Mission improbable.

• Author: Bennet, James
• Position: War against terrorism, includes related article on hijacking

By James Bennet

The Cold War is over and you're ready for bed. So you pat the dog, kiss the wife, and set the alarm for a half hour later than usual. You pull the down comforter up to your chin and wriggle slightly, enjoying the rough feel of your new flannel PJs. Idly, you picture your-self casting, the line arcing through the air-20 yards, no, 50 yards--the lure striking the water ... here he comes, big fellah, big ole bass ... the phone rings. The wife sighs. It's Brent Scowcroft, sounding more tense than usual. You listen. Softly you mutter, "Darn Eye-rainians." You get out of bed and, robed, shuffle off for the Situation Room, trailed by the officer with the launch codes.

Actually, the Iranians evidently have nothing to do with this one. Meeting you at the door, Scowcroft explains that a group of terrorists have hijacked a Lloyd Aero Boliviano 727 bound for Miami from La Paz. On board are at least 40 Americans, including several businessmen and economists who were in Bolivia for a round of debt-reduction talks. The plane is now flying a crazy, zig-zag route up the spine of South America. You ask Scowcroft about the available military options, and he starts to look really nervous. Shouldn't we alert Delta Force? you ask. Can't they handle the job? Scowcroft quickly answers yessir to the first question. Then he clears his throat and gives you the only truthful answer available to the second one, which is that....

There's no way of knowing, because Delta hasn't tried to rescue any hostages since the botched mission to Iran. But if the record of America's counterterrorist commandos through the eighties is any indication, the outlook's pretty grim. The United States has had a decade to apply the brutal lessons of Desert One to building counterterrorist forces that can supply the "swift and effective retribution" promised by Ronald Reagan-that can give the military the capacity for the quick-hit missions, ranging from rescue to retaliation, that it so clearly lacked. More than a billion dollars has gone to develop two commando units-Delta Force, which grew out of the Army, and SEAL Team Six, drawn from the Navy-and the support they require. The need for a better response to terrorism certainly hasn't disappeared: During the 1980s, terrorists killed 571 Americans around the world.

So with all that incentive, all that spending, and all that time, could we get the hostages out of Iran today? "No, no," says a former member of the Special Operations command, who, like most of his comrades, wouldn't allow his name to be printed since he continues to advise the command informally. The troops themselves, by all accounts, are excellent; the problems lie not with the men who pull the triggers but with the command that controls them and, ultimately, with the political leadership. Their Rambo rhetoric notwithstanding, first Ronald Reagan and now George Bush never pushed hard or long enough to bust through the roadblocks that cut off the Iran rescue mission at Desert One. Left to its own devices in the late eighties, the military side of the American counterterrorist effort became "a boondoggle," says a Defense Department source with several years' experience in special operations. "This whole force, the way it's configured, is a disaster." Even the more charitable assessments don't inspire much confidence. "If you put the right leadership in and give them five years, we'll have the forces we need," says Col. Charlie Beckwith, who led the troops on the ground in Iran. "And I think we've got the right leadership now." Five more years?

But you need those commandos in the ail- now. The plane, low on fuel, has requested permission to land in Caracas. Perez probably won't let American troops fight on his soil, but there's a chance he'd at least take some advice, if you could get a team there fast enough. You've gotten a clearer picture of the situation from information that's dribbled in as the pilot communicates with air-traffic controllers in Lima and Quito: There are at least four terrorists, all members of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolutionarias de Colombia (FARC). A communist guerrilla movement with close ties to Colombia's drug lords, the FARC has conducted a number of kidnappings and assassinations of Colombians and even some attacks on Americans over the past few years. Unfortunately, you don't know much more about the FARC than that. You do know that the terrorists are armed with handguns and grenades and apparently are carrying some sort of explosive, since they keep threatening to blow up the plane.

On an open line from Simon Bolivar Internationial Airport, Kenneth Skoag, the charge d'affaires, informs you that the Venezuelans have deployed their army to block all runways. The jet comes in anyway in an effort to force a landing-maybe hoping the barricades will be lifted at the last moment, as they were in Beirut during that nightmare TWA hijacking five years ago-but the pilot loses his game of chicken and pulls up at the last moment, banking to the northwest. Given his dwindling fuel supply, he must be planning to land at either Aruba or Curacao-- neither- of which has a standing military capable of dealing with the crisis. The U.S. might have to act, not just advise, after all. Stealth vs. Sikhs

"Oddly enough," says Robert Kupperman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, "we may yet yearn for a bipolar, Cold War world." Besides flooding the international arms market with sophisticated weapons, the retreat of the superpowers is creating a vacuum in which ethnic nationalist groups around the world-Tamils, Croatians, Igbos, Azerbaijanis, Sikhs-can press their demands. Many of their grievances are legitimate, but, as the Lithuanians are discovering, their desires for independence may not be fulfilled overnight. It's in that gap between a pressing, legitimate cause and its satisfaction that terrorism flourishes. As terrorist and insurgent groups like the PLO, the Shining Path in Peru, the New People's Army in the Philippines, and the Basque Fatherland and Liberty in northern Spain learned long ago, there's no better way to grab attention in the telecommunications age than with a sudden act of spectacular violence. Today, the means to do so are becoming more accessible and more deadly (see "Beyond Hijacking," p. 24).

In the United States, responsibility for dealing with international terrorism is parceled out, with some duplication, primarily among the CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the National Security Council. Of these, the Department of Defense seems least likely to play a continuous, useful role. Military force won't win the war on terrorism, just as hiring more cops alone will never put an end to urban crime. To sleep more peacefully, the world's leaders must recognize the just grievances at the core of many terrorist actions; the best commandos in the world-the British SAS and the Israeli paratroopers-haven't managed to subdue or placate Catholics in Northern Ireland or Palestinians on the West Bank.

But that doesn't mean the president should be deprived of an off-the-shelf military option, and that terrorists should be relieved of worrying about one, when Americans are threatened abroad. When a group of angry Sikhs threatens to blow up the U.S. embassy in New Delhi, you don't want to have to wait for the State Department to negotiate peace in the Punjab; you want to have a good intelligence network in place, solid logistical support, and a counter-terrorist team that's armed and ready to go. The release of American hostages by terrorist groups in Lebanon may prove that the U.S. doesn't always need good counter-terrorist forces; but the fact that the Americans were captive as long as three and a half years-and that others continue to be held hostage-suggests that those forces would be nice to have. Sure, the Czechoslovaks have stopped exporting Semtex; but they had already sent one million pounds of it to Libya, and, as Vaclav Havel pointed out, it takes only about six ounces to blow up an airplane. And while American customs agents may be able to stem the flow of nuclear triggers to Iraq, they can't shut down Iraq's nuclear weapons program or deter Saddam Hussein from using or selling the binary chemical weapons he calls "the fire."

As Sam Nunn commented in a 1986 Senate speech, since "Special Operations Forces"-including counter-terrorist commandos-are more likely to conduct missions than conventional troops, "our entire armed forces-and hence our military capacity-will be judged on whether these forces succeed or fail." After four years, that message seems finally to have made it across the Potomac to the defense department, only to be transformed into a marketing ploy. The Pentagon is still pushing to build Stealth bombers, but now with the added claim that they'd make great counter-terrorist weapons. "Right now, I don't think [Richard Cheney] has a clear idea of what the military needs of the future are, of how important terrorism and low-intensity conflict will be," says Gen. Edward "Shy" Meyer, former Army chief of staff. Indeed, the history of America's efforts to develop commando units should serve as a cautionary tale to anyone who expects the Pentagon to make good on its promises of trimming down to lean, flexible fighting forces.

It sure is sunny in Curacao, where CNN has once again beaten the U.S. military to the scene. Standing beside the plane, one of the terrorists issues the group's demands in excellent English: the release of several members of the FARC being held in Colombia; the withdrawal of all American advisers and drug interdiction officers in Colombia and Peru; the destruction of all military equipment supplied by the United States to Colombia; and the pardoning of Gen. Manuel Noriega. One of the terrorists' demands-a full tank of fuel-has evidently already been met. The young man swears to begin killing one passenger every four hours. To...