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Gary Hart, former senator and presidential candidate, headlined a four-member panel on terrorism

Gary Hart, former senator and presidential candidate, addressed a crowd of students, faculty and diplomats Tuesday as part of a conference called “Global Terror Threat: Are We Winning or Losing?” put on by UCLA’s School of Public Affairs.

Hart was part of a four-member panel that also included Brian Jenkins, senior adviser to the president of the RAND Corporation, as well as public policy graduate Professor Peter Katona. Serving as moderator was Michael Intriligator, who along with Katona, leads a graduate seminar about global terrorism.

Tuesday’s conference was the last in a series of events throughout spring quarter designed to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the School of Public Affairs.

Hart caught the attention of fourth-year political science student Joe Holmes. The senior saw a flier on campus for the event featuring the former politician and decided to attend.

“I really think he’s bright and quite provocative,” Holmes said.

The conference centered around two questions: Is America winning or losing the global war on terrorism? And, have the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq made America safer?

Hart, an outspoken critic of the Bush administration, was first to speak.

“We must distinguish between the war on terrorism and the war on tyranny,” Hart said. He added that if the United States pursues the former, Americans can expect “a very long century ahead of us.” Iraq’s role in the U.S.-led war on terrorism must be clarified, he said.

He said the war in Iraq has relegated the war on terrorism secondary. Hart also said the Iraq war is not principally over oil, although “I can’t say oil had nothing to do with it.”

Hart also talked about the changing nature of modern warfare engendered by “non-state actors,” such as terrorists, where battles are fought sporadically. The modern battle is analogous to those fought in Mogadishu, Somalia and the more recent battle over Fallujah in Iraq, he said.

Public policy graduate student Renee Moilanen attended the conference to gain a better understanding of America’s role in the war on terrorism. “With everything that’s going on in the world today, I just want to understand why we’re in the situation we are,” she said.

Panel member Brian Jenkins said the existence of an ideological divide between the way the West views war and the way he described “jihadists” view war. “We view war as a finite undertaking. They see warfare as a perpetual condition.” He noted that terrorists do not operate on a timetable and see a struggle against the United States as a battle between their spiritual superiority against America’s material superiority.

Pakistani Vice Council Ahmad Farooq attended the conference and said that in order to defeat terrorism, the source of the tactic must be addressed. “We must address the root causes,” he said, in order to take away the terrorists’ motivation. He added that unresolved political conflicts in the Muslim world, such as those in Palestine and Kashmir, might serve as motivation for potential terrorists.