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Middle East adviser says threat can only be diminished By PAUL FATTIG Ridding the world of Osama bin Laden will not end the terrorist threat to the United States, says Middle East expert David Mack. "You can't simply solve the problem by lopping off the head of terrorism," said Mack, 61, a 1958 graduate of Crater High School. "You can diminish it and weaken it but you can never get rid of it. You can't retaliate just militarily. "What's required here is a very broad-based kind of campaign of which the military is just one component, and probably not the most important component," he added. The son of Mildred and the late Gilbert Mack of Gold Hill, Mack knows of what he speaks: He is vice president of the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C. The mission of the renowned nonprofit organization, established in 1946, is to educate Americans who deal with the Middle East. Fluent in Arabic as well as French, Mack retired from the State Department in 1995 after serving as ambassador to the United Arab Emirates. The Harvard graduate also has served as deputy assistant secretary of state for the Near East. In a telephone interview Monday, Mack did not fault President Bush for the current military strikes. Rather, he laid out a strategy he believes is necessary to greatly reduce the threat of terrorism to the United States. "What needs to be done is an international policy involving governments the world over," he said. "They need to cooperate completely with intelligence exchanges, financial cooperation to clamp down on money laundering by terrorists. They need to deny safe harbor to those practicing this kind of terrorism." Mack, who has traveled extensively throughout the Middle East for four decades, applauded the steps taken by the Bush administration to form such a coalition. "They have handled the crisis quite well," he said. "As President Bush has quite correctly stated, this is not a confrontation with Islam. Instead, we are dealing with the universal problem of terrorism." But he hopes Bush will refrain from again using the word "crusade" to describe the conflict. "Crusade has a nice connotation to Western ears, but it has a very evil connotation to those on the receiving end," he said. Noting there is a chance the United States could be bogged down in a drawn-out conflict, he reiterated that Americans must use every available tool to reduce the terrorist threat. "As somebody who has spent some 40 years of my life dealing with this part of the world, I know that we will have to deal with some people we don't enjoy dealing with, regimes that are not the most attractive to us," he said, referring to governments that don't share democratic ideals with the West. "But they are in better positions than more genteel allies to come up information we can use," he said. Americans should also make a point of understanding why there is animosity toward the United States from extremists in the Middle East, he said. "The United States is identified with a range of things they object to, starting with the very intrusive Western culture," he said. "From McDonald's to Madonna, it has a powerful attraction to young people in this age of globalization." That cultural intrusion is perceived as a threat to those the West perceives as terrorists, he said. "Right now, I think the best we can do is reduce the terrorist threat to manageable proportions," he said. "We should never fool ourselves into thinking we can ever achieve a victory." Yet the threat of terrorism can be reduced to a minimal level, he said. "This is has to be more than just a military conflict," he said. "You need to have someone willing to use military force, but it would be a mistake to think it can be dealt with quickly. "This is going to be much more like the cold war with national mobilization and global cooperation," he added. "We have to use to use all the tools available to us." Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 776-4496 or e-mail him at [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.