Husson audience hears terrorism speech

BANGOR – A professor from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point told an audience at Husson College on Friday that it would take not only military resources but also the United States’ great thinkers to win the war on terrorism.

“We must work hard to understand the enemy, we must leverage all of the governmental and academic resources against it,” said Col. Michael Meese, head of the Department of Social Sciences at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. “This is going to be a long struggle, but it’s one that if we bring all of our national assets to bear, we can be successful.”

Meese has traveled to Iraq three times in the past five years and assisted in the recent assessment, recommendations and testimony by Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, about the situation there.

Meese is the son of Edwin Meese III, who was President Reagan’s chief of staff and served as U.S. attorney general from 1985 to 1988.

Meese was invited by Husson and the University of Maine’s William S. Cohen Center for International Policy and Commerce to give a talk titled “Terrorism: A World View.” He spoke to an audience of about 75 students, veterans and residents.

In his speech, Meese challenged the notions that the war in Iraq is unlike any other war and that old lessons and tactics do not apply. He compared the current situation to the Cold War and likened al-Qaida to the Nazi party in Germany in the 1920s.

“This is an ideological, ruthless and timeless kind of war. [Former President] Eisenhower said that of the Cold War, but that also could have been President Bush describing al-Qaida,” Meese said. “Like the Cold War, it is also, and perhaps more importantly, intellectual and ideological. It is not possible to capture, kill or incarcerate ideas.”

Meese noted that these were his personal views and not necessarily those of the U.S. government.

While Meese and his students study, analyze and fight against the “core” terrorist enemies, he said it is important for everyone in the U.S. to realize that the violent, extreme jihadis are a very small subset of the worldwide Muslim population.

Meese described how he and his students obtain numerous terrorist communications from the Internet and are engaged in a sort of cyberwarfare to combat al-Qaida’s online recruitment efforts. He showed a brief television news clip of his students meeting with a peaceful Muslim community in New Jersey, explaining the importance of giving students a well-rounded view of the religion’s followers.

aravana@bangordailynews.net

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