Six Years On

America's progress report in the War on Terrorism

M. Harrison, for the editors

On this sixth anniversary of the horrific attacks of September 11th, we pause to mark our nation's progress.

Sadly, this great nation finds itself still deeply embroiled in the Global War on Terror(ism), with varying perspectives on its success, but little victorious end in sight. As more American troops have died in the occupation of Iraq than American citizens died in 9/11, and a staggering percentage of the "liberated" Iraqi people already want the troops to leave, many Americans are questioning the wisdom of President Bush's current war strategy, and rightly so.

The first gross failure of Mr. Bush's War on Terrorism lies with the initial fact that terrorism is not a state or even non-state entity against which one can effectively declare "war". Rather, terrorism is a highly evolved criminal tactic, based on exploiting the greatest weaknesses of the globalized modern world (explosives, infrastructure attacks, hijacking, etc.). Terrorists are not a standing army that could be fought militarily; individual terrorists were "engaged in ordinary occupations, shocking friends and family when they struck as terrorists," in the great William F. Buckley's words. As such, the phenomenon is only effectively combatted as a global crime.

America's existing law enforcement and intelligence services had the necessary cumulative (but unshared) information to thwart the 9/11 attacks and prosecute the plotters as criminals. But instead of giving these agencies the tools to effectively fight subsequent terrorist threats, the Bush Administration has created entirely new separate agencies, bringing the grand total to 16 (!), while still leaving American intelligence in a overall state of perpetual ignorance. This state of ignorance resulted in disgustingly flawed prewar intelligence, which led us, inter alia, to invade Iraq in order to disarm a nonexistent WMD program. However, the solution to our unfortunate quandary is quite simple. America should concentrate on effectively responding to the terrorist threat like the global criminal threat that it is, specifically by a) facilitating effective communication among our existing separate intelligence agencies, preferably by merging most of them; b) effectively communicating with foreign intelligence and law enforcement, such as MI6, especially through the use of human intelligence (HUMINT); and c) preparing effective emergency responses in the event of large scale chemical, biological, infrastructural, informational, or other unconventional attacks.

Mr. Bush's misguided terrorism policy has also ignored other immediate dangers facing America. Despite Mr. Bush's single-minded desire to "fight terrorists over there" to keep them from "attacking us here", domestic terrorism has now become the greatest threat facing our nation, according to a recent NYPD report. These homegrown terrorists, like John Walker Lindh, Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber and Seung Hui-Cho, are not the product of backward Arab regimes lacking Democracy, but are products of the greatest Democracy in the world, the United States of America. Worst of all, these terrorists know our infrastructure, people, and they fit right in as legal American citizens. Stopping this threat requires effective domestic defense with aggressive law enforcement and dynamic intelligence, whatever the nationality, religion, or ideological zeal of the individual terrorist.

Yet instead of treating terrorism like the dangerously unique 21st century criminal tactic that it is, the President uses the failed 20th century tactic of foreign military occupation to try to keep America safe. Unfortunately, despite our military's valiant efforts, the policy has proven dangerously ineffective.

The worst part of Mr. Bush's reckless foreign policy, however, aside from it being manifestly useless in preventing domestic threats, is that it only serves to fuel the Islamists' global jihad. In Osama bin Laden's 1996 declaration of war against the United States, he stated his casus belli directly as the American 'occupation' of the Middle East, specifically our military aid to Israel, the first Gulf War invasion, and presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia, claiming that the effort to expel the 'invaders' and 'crusaders' is the most important duty of all Muslims.

Notably, despite the patriotic fantasies of R. Giuliani and M. Romney, bin Laden did not declare war on American Freedom. Rather, bin Laden unequivocally declared war on American intervention in the Middle East. In fact, his only mention of American Freedom was to encourage Muslim women to boycott the products of American Capitalism. (Terror Alert Red: U.S. Intelligence has 'credible reports' of bin Laden planning boycotts of landmark American retailers.) Furthermore, Bin Laden's only stated political objections in his declaration of war were aimed at the Arab states, who he viewed as apostate in their abandonment of sharia law. (Nowhere did bin Laden indict the First Amendment, Constitution, or any other political feature of America, except its foreign policy.) It's time American politicians stop creating imaginary enemies with imaginary grievances, and recognize that jihadists hate us because of our interventionist military policy.

If bin Laden's declaration of war isn't enough to understand the reason 'why they want to kill us', Khalid Sheik Muhammad, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, had an earlier plot that would have made it glaringly apparent. The plan was for Muhammad to personally hijack one of at least five planes, land at an undisclosed location, kill the adult men on board, proceed to deliver an extemporaneous stump speech indicting American foreign policy in the Middle East, release the women and children to tell his story, and then kill himself.

Such a disturbing plot reminds us of yet another feature of terrorism that Mr. Bush fails to recognize. As bin Laden warned us in his declaration of war, "These youths love death like you love life." The War on Terrorism thus won't be won simply by killing every terrorist, obviously because every terrorist already wants to die -- preferably in a crowded city from the biotoxin-filled explosives strapped to his chest. Victory is thus keeping them alive and bringing them to justice.

But instead of recognizing these crucial distinctions and facts about our 21st century terrorist threat, America's leaders choose to escalate the military occupation of foreign lands, only fueling the terrorist jihad against the American 'crusaders', while allowing domestic terrorism to loom an even larger threat. This, while our domestic law enforcement and intelligence services remain hobbled by bureaucracy, inefficiency and ignorance.

Is there any wonder why we're not winning?

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed