Americans need to define terrorism from their heart on a feeling level. That is the only way we will ever have a chance to really comprehend what it means. After that, the discussion can begin.
That’s necessary, but it’s not enough. Working from feelings, especially when we only look at part of the picture, leads to predictable responses and makes us easy to manipulate.
What we’ve seen in Russia is a perfect example. We see evil done on an unprecedented scale, with the deliberate targeting of children creating an event nearly as atrocious as 9/11. If we fall into the rut of the good/evil paradigm, though, we might easily assume that those who fight evil are good, and deserve our support. That’s a dangerous assumption, because in the real world, those who fight evil aren’t always good. It’s quite common to find evil fighting evil, with the innocents trying, often unsuccessfully, to stay out of the way.
Russians have been fighting Chechens on and off since 1754, with the Russians most often the aggressors. There has been no shortage of atrocities directed at Chechens. That doesn’t justify the acts of the Chechen militants, which are utterly unjustifiable. It does mean that we need to think twice before taking sides.
The hand of AQ appears to be very much present in the sequence of attacks in Russia. We know very well that AQ is a group that operates with purpose and with a long term strategy. In addition to feeling, we have to ask ourselves what the purpose is.
There’s a pretty obvious answer to that question. They want the Russians to go back into Chechnya, ideally with American backing. That will leave lots of dead Chechens, and lots of gory footage for Al-Jazeera: the Russian military is not exactly subtle. Lots of echoes of Afghanistan, and a perfect chance for the Islamist factions in Chechnya to gain supremacy. Lots of dead Russians too: the Russian military hasn’t been able to manage lasting suppression of Chechen resistance in 250 years of effort, and they aren’t exactly on top of their game these days. It would almost certainly lead to persistent terrorist attacks in Russia, which the Russians are poorly equipped to prevent or manage.
It probably won’t take a great deal of that before Russians start asking themselves what the hell they wanted Chechnya for in the first place. Some are asking that question already. It’s not even a bad question: they’ve never been able to hold Chechnya, the Chechens aren’t and clearly don’t want to be Russian, and there are few good reasons for anyone to want such a nest of rattlesnakes as part of their nation.
Where that leads is Putin going out, and a leader who favors dumping Chechnya coming in. Not actually an unreasonable move, but it would leave AQ with a nice new Islamic Republic and a perfect base for moves on the former Soviet republics in the area. Several of these are ripe for the picking.
This scenario is by no means impossible. Putin is probably more sophisticated than Bush (not saying much), but he’s built his career on a tough guy image, and that makes him easy to manipulate. If the current round of attacks doesn’t do the trick, expect more of the same. With enough provocation, Putin is quite likely to fall into the trap and go for a major military move on Chechnya. AQ figures they can beat the Russians in a war of attrition there, and they are probably right.
A 9/11-scale attack on Russia may be more likely than such an attack on the US. I’m sure AQ would like to hit us again, and will if they can, but they don’t need to: we’ve already taken the bait and walked into the swamp. Suckering the Russians into the other end of the same swamp is by no means an unreasonable next move for the enemy.
None of this means, of course, that we should not strike at our enemies. We can and we must. We have to calculate our strikes, though, to avoid the traps our enemies set for us.
The US campaign in Afganistan was a perfect example of how this can be done. There is no doubt in my mind that Osama expected and wanted us to move on Afghanistan. The way we did it came as a complete and ugly surprise for him, though. He expected a ponderous Russian-style move that would give his guerrillas and terrorists room to maneuver and an abundance of static targets. What he got was
something completely different.
When that campaign ended, we really were winning the war on terror. We had removed a major enemy base with a minimal commitment of force. We were not bogged down: the bulk of our force was ready, mobile, and prepared to strike anywhere in the world. Cooperative intel and police efforts were paying off with important arrests. The American people were united behind the war, all but the wildest fringe, and we had the makings of a functional worldwide alliance. Not a universal alliance – no such thing has ever existed – but it was the appeasers, not us, who were isolated and on the back foot. We were floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee, and we were winning.
Then ideology, hubris, and weak leadership took over, and we sacrificed it all on the altar of Iraq. Having denied AQ the advantage with a brilliantly unconventional campaign in Afghanistan, we turned around and handed it back to them. Now they have new recruits pouring in and new leaders emerging across the Islamic world. They can attack us with their uneducated footsoldiers, saving the well-trained hardcore ideologues for attacks deep in enemy territory. They have an abundance of accessible soft targets, and they are exploiting them. We’re stuck there and we can’t get out. Of ten divisions in a high state of readiness, we have two available for commitment. Iran is openly accelerating their nuclear program, and N. Korea has flipped us the finger and done what we said we wouldn’t tolerate. Our populace is bitterly divided, and the only allies we have left are with us against the will of their own people. Our neck is on the block, and we have nobody but ourselves to blame for it, because we put it there.
Fortunately for us, our enemy is weak, and even with our neck on the block they can’t deliver a killing blow. They can only harry us, drag us into a war of attrition, try to break our will, try to force us to retreat behind our own border and concede the field to them. If we keep going the way we’re going, they may succeed. It’s still possible for us to turn it around, but that will mean fighting with our heads instead of our balls. I see little evidence to suggest that this is happening. |
