War Games
by the Editors
Post
date 10.04.01 | Issue date 10.15.01 |
|
|
When President Bush declared war on terrorism
just after September 11, he promised something
very important: America would not merely punish
the terrorists; it would punish the states that
sponsor them. And so when Bush stood before
Congress two weeks ago, he issued an explicit
ultimatum to the Taliban, the medieval fanatics
who harbor Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda
terrorist network. "The Taliban must act, and
act immediately," Bush vowed in his speech.
They must "close immediately and permanently
every terrorist training camp in Afghanistan
and hand over every terrorist and every person
in their support structure" or "share in their
fate."
The Taliban, unsurprisingly, has not backed
down. But there are signs that Bush may. With
each additional invocation from a Bush surrogate,
the "war on terrorism" seems to shrink in scope
and moral purpose. "[M]ilitary force will be
one of the many tools we use to stop individuals,
groups and countries that engage in terrorism,"
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wrote in
a New York Times op-ed last Thursday,
"... [but] this is not a war against an individual,
a group, a religion or a country." In recent
days Secretary of State Colin Powell has gone
further, questioning whether "we should even
consider a large-scale war of the conventional
type." In other words, we're not really fighting
a war against states, using weapons and soldiers,
so much as a metaphorical war--a "war-like"
effort--in which military operations play a
vastly reduced, largely complementary role.
Practically and morally, this is lunacy. The
Bushies worry that a war on terrorism would
prove messy and difficult. But a "war" on terrorism
would be just as messy and difficult, and would
hold out no chance of really solving the problem.
Consider what would happen if we pursued bin
Laden and his lieutenants simply as criminals.
Because American officials have no jurisdiction
in other sovereign countries, they would be
at the mercy of foreign governments--governments
that, in the past, have proved far from helpful
in anti-terrorist efforts. The Saudis, for example,
were notoriously resistant to our attempts to
bring to justice the Khobar Towers murderers.
The government of Yemen continues to impede
our investigation into the attack on the USS
Cole. Treating September 11 as a police rather
than a military problem may actually give the
United States not more room to maneuver, but
less.
At various times, Rumsfeld has called on men
and women dressed in "bankers' pinstripes" and
"programmers' grunge" to wage the conflict against
terrorism in the world's electronic databases.
But while perfectly appropriate as a subsidiary
measure, the cyber "war" will not be effective
on its own. As Michelle Cottle explains this
week ("Eastern
Union"), if you limit Al Qaeda's cash flow,
it will simply find other ways to transfer money.
In fact, Rumsfeld's suggestion that programmers
and bankers can beat terrorism sounds like a
relic of the globalization mania of the late
1990s--a refusal to recognize that the threats
that September 11 brought home are not primarily
technological and financial, they are political
and military.
This is not to say that overthrowing the Taliban
would be easy. But it would be far more effective.
Lately Colin Powell has been implying that if
Kabul hands over bin Laden, the United States
will make peace with the regime. But that would
probably keep bin Laden's infrastructure intact.
Quite likely, some successor terrorist group
would simply take Al Qaeda's place--utilizing
the same camps with the same regime's quiet
blessing. Were the Taliban replaced with a friendly
government, however, international terrorism
would lose its primary base of operations. Al
Qaeda is almost completely reliant on the Taliban--for
freedom to operate training camps, freedom to
move across the border, and freedom to transport
arms and other supplies. With the Taliban gone,
those freedoms would disappear, and the United
States could not only strike a blow against
bin Laden, but also make sure his followers
didn't rebuild his network.
But the problem with the Bush administration's
new rhetoric is not only practical, it is moral;
it threatens to undermine America's outrage
and sense of purpose. The way Rumsfeld and Powell
have been talking, the war on terrorism sounds
like the war on drugs--a battle against a morally
ambiguous, multi-causal plague directed at no
particular nation. But the enemy today is not
ambiguous, it is not abstract, we are not complicit
in its evil, and it is not directed at "the
international community"--it is directed at
us. Which is why President Bush was right the
first time: Fight the war on terrorism with
guns. Go after both the terrorists and the regimes
that protect them. And save the metaphors for
the victory speech.
|