QandO: No Good Options

September 08, 2004

No Good Options
Posted by Dale Franks

The school massacre in Beslan has gotten me thinking about the implications of how we would respond to a similar situation here. And, the more I think about it, the gloomier I become. I don’t see any good options for dealing with such a tactic.

I've spent the majority of my adult life in the military or law enforcement, both as a career NCO in the USAF Security Police, and part-time high-risk civilian security and law enforcement. My conclusion is that we're completely unprepared for such an attack here in the US.

The central emphasis on hostage situations in American law enforcement is on negotiation. In almost every case, police hostage situations deal with criminals who do not have an ideological pre-disposition to kill their hostages. That allows us to have, as our primary objective, a conclusion to hostage situation in which both hostages and hostage takers are unharmed. Naturally, sometimes such situations go wrong, because the hostage taker is irrational. But, for the most part, police train for hostage situations that are ad hoc affairs where a criminal takes hostages on the spur of the moment. Our current training assumes that the hostage taker does not wish to kill hostages (although he may be willing to do so), and can, in most cases, be convinced after some period of time to release them and surrender. There is, therefore, no pressing reason to assault the hostage taker, and risk the lives of the hostages. The assault option is exercised only as a last resort. Additionally, the hostage taker is usually a single individual, or at most three or four people.

What we do not plan or train for are hostage situations in which a large group of hostage takers methodically plan to take large numbers of hostages with the full expectation that they will eventually kill the hostages, and die themselves. The terrorists in Beslan made it clear from the outset that they were on a suicide mission, and that puts this type of situation into an entirely different framework from the one police and high-risk security personnel are trained for.

Our police training is also not designed to cover military assaults against a large number of hostiles. It assumes the number of hostiles will be small, and that the police will have overwhelming force. The British, when faced with such situations, simply don't use the police. They call in the SAS. In the US, however, posse commitatus prevents us from using military forces for police purposes—and that's a good thing—but it means that we usually don't have the Delta Force option available, and in any event, even if we could, it would take hours for them to get to where they are needed from their base. We can, of course, train our police to the same standards that Delta Force uses, picking off terrorists with headshots, even in crowded rooms, but the further militarization of police forces is, in itself a troubling trend.

When faced with such a situation, my conclusion is that there are simply no good options for security forces to pursue. Negotiation, as a tactic, relies on the assumption that both parties are willing to negotiate in good faith. That assumption appears to be inoperable in dealing with terrorists. They are there to die, and to take as many infidels as possible with them as possible when they go. So, what, precisely, are we negotiating?

Moreover, in Belsan, while these negotiations were going on, the terrorists were raping 14 year-old schoolgirls and filming it for their own edification. Usually, negotiations stop and an assault begins immediately once a hostage taker begins harming the hostages. At that point, we assume that the assault is less dangerous to the hostages than leaving them in the hands of the hostage taker. Unfortunately, if the Beslan framework holds true, the hostage takers will have booby trapped their location to ensure that an assault cues a catastrophic outcome by killing as many hostages as possible by tripping the booby traps.

It's Hobson's choice. The terrorists aim to kill their hostages, because that is the statement they mean to make. Negotiations are, therefore, fruitless. At best, they delay the inevitable, while allowing the hostage takers to consolidate their position, and brutalize the hostages. Moreover, as Beslan shows, as time passes, it increase the chance that a booby-trap will be inadvertently tripped. On the other hand, an assault runs the risk of the terrorists simply blowing all their bombs, and going down in a flaming orgy of destruction, taking our children along with them. Also, if the terrorists expect that our policy will be to forego negotiations and assault, they won't take hostages at all. They'll just start killing children immediately in order to maximize casualties, in the expectation that as soon as security forces arrive, an assault on their position will begin.

In essence, what this means is that, the moment such a terrorist operation begins, our first operating assumption must be that the children are already dead, no matter what we do, and to plan on killing the hostage takers immediately, irrespective of the loss of life that might entail.

I doubt, however, that it will be possible to do that. No parent will willingly consent to an assault that might kill his or her child if there is any hope at all for a negotiated settlement. Trying to convince a community that they must regard their living, breathing children as already dead is simply a non-starter, no matter how objectively true that might be. That means that a period of negotiation will be mandatory, no matter how useless such negotiations will ultimately be.

Remember, the terrorists are on a suicide mission. The only possible outcome to such a negotiation is to convince the terrorists to let the hostages go and then kill themselves. But, since the whole point of terror is to terrorize, the chances of such an outcome are vanishingly small. The end result will be that the negotiations will practically ensure that the final assault will be more costly than it might otherwise have been.

The only possible solution I see is wildly impractical, and that is to have a number of highly trained shooters stationed at every school, in order to combat the terrorists before any hostage situation can be effectively begun.

Over the weekend, terrorists in Afghanistan blew up a boy's school—a madrassah, as it happens—that had begun offering after-school programs in English and mathematics. Apparently, such distractions from Islamic studies cannot be allowed, so the terrorists had no compunction against blowing up the children of fellow Moslems, studying at a madrassah, by detonating a bomb while the school was in session.

Apparently, our children are now targets, and we have no good options available for protecting them.

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Comments

1. Require teachers to carry firearms. Maybe even the older students.

2. Negotiations must focus on convincing the terrorists that they will go to hell if they kill anyone. (bring in a muslim scholar to convince them).

Posted by: Super Fly at September 8, 2004 12:12 PM

What about some sort of debilitation tactic instead? Inserting some sort of sleep agent into the ventilation system or the 'pain-ray' developed by the military?

I know (from unfortunate personal experience) that a practice grenades, the cardboard kind used in Marine Combat Training with all of the boom and none of the shrapnel, will knock the sense out of you if tossed in an enclosed area (i.e. my foxhole). I can only imagine what a concussion grenade would do.

What is your thought on nonlethal tactics in this situation? The kids could be hurt, but more than likely not killed, and you'd possibly keep the terrorists alive which would put a damper on their plans for martyrdom.

Posted by: Sharp as a Marble at September 8, 2004 12:17 PM

Gas is a good option, but the Beslan terrorists supposedly had dogs (early predictor) and gas masks.

Any gas we used would have to be better than the gas the Russians used in the theatre seige, which ended up killing a lot of people. And it might not be fast acting enough to keep bombs from being triggered. Still, you would think that any successful assult would have to include some form of gas.

Rescue operations need to be lauched almost immediately and no later than the first night.

Posted by: Super Fly at September 8, 2004 12:28 PM

Which is why school security- horribly lax now- needs to be beefed up.
How many doors are there? Are they locked? What security personnell are on duty? What training do they have? What is the procedure for accepting deliveries?

Parents had better get to hassling their local schoolboards with these sorts of questions....

Posted by: shark at September 8, 2004 12:28 PM

I know (from unfortunate personal experience) that a practice grenades, the cardboard kind used in Marine Combat Training with all of the boom and none of the shrapnel, will knock the sense out of you if tossed in an enclosed area (i.e. my foxhole).

Heh. I learned that lesson, too.

Posted by: Dale Franks at September 8, 2004 12:35 PM

I reject the idea that the Posse Comitatus Act prevents the US Army from responding to a foriegn terrorist operation on US soil. The Act did not prevent the US Army from fighting the Sioux, Nez Perce, Apache and others on US soil, sometimes within organized states.
I'd also question the idea that the situation would have to be resolved more quickly than Delta Force operatives could fly in from Ft. Bragg. The Beslan children were held for days.
In which case, the response would be federal not local and the local community would not call the shots.

Posted by: Chris B at September 8, 2004 12:35 PM

As a parent of two small children, I'll go on the record right now and say that if Islamic terrorists take my children hostage, my first preference is for Delta Force to launch an immediate rescue operation. I say this understanding the high probability of my children being injured or even dying in the assault. But I feel this is better than allowing them to be tortured for days on end and being killed by the terrorists. Negotiations will always fail. The terrorists want to die, not to negotiate.

Posted by: Super Fly at September 8, 2004 12:37 PM

While Dale correctly points out that we, by law, cannot use the military in an law enforcement issue, I think an argument could be made that an occurrance such as Beslan could be considered an act of war and not a law enforcement issue.

Another option is a delta type force at the federal level of law enforcement. A much improved and probably much larger HRT (hostage rescue team). The case study to which the entire enterprise might be aimed is a successful intervention in a Beslan style situation. Of course it isn't only schools which could be targeted.

Shopping malls, sporting events, large gatherings of any type (how about a stockholder's meeting for Halliburton?). The possibilities are endless and each situation would of course, be different. Its hard to imagine police forces or security forces trained up to the level to thwart this anywhere in the US at the moment.

Posted by: McQ at September 8, 2004 12:41 PM

Support CCW.

Get a gun.

Know how to use it.

Slowly, the country will have to realize the lesson of September 11 applies to places outside of planes. Just as people say a plane will never again be hijacked because everyone will presume a suicide mission, so the country needs to learn that the best defense against any attack of this hostage-taking type is an armed, resistant population.

Posted by: Brian J. at September 8, 2004 01:02 PM

Note that there's a couple of big problems with modern urban schools.

1) They've become "Forts". Limited entrances/exits with walls/fences/buildings that don't have low external windows.

2) The entrances are 'defended' by metal detectors. This isn't a real defense, it is just to shake down the kids. But each such entrance could be held by two guys for a long time.

3) In some states, a gun on school property is a felony. Period. So _everyone_ is disarmed.

So... not only is it an easily defended fort. It is an _un_defended fort.

Posted by: Al at September 8, 2004 01:07 PM

Hence - pre-emption, tie them down in their homeland(s) as best we can, prevent them from getting here as best we can.

The alternative is we go the route the lefties are claiming we're going - a police state. And even that won't stop these guys, because by "Western Civ" standards, they are not sane.

Posted by: looker at September 8, 2004 01:18 PM

The only practical response to a similar attack is to keep some highly highly-trained military unit(s) on a short notice alert. I'm sure we can find some way around posse commutatis. There are just too many tempting targets for us to all defend them using highly-trained rent-a-cops making $5/hour.

Allowing teachers to carry guns aint about to happen. Besides, most teachers would refuse to carry, train with or use them.

Posted by: qoolalex at September 8, 2004 02:03 PM

You know, Archie Bunker hit it right on the head. Give all the passengers guns, there won't be any trouble :)

Posted by: shark at September 8, 2004 04:56 PM

There are just too many tempting targets for us to all defend them using highly-trained rent-a-cops making $5/hour.

Highly trained rent-a-cops make a lot more than $5 per hour. Trust me.

Posted by: Dale Franks at September 8, 2004 05:23 PM

To be pedantic, Hobson's choice is no choice at all. (Such as the choice of color on your Model T Ford. Black, black, or black.)

You might perhaps mean a Hobbesian choice, along the lines of "nasty and brutish" either way, or simply a set of distasteful (to put it lightly) choices.

Posted by: Sigivald at September 8, 2004 06:35 PM

I agree with the armed citizen approach.
This short essay is a good explanation.

Here is a good reference on Posse Comitatus.

And finally, this former Seal has some good thoughts on the difference between military and civilian interventions.

Posted by: Oscar at September 8, 2004 07:02 PM

I'm reminded of the Israeli raid on the hijacked airplane at Entebbe. Back then that was the gutsiest move of the decade. And today, the Israeli people continue to live with terrorism every minute. But, they go about their daily business. They are completely aware, they have taken all precautions, and yet the terror still comes. I think we can take lessons from those who live with fear of that unknown on a daily basis. We Americans are kindergardeners when it comes to protecting ourselves against terrorists. It's not our fault. But it will be our fault if we don't utilize all of our resources to fight. And that means asking for help and using the experience and education in fighting terror that our allies have to offer us. We don't have to know it all. And it's OK to have our hand held once in a blue moon. Lord knows we've held a lot of hands in this world. Out here.

Posted by: jeri at September 8, 2004 07:18 PM

Sorry to use a hackneyed phrase but this really does represent a paradigm shift. Just as the events of 9/11 all but eliminated the possibility of an old style hijacking the lesson of Beslan is do not get entrapped in a slow motion slaughter.

A general rule of life on the street is 'never let yourself be transported.' What this means is that if a mugger sticks a gun in your ribs and says 'give me your purse' you give him your purse. When he sticks a gun in your ribs and says 'get in the trunk' well, you might as well get shot where you stand because once you get in the trunk you are gonna be dead and alot worse before it's over.

It may be a bit much to expect school children to break into active resistance to such threats but adults must be prepared to do so under such provocation. To surrender all initiative is to allow precisely the type of events that occured at Beslan; the identification, isolation and elimination of anyone capable of internal resistance (adult males); the development of barricades and defensible strong points; the wiring and activation of explosives - inluding the use of deadman switches. All of which only serve to worsen the carnage. Not to mention the publicity victory such a standoff entails.

It may be the Devil's math but hypothetically speaking how many would have died in Beslan had everyone simply attempted to flee at the first gunshot?

Posted by: ThomasD at September 9, 2004 04:35 PM