Steller: McSally takes lead on ISIS, security threats

At first the San Bernardino case seemed to be just another of the sadly routine mass shootings in America.

When it turned out to be inspired by the Islamic State group, it was clear Rep. Martha McSally’s time had come.

McSally, a first-term Republican from Tucson, had already been talking about ISIS, as it’s known, and criticizing the Obama administration’s efforts against it. After the Paris attacks, on Nov. 21, she delivered the Republican response to the president’s weekly radio address.

“We’re calling on the administration to step up, provide global leadership, and put together a coherent and aggressive strategy to defeat ISIS,” McSally said that day.

She had already been promoting the report of a congressional task force she was on, examining the threat of foreign fighters and domestic extremists. The Islamist motive of the San Bernardino attacks has only driven her profile higher.

Yet I’ve viewed her rise cautiously, because in my mind we have too often turned to military (or in McSally’s case, retired military) leaders for answers to multifaceted foreign policy and social questions. Being trained in military violence, they often seem to favor more military violence as a solution.

We need only look to Iraq and Libya to see how well that has worked.

After President Obama spelled out a continued deliberate approach to terrorism and ISIS in a speech Sunday night, McSally and other Republicans said he was not being assertive or comprehensive enough. That made me worry they’re overstating the threat and aiming for more aggressive military action in Syria that will entangle us in a hopeless conflict.

On Friday I was able to catch up with McSally by telephone as she caught a plane back home from D.C. And the truth is, though she does want a broader military campaign against the Islamic State, McSally’s analysis and prescription is more complex than that. Here are excerpts of our conversation:

Q: What did you mean when you called ISIS a “generational threat”?

A: I think the threat of Islamic extremism is a generational threat. And those of us who have been involved in national security for many years have seen a growing and metastasizing threat prior to ISIS. That includes al-Qaida and its affiliate organizations in Africa and the Middle East.

So, this is not a new thing. We’ve been seeing the threat grow. ISIS is new in many ways in that it’s taken over territory, it’s declared a caliphate, it’s using social media in a very sophisticated way.

It’s not going to be defeated quickly. We need a multifaceted strategy to defeat them. But I do believe it’s going to be generational.

Q: What do you think the government needs to do more of in terms of countering radicalization and violent extremism?

A: Within Homeland Security there wasn’t even a person whose primary job in a permanent position was to address this issue. He was detailed over from another office. We elevated it to an assistant secretary position. What we have is not enough manpower addressing this.

To give you a couple of examples of what we think we could do better — countering the messaging. We could be doing more to use what they call ‘jaded jihadists,’ people who have actually traveled from America or Western countries over there. They’ve made it out. Some of them are behind bars right now.

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It’s not all it was made out to be for some of those who are traveling because they think it’s romantic or adventurous. The realities of harsh treatment and a harsh way of life and what they’re subjected to needs to be exploited in order to get that message out to others who might be vulnerable to being radicalized.

Q: How can bombing Syria more lead to a safer United States or a solution?

A: It’s not so much about bombing Syria more. It’s about using airpower in a more effective way in order to tip the momentum and take away some of the strengths and advantages they have.

Something worse than not engaging is engaging in an ineffective way, so that it looks like they’re taking on American air power and winning. That adds to their brand.

It’s pretty safe to say ISIS has been getting $1-3 million dollars a day from their black-market oil. That’s the major source of revenue for them, and we knew this from the very beginning. It was just within the last few weeks we started hitting the oil trucks that are leaving the refinery and heading to the black market.

Q: Isn’t the Obama administration just trying to be careful not to make matters worse — not killing civilians or not in great numbers?

A: We had a two-hour classified discussion and briefing this week from the Pentagon on the command and control rules of engagement. I’ll tell you it’s just heightened my concern that we have a very convoluted process. It seems like we’re stuck in a mindset of counterinsurgency or counterterrorism strikes that we’ve done in the last decade or so.

I think the most compassionate thing we can do is effectively use military power when we need to in order to take away their ability to terrorize the region and export their terror abroad. We need to keep focusing on shifting this momentum so we can free the civilians from the terror of this organization.

Q: Why does terrorism that looks like a typical mass shooting get a much more active response than the day-to-day violence that we see? They’re very similar in their effects but only the one, terrorism, gets a big response.

A: They’re similar in their effects for those whose lives were lost, for sure. If your loved one has been murdered, you don’t necessarily care what the motive is. When we have individual cases of people who may have a mental-health (problem), those seem to be individual in their motives.

The larger concern is the homegrown radicalization, the homegrown extremist who isn’t on anybody’s radar. That could happen anywhere.

We used to think Washington, D.C., and New York — those are sort of classic targets for organizations like al-Qaida. What we’ve seen with Chattanooga, Tennessee, the guys who drove from Phoenix to Garland, Texas — this can really happen anywhere, and it’s all connected to this inspiration of jihadism and radical Islam that is catching fire.

Q: How do you respond to these acts wisely without alarming people unduly?

A: I think it’s really important for us to be measured and factual in getting information out to people without stoking fears. Vigilance is an important tightrope to walk. We don’t want to stick our heads in the sand, but we don’t want everybody so afraid that they don’t want to live their lives.

I’m trying to speak in a very measured way that’s based on the facts and remind everybody that if you see something, say something. If something doesn’t look right, if you take a second look and it still doesn’t look right, let somebody know.