The Error
in the War on Terror
December
08 , 2006
After five years of the “War
on Terror” what has Bush really accomplished?
Is the world a safer and better place than it
was on September 12, 2001? Is the “Global
War on Terror” (GWOT for short) a success?
The answer is clearly no, with one major exception.
The reasons for the failure though are not due
to insufficient force or determination, but rather
to errors of thinking and strategy that have led
to useless and counterproductive detours.
The first error is the very name of the endeavor
itself. Terrorism (defined as deliberate violence
against civilians for political gains, usually
carried out by sub-national groups) is a tactic,
not a thing in itself. To declare war on terrorism
after 9/11 makes as much sense as to declare war
on aircraft carriers after Pearl Harbor. Terrorism
is not a thing in itself to make war on, it is
a tactic used by the weak against the strong.
In fact, the Bush administration never took this
rhetoric of GWOT seriously. It really was an assault
initially on Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and then
became a term used to justify anti-Muslim policies
in general, whether in the US itself, or in the
Middle East.
The main success in the GWOT was the rapid dismantling
of the Al-Qaeda infrastructure in Afghanistan,
and the overthrow of the Afghan Taliban regime.
But since then, the US has bungled the Afghan
situation. It failed to fully deploy enough military
power to secure the country without needing the
cooperation of the warlords, a tactic that seriously
undermined the credibility of the new government.
This has allowed the Taliban to regroup and resume
a war in the southern provinces. Secondly, the
US did not get Osama Bin Laden or Mullah Omar
when they had the chance, and they both remain
at large five years after 9/11. Finally, despite
spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the
GWOT, the US could not spare the small sums needed
to really reconstruct Afghanistan, and in particular
to buy up and destroy the opium crop.
A strategy of buying up the Afghan opium crop
would deprive warlords and Taliban supporters
of one of their main funding sources, and would
substantially reduce the supply of narcotics in
Europe, America, and even Pakistan, which has
half a million heroin addicts sustained by cheap
heroin from Afghanistan.
The GWOT, if it was ever going to succeed, would
need the active support and cooperation of Muslim
peoples and countries. But rather than trying
to build an anti-Al Qaeda coalition among Muslims,
the US invaded Iraq, which had nothing to do with
Al-Qaeda. Now, three years later, Al-Qaeda supporters
are well-entrenched in Western Sunni Iraq, and
a recent Pentagon report stated that it was impossible
to dislodge them at this point. The attack on
Iraq also radicalized Muslims worldwide, and the
bombers of London’s subway claimed to have
been motivated in part by their anger over the
Iraq war.
The desire to pursue this GWOT also distracted
the US from the real fundamental problem of the
Middle East, which is the occupation and subjugation
of the Palestinians. If Israel were to make peace
with the Palestinians and Syrians, primarily by
returning occupied land, it would substantially
improve the US position in the Middle East. Syria
would no longer need to be allied with Iran and
support insurgents in Iraq, while real peace with
Lebanon would allow the Lebanese to fully unify
their state and Hezbollah would no longer have
a justification for keeping its weapons and militia.
Iran would no longer have any reason to threaten
Israel in the name of the Palestinians, as the
Palestinians would be at peace with their Israeli
neighbor. Iran could then be persuaded to back
off its nuclear ambitions in exchange for security
guarantees.
The final error of the GWOT resulted in a massive
erosion of civil liberties in the US itself, and
loss of America’s moral authority as the
President authorized illegal wiretaps, vastly
expanded no-fly lists with no logical basis for
challenge, torture, and the claimed right to declare
anyone an “enemy combatant” who could
then be jailed indefinitely without legal recourse.
This could even happen to US citizens. The basic
flaw in all this was a deep misunderstanding of
the American Muslim community.
In general a community can consist of loyal citizens,
radicalized elements, and active terrorists. Bush’s
administration treated the American Muslim community
after 9/11 as if it consisted mostly of radicalized
elements within which were some active terrorists.
In order to ferret out these terrorists they conducted
massive interview campaigns, sweeping arrests,
and instituted a series of policies to harass
and investigate the Muslim community. But despite
a whole lot of looking, they never found anything.
No one has been convicted of a real charge of
terrorism in the American Muslim community since
9/11, despite thousands of arrests and a whole
series of high profile prosecutions that have
ended in failure. The real truth is that the American
Muslim community was and is mostly loyal citizens,
with a small radicalized element. The proper strategy
after 9/11 should have been to treat us as partners
in the GWOT, rather than as targets.
By doing so, Bush would have better achieved the
real goal of avoiding alienating and radicalizing
the community. That had to happen first, before
the community could actually produce homegrown
terrorists. The Muslim community should not have
been treated with the suspicion and repression
that it was subjected to. That approach was actually
not needed given how nothing ever real turned
up, and it was counterproductive to the long-term
goal of avoiding the creation of pro-Al Qaeda
groups in the US itself. Comments can reach me
at Nali@socal.rr.com.
