The IDC

“THE TIME IS NOW FOR SERIOUS
SANCTIONS…TO STAND TALL AND TELL THE
IRANIANS: YOU TALK TOUGH AND WE ARE
GOING TO BE AT YOUR DOOR, WE’LL KNOCK
HARD, AND WE’RE NOT GOING AWAY”
- Congressman Mike Rogers, ranking member of the Subcommittee on
Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism and Human Intelligence, House Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence
better sense of the complexities, but only recently has begun to understand
the need to be proactive.
The differences between the two doctrines translate into an operational
capacity and motivation “to save Islam from the Islamists.” Yet to believe
that introducing liberal democracy to traditional Middle Eastern societies
could be the answer is to continue a mistaken “American naïveté” and
perpetuates a faulty grasp of asymmetrical warfare. We are not dealing
American Friends of IDC director Felicia Steingard
with ICT Guardians Steven and Bonnie Stern and
Simcha Stern
Mr. Michal Tomasz Kaminski, president, European
Conservatives and Reformists Political Group,
European Parliament, European Union
with a typical David and Goliath situation, Ganor explained, but with the
reverse: “Goliath is shackled by his values,” whereas the so-called David- is
“on the loose without any values whatsoever.”
In agreement with this assessment, Prof. William C. Banks, director of
the Institute for National Security and Counter-Terrorism, Syracuse
University, noted that the standard rules of war are simply not applicable to
asymmetrical warfare and that “gaps in international norms are becoming
William Banks, director, Institute for National
Security and Counterterrorism, Syracuse University,
USA, with Dafna and Gerald Cramer and IDC Vice
President of External Relations Jonathan Davis
increasingly problematic.” With no standards to shape responses to
asymmetric attacks, “terrorists may feel more emboldened to act in civilian
contexts, leading to an increase in the number of civilian victims.”
Abraham Sofaer, George P. Shultz senior fellow in Foreign Policy
and National Security Affairs at the Hoover Institution at Stanford
University, spoke of the use of force in order to prevent terror. Calls for
prevention measures should hardly be surprising, he explained, noting
that “domestically, we don’t wait to prevent crime. We don’t forget that
someone committed a crime in the past because they haven’t committed
a crime in a while.” Yet preventative attacks are inherently risky; the
“HALF OF CIVILIZATION IS FIGHTING THE
BARBARIANS AND THE OTHER HALF IS
PLAYING GAMES WITH THEM”
- Dr. Sergey Kurginyan, president of the International Public Foundation
Experimental Creative Center, Russian Federation
Dr. Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East
Forum and Taube Distinguished Visiting Fellow at
the Hoover Institution, offered reflections on the
changes in how the world regards warfare in this
new age of terror
Dr. Matthew Levitt, senior fellow and director
of the Washington Institute’s Stein Program
on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, spoke of
the “cascade of instability” resulting from Iran’s
pursuit of nuclear arms and sponsorship of terror;
while Eugen Wollfarth, head of the Counter-
Terrorism Task Force in the Auswärtiges Amt
(Federal Foreign Office), Berlin, spoke of the
danger posed by home-grown terrorists recruited
within Germany and trained in the Afghan-
Pakistani border area
“OUR THINKING ABOUT JUSTICE AND
WAR HAS NOT CAUGHT UP WITH THE
TECHNOLOGY AND OTHER INNOVATIONS OF
THE WAR IMPOSED BY TERROR”
- Dr. Peter Berkowitz, Tad and Dianne Taube senior fellow Hoover Institution,
Stanford University Washington Office
“SECURITY HAS TO DO WITH THE PROTECTION OF HUMAN LIFE AND THERE
THAN PROTECTING THE HUMAN LIFE OF A CITIZEN”
– Prof. Asa Kasher, Laura Schwarz-Kipp Chair in Professional Ethics and Philosophy of Practice, Tel-Aviv University
58 < IDC Winter 2010