WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 (UPI) -- Western governments and Israel have made broad mistakes combating al-Qaida, a U.S. expert said Wednesday.
Alexis Debat a senior terrorism analyst for ABC News, told a meeting at the Nixon Center, a Washington think tank that the victory of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, in the recent Palestinian elections had exposed major shortcomings in Western strategy towards Islamist extremist groups.
"The recent results of the Palestinian legislative elections provided a few clues to that answer [of victory] exposing the collective failure of some Western governments to address the terrorist phenomenon as a political phenomenon and placing too much emphasis on the violence and the military dimension of the phenomenon," Debat said.
He said the failure of Western governments to address Hamas and al-Qaida as political organizations was "at the core of the answer to that dilemma of victory."
Western governments had also erred in focusing too much on the tools and violent methods of terrorist groups and not on their goals, Debat said. "They have generally placed too much confidence in the military option to combat what in a sense is an insurgency. An army can win every battle and still loose the war," he said.
Debat said the phenomenon of terrorism might be inevitable and uncontrollable. Therefore the U.S. government might do better to try and control the effects of terrorism at home. "It is not terrorism, if we are not terrorized," he said.
