U.S. vs. Them
Opposition to American policies must not become the chief passion in global politics.
By Francis Fukuyama
Wednesday, September 11, 2002; Page A17
Wednesday, September 11, 2002; Page A16
ONE YEAR AGO the historical metaphor that crashed into public consciousness was Pearl Harbor. Like many others, we drew the comparison that day: "Not since Dec. 7, 1941, has the U.S. homeland sustained such an aggression," we wrote in this space. But we also predicted that the challenge of 9/11 would be different and in some ways more complex than that of 60 years before. A year later the nation is still feeling its way toward a proper response to its newly recognized enemies and challenges. The threat is as grave as it seemed on that sickening morning, but the complexities have proven if anything more confounding. The Bush administration has risen to the occasion in many ways; the armed services have responded with courage and skill; many Americans have shown patriotism and tolerance as well as understandable anxiety. But the government and country also, in coping with this unconventional war, have underreacted in some areas, and overreacted in others.
We know more now than we did a year ago about the people who wish to harm us. Much of the knowledge was available to us before 9/11, and was blithely ignored; much is new. From the videotaped boasting of Osama bin Laden to intelligence painstakingly collected in Hamburg, Karachi and Singapore, we now know -- we can no longer wish away the knowledge -- that a network of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists is bent on doing great damage to America and its allies. We know that this network trained thousands of people to varying levels of lethality, and that most of those remain at large. We know that al Qaeda practiced with chemical weapons and showed interest in nuclear and radiological arms. In the year since al Qaeda's greatest success, its agents have managed to kill others -- Germans touring a synagogue in Tunisia, French workers aboard a bus in Pakistan -- and may have tried to blow up a U.S. plane over the Atlantic Ocean. We know that, for al Qaeda, the war continues.
Yet one has only to look at the world of 12/7/42 to realize how much, by comparison, we do not know. One year after Pearl Harbor, American soldiers were fighting Japanese troops in New Guinea and Germans in North Africa. War had been officially declared. Its objective, as Franklin Roosevelt said in a radio address, was "clear and realistic. It is to destroy completely the military power of Germany, Italy and Japan." One year after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, this nation is still debating the identity of the enemy (all terrorism? Islamic fundamentalism? rogue regimes with weapons of mass destruction?) and the proper way to fight it. Just yesterday administration officials warned of increased danger, but they could tell Americans nothing useful about the likely location or nature of an attack. We are at war, but against no nation; we have an enemy, but it wears no uniform; we are pledged to victory, but may not recognize it when it is achieved.
To this murkiness, President Bush early on brought clarity. He declared war, when some would have summoned the police. He targeted the Taliban regime that had sheltered al Qaeda, when some counseled attacking only the perpetrators. He rallied American allies to seize terrorist bank accounts and safe houses. He appointed an adviser to shore up homeland security and then, recognizing the need for a permanent shift in priorities, decided to create a full department for that mission. He vowed that the defense of the nation would be his daily preoccupation for as long as he led.
But in a war as shadowy as this, against an enemy that attacks with such irregularity, such daily vigilance is not easy to maintain. Much of the government and many Americans are working hard to improve safety, but progress is distressingly uneven. Airports and ports remain vulnerable; private businesses resist measures to defend the nation from cyberterror. It's questionable whether many communities are more prepared for biological attack than they were a year ago.
Mr. Bush himself has contributed to the business-as-usual atmosphere. He has done so by devoting much time to political fundraising and by bringing the war into the political arena, thereby putting at risk the national cohesion needed to fight such a war. He has done so by dramatically increasing the budgets for the military and for homeland defense while refusing to find ways to pay for those increases. In defending his favored ideology of tax cuts as though the nation were not at war, as though nothing had changed, he has left himself poorly placed to counsel sacrifice and flexibility in others. And while he has embraced the notion that America must fight for a higher purpose, Mr. Bush has yet to act as though his rhetoric persuades him. It is right that the United States must be fighting for liberty and opportunity and not just against Islamic terrorists, as the president has said. But in practice he still balks at rebuilding Afghanistan, devoting sufficient money for schools in poor countries, and promoting democracy among U.S. allies.
Perhaps because those tasks are so difficult, Mr. Bush has been too zealous in some that are easier to implement -- but that are harmful in the long term to the nation's values. The administration's attraction to secrecy and its assault on civil liberties are understandable, given the enemy's stealth and murderousness. But they are dangerous. The barriers and closed roads of the capital are a physical manifestation of these trends; the contention that a president can deprive a U.S. citizen of almost all rights simply by declaring him an "enemy combatant" is the most radical. Federal judges have offered some resistance to the administration's efforts to hold people indefinitely without charge, to deport aliens without public hearings, to lower the barrier to undisclosed wiretapping and searches of citizens. Yet that job should not fall to judges alone; the administration should know to restrain itself, and Congress should play its role. If this is to be a war with no clear end, the nation must find its way to new rules that can offer protection without countenancing indefinite detention, without charge or conviction, of Americans or foreigners.
Now the president is guiding public attention to Iraq, and to the question of whether the United States should invade that country and overthrow its leader. We have for years argued on this page that Saddam Hussein is dangerous, and that in particular the United Nations' failure to enforce its own disarmament demands sets a calamitous precedent. The challenge for the administration is to offer a coherent and persuasive explanation of how the Iraq danger is connected to the 9/11 attacks and how action there would fit into the larger war against terrorism. Its arguments have ranged from a contention, unproven though plausible, that Saddam Hussein supported al Qaeda; that he could, undetected, slip chemical weapons to al Qaeda suicide bombers and thus wreak havoc through an avenue that deterrence cannot block; that his overthrow would further the cause of democracy in the Muslim world, which in turn would undermine al Qaeda; and that, even if Saddam Hussein had no part in 9/11, the attack should remind us of the folly of waiting for our sworn enemies to gather strength. We find merits in each of these arguments, and we believe the status quo in Iraq is not acceptable. But the slip-sliding rationales serve as one more reminder of the extent to which the lessons of 9/11 are in the process of being defined.
Fifty-one American service members and at least one CIA officer (the agency does not reveal its casualties) have died in the war on terrorism, in hostilities or battle-related accidents. Thousands more remain in dangerous circumstances in and near Afghanistan, chasing al Qaeda terrorists. Along with the direct victims of 9/11 and their still-grieving survivors, those service members deserve to be in our thoughts today. So does their mission. On Sept. 12, 2001, 66 percent of Americans believed that the previous day's attacks were more serious than Pearl Harbor. By last month only 37 percent believed so. Until the next attack, and as long as the fighting is distant, the percentage may continue to slip. But as a lesson of 9/11, and as a memorial to the dead, nothing can matter more than defeating the terrorists who would attack the nation and holding accountable the regimes that harbor them. "Overconfidence and complacency are among our deadliest of all enemies," Franklin Roosevelt said. That is one lesson from the Pearl Harbor days that has lost no relevance.
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