Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Needed: New game plans

Friday, Sept. 21, 2001 | 9:12 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.

MY FRIENDS AND I certainly aren't experts on terrorism but if we need any advice all we have to do is turn to local and national television programs. The past 10 days we have been inundated with terrorism experts from colleges, both small and large, and think tanks from over the nation. The first three or four weren't bad but after a few days it appeared they were becoming more authoritative and confident in their pronouncements. What they had learned about terrorism in just a few days was amazing. Strangely I didn't feel any more knowledgeable after listening to them.

Several years ago, following an international threat of terrorism, a Washington college think tank expert on the subject became a talking head on television. Several people I had worked with in a federal disaster agency called me and asked: Isn't that so-and-so we worked with in D.C.? Sure enough, there was our old buddy, a full-blown expert on terrorism offering his wisdom for the consumption of millions of viewers around the world. Those of us who knew him were entertained to see him wearing the mantle he now claimed. In reality, he was a very bright academic type but wouldn't know a real terrorist if he saw one placing a bomb under his car.

Since the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks the people of television, radio and print have done an outstanding job relaying information to the public. I watched every channel at some time during these days and was pleased with the flow of information.

During the past many years I have written about the use of terrorism as a tool of war by dissident groups. Seeing the results of bombing by terrorists in foreign countries was disturbing. Despite these small tastes of terrorism, there was no way for me to even imagine what could or would take place last week. The plot and its precise execution had never become part of my thoughts. I can't even recall a nightmare that entertained such a plot. Wisely, not one of the experts I heard on television was brash enough to proclaim they had predicted such a deadly strike.

Now, despite the fact that most of us don't have the experience and imagination to predict what will be the next target for terrorists, we still must move forward. We have watched terrorists attack ocean cruise ships, railroad trains, airplanes and streets with car bombs. So we know that modern transportation facilities are favorite targets and in some cases also the delivery system for terror. So what part of modern transportation systems will be the next target? Will it be the systems that deliver our gas, electricity or water? How about city transit systems or large trucks moving nuclear waste, chemicals and explosives to sites around our nation?

Past history shows that our country has prepared to fight its next war by using what it learned from a past war. It didn't take our military forces long to learn that World War II tactics had to be different than the trench warfare of WWI. Then, five years later, we learned that much we learned during WWII didn't apply to Korea. Actually the last two years of the Korean War saw the necessity to revert to the WWI-style trench warfare. Then along came Vietnam and entirely new tactics were needed.

In our new war against terrorism we can't afford to become so involved with the past that we don't use our imaginations and new techniques to prevent future strikes. We have to have bright people with field experiences who are given the freedom to think, plan and execute preventive strikes. Our people must be flexible enough to think like the terrorists and use their own tools against them before they strike. When all is said and done they won't be passing themselves off on television as terrorism experts but will be busy planning for the next strike.