…as we one-by-one take out the places where terrorists train, hide, obtain weapons, and have government support systems, they will have less support, and be less influential, not more.
Let’s not pretend that there’s a one-by-one progression here. There isn’t. Terrorists were working in Afghanistan, openly. They can’t do that any more, though they may very well be doing it quietly. There’s no evidence that Iraq has been a major or even significant focal point for such activities, and whatever base terrorists had there can easily be shifted elsewhere. They don’t need major infrastructure or facilities. They don’t need state support either. They do need money, but they can get that without overt government cooperation.
We can't pretend that the "one-by-one" idea will apply beyond Iraq, either. If we take over Iraq we will face the same situation we face now. Our enemies are entrenched in countries where invasion is simply not an option: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, to name a few. The leaders of these countries may or may not be fully devoted to rooting this presence out; in most cases they simply lack the capacity to do that. The terrorists have operating cells in our country and inside other liberal democracies, cells that can hurt us at any time. That's our situation now, and that will still be our situation after we invade Iraq. We'll just have a lot more people in an exposed position, and a lot more enemies.
If we're going "one-by-one", what's the next one? Any suggestions?
People who are motivated to fly aircraft into buildings will understand very little besides raw power.
They understand that they and their support came from Saudi Arabia, but our raw power is being directed against Iraq. They understand that much of Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Iran are safer havens for them and their kind than Iraq, but that none of those havens are under attack.
As we demonstrate we can reach them anywhere, at anytime, they will begin to fragment and decay.
I wish we would demonstrate that. Going into Iraq, alas, will do nothing of the kind. We need a lot more targeted attacks on individual terrorists – and, more important, on the people providing the money, logistic support, and weapons – and less open war. A lot more of this activity needs to take place in the US and Europe, where the terrorist cells that actually have the capacity to strike us are located.
The appeasement policies of the past, where we talked tough, but did little besides bomb pill factories in the desert, created the environment in which terrorists networks grew more embolden, more adventuresome, and more likely to strike.
One of the great illusions of this fight is that if we get tough, the terrorists will fade away. They won’t. They fought the Russians for a decade, and the Russians were not exactly bleeding heart types: they were nastier than we will ever be. Osama and Co. hung in there and waited them out. They are not a bunch of yellow bellied chickens, much though we’d like to believe they are. Getting tough won't win this fight, not by itself. We need to be smarter, not tougher.
America intends to work with our allies around the globe incinerating these murderers, the next batch of recruits will be reluctant to join, out of fear of becoming the next burning match.
Given the attitude we’ve been displaying toward opinions elsewhere on the globe, we may not have very many allies willing to work with us.
Attacking Afghanistan and virtually destroying the Taliban network of terrorists cells there, while simultaneously instilling a form of representative government. Has made us more safe as a nation, not less. The same will be true if we oust Saddam and end his reign of terror.
I agree on Afghanistan. I don’t think Iraq is an analogous case at all.
We should watch the flow of money from these clandestine centers very closely. We should watch the transfer of weapons systems closely, and we should watch where they're training the next batch of assassins.
Much of the money, probably most, does not come from government sources and moves totally outside government networks. The assassins are as likely to be training in Luxembourg as in Baghdad. Yes, we need to find them and we need to neutralize them. But we need to do it with the rapier, not the sledgehammer.
The terrorists are using the time-honored terrorist method: strike, then disperse. We are responding in the time-honored way, proven to be ineffective: lash out with military force, at a surrogate if we can’t find the terrorists. The terrorists will slip away, laughing, while we flail away with armaments and strategies that are magnificently designed to destroy rival armies, but are less than ideal for deployment against an enemy with no necessarily territorial base. The result: we do little or no damage to the terrorists, but the enemies we make in the course of our wielding of blunt instruments become allies of the terrorists.
Bush was right to paint a clear moral picture to our enemies and friends. "You are either with us or against us in this fight against terrorists". They are the enemy to freedom, progress, and civilization.
The question of whether one is for or against terrorism is one that can be framed in moral terms. The question of whether or not the strategy that the US is employing to fight terrorism is the best one available is another matter altogether. The two should not be confused. Being against any given policy of the Bush administration does not mean that one is for terrorism, much though the administration would like us to believe that this is the case. |
