN: If we schedule a drone strike and it doesn’t achieve its goal, and/or kills innocent civilians, it’s not surprising if it inspires new recruits for ISIS and the like. Why doesn’t that change our tactic? Are ‘boots on the ground’ just that much less well received by the American public? [Ed. It was announced on Oct. 30 that the U.S. will be sending special ops troops to Syria.]

Kuo: Any civilian deaths in war are tragic, particularly among the wounded and children. But it’s also important to note that civilian casualties are completely allowed under the laws of war. They cannot be intentional or directly targeted, however. So if the deaths are truly accidental, the result of bad intelligence, poor targeting, or some other factor, it’s a horrible situation but they are still legally and even morally allowed. Military necessity – the desire to bring a conflict to a close sooner and potentially save even more lives – unfortunately means that civilians can be caught in the crossfire. Effective militaries want to minimize that as much as possible, but recognize that innocent deaths may occur in the course of their duties.

But you ask a deeper question about the strategic effects of strikes. Do they cause more harm than good? Preliminary results from my research suggest that strikes actually stabilize the areas in which they fall, so long as we kill the right people. The opponents of the program are correct if we only concern ourselves with “regular” militants. For each one the U.S. has killed in Pakistan, 47 civilians leave their districts, suggesting that they are moving for safer or better prospects elsewhere. However, killing a militant leader acts as an enormous brake on this outward migration. Over 1,100 people stay in their districts for each leader killed. And finally, killing a civilian means that 98 people want to stay. That is, the public seems willing to absorb a certain degree of innocent deaths so that the program can achieve its objectives.

Again, these are preliminary results, and I’m still subjecting the data to more tests. But I should note that the region of Pakistan where the numbers are drawn from is an active conflict area. The U.S. doesn’t have a military presence there, and it’s difficult for journalists to make their reports. So the numbers that organizations like the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (one of the sources the Intercept report relied upon) receives come from the people on the ground. In other words, the militants themselves. So even using their numbers, we’re still seeing evidence suggesting the drone program is having a positive effect overall.

FN: Is it possible that our drone strategy would change if a Republican president were to take office in 2016?

Kuo: Drones have been used under both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. I actually don’t think the party in office matters too much to the drone program per se. The operations are in place because they are a relatively cheap option which seem to achieve some of their goals while preventing American casualties. If a more aggressive or militaristic president or Congress emerges, I suspect they’ll commit actual troops to these battlefields, rather than rely upon drones as the primary intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and strike vehicles.

But as I mentioned earlier, the program does have a substantial political drawback: It engenders extreme dislike in the wider public. But we should keep in mind that drones – for all the terror and awe they may induce – are actually pretty weak combat platforms. The Predator was originally designed as a surveillance and reconnaissance platform. Drones in general are relatively slow and unmaneuverable, which you want since they will be loitering over an area. But even a minimally competent air force or air defense network could swat them out of the sky. Drones can only operate where the U.S. has air superiority, typically by reaching an agreement with the host government.

And it is those individuals who need to take more responsibility for the program. In Pakistan and Yemen at least, the U.S. operates with the consent and even active (though hidden) support of the government. As an illustration, consider that in 2008, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani reportedly stated “I don’t care if they (the Americans) do it (the drone program) as long as they get the right people. We’ll protest in the National Assembly and then ignore it.” There are even suggestions that the program has been manipulated by these groups to selectively strike at political enemies, rather than target all insurgents.

So host governments have been playing both sides: protesting against the strikes, even urging their people to do so, while secretly pushing for more drone operations. That is pure political cowardice, but it also makes political sense given the incentives these politicians face. So if (and that’s a big if) this is an important enough issue, the U.S. needs to push these individuals to be open about their decisions to deal with the general public backlash against strikes.

Learn more about, and contact, Kuo on his website.

“I think that [wind of public opinion]has blown us to a place where fear and mistrust of law enforcement is getting in the way of reasoned conversation about what we do, why we do it and why it matters,” he said, speaking on Nov. 3 at “Today’s Terrorism: Today’s Counterterrorism,” a daylong conference sponsored by the school’s Center on National Security and the Ari Halberstam Memorial Fund.

Referencing recent announcements that the tech giants Google and Apple will make encryption the default setting of their operating systems, Comey said he was worried about “going dark” on the tracking of criminal suspects.

“I do not want some sneaky back door. I do not want some side door. I want us as the people, to find some way with transparency, regularity, and discipline for us to be able to access the information to be able to do our work,” he said.

Comey’s talk, which was followed by a lengthy Q&A session, was the keynote address of a day-long conference, which attracted some 500 members of the media, academia, and the security industries.

Comey, who was appointed FBI director in September 2013, said the framework of the current “security versus freedom” debate is wrong because, ideally, security should enable freedom. He gave as an example the deployment of New York City police officers into city parks to disrupt drug dealers who have taken over the spaces from law-abiding citizens.

And the threats to the United States are indeed real, thanks to two developments: The surge of offspring of Al Qaeda, including ISIL, which Comey said is extremely adept at broadcasting its propaganda; and the rise of the home-grown extremists such as Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, the gunman responsible storming the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa and killing a soldier last month.

The first issue is challenging because the number of travelers going to Syria to fight on ISIL’s behalf has blossomed, and these people could return to the United States, Comey said.

“All of us in the counterterrorism business can remember a terrorist diaspora after the war with the Soviets in Afghanistan,” he said. “We can trace a line from that diaspora to the events of 9/11, and we’re determined not to allow a future terrorist diaspora—especially out of Syria—connect to future tragedies.”

“We have enough humility to constantly ask ourselves ‘Who might we be missing who is looking to travel?’ or ‘Who has traveled?’ and the challenge is obvious: In this great big free country of ours, there are literally thousands of ways to get from the United States to Syria, and the same number of ways to return.”

The phenomenon of the home-grown extremist is even more challenging, he said, because voluminous online propaganda means that an extremist need never meet a member of Al Qaeda, or the Al Nusra Front to learn how to commmit an act of violence in the United States.

“In away, we banked on the core Al Qaeda culture being one in which, [a terrorist act]needed to be big,” he said. “Today, it’s simply, kill.”