Oxford Student: 20th May 2004: This War on Terror

Oxford Student: 20th May 2004: This War on Terror

Now, I find this article by some student at Oxford to be just plain naive. Its not surprising that it is, since I had the same sort of outlook when I was a student. His basic argument seems to be that if we would just politically do whatever the Islamic world desired, no one would attack us. He says that you can't win a war on terror. But apparently the right series of political moves in the Middle East, such as solving the Palestinian/Israeli conflict will. Gee, what could be simpler than that. The political issues of the Middle East are deep and serious. If the conflict over Israel could be so easily dealt with, it would have been. You're are not going to get the parties to that conflict to reach a political settlement. That conflict is not going to end, and really, thats biblical. So this idea that if we would just do the right political things terrorism would be defeated is as untenable as military action.

And frankly, I think if you kill the terrorist, that is a pretty effective means of stopping terrorism. But I don't think the average person understands the basics of this conflict. Part of the problem in every online debate on the war and something that runs through nearly all the dialogue we see in the media is the question and issue of "why did we invade Iraq?". Many people do not believe the WMD threat was real, that it was a cover for going in to get their oil. I think that concept makes no sense simply because before all this went down, we bought the oil. And we'll be buying the oil in the future. Its not about oil.

Thats not to say that there is not a serious level of ongoing profiteering taking place with this war. There most certainly is. But that does not mean that the rationale for doing it is not there. Unfortunately, the Bush administration has done a strikingly inept job of articulating (or not) the strategy behind invading Iraq.

Part of the problem is that neither our president or our media have done one whit to educate us about the motivations of the principal terrorist enemy, Al-Queda. All you get is "they hate freedom" and "they want to spread an idealogy of hatred". Thats not good enough to help us understand this enemy. Whats going on with this war makes more sense if you have some analysis of the antagonists. So here's one to mull over.

What is Al-Queda's goal? The establishment of a pan islamic state across the entire muslim world.

What is their strategy to achieve this? Al-Queda must bring down the current governments in the middle east and arab world to achieve their goal. These governments are undemocratic, often corrupt and despotic governments iin many islamic countries. Al-Queda's problem is that they cannot overthrow these governments militarily, many of whom are supported by the U.S. However, these governments are not popular and none are democracies. The political will of their populations is supressed, they can't vote the leaders out. Al-Queda wants to cause the "Arab street" to rise up against their governments. 911 was an attempt to do that, by accomplishing a major attack on the US. They hoped that attack would provoke a massive and indiscriminate attack on the muslim world by the U.S. . An, attack that would cause the muslim world to unite against the U.S., overthrow their governments and begin the move towards a pan islamic state.

911 accomplished provoking the US into a very strong response (first Afghanistan, then Iraq), but it was not indiscriminate, nor did the arab street respond as Al-Queda expected, nor have the governments of the region been weakened to the point of collapse, indeed several have changed their behavior.

Why we invaded Iraq: After 911, the president is looking at three major scenarios to respond to the terrorist threat.

1. Homeland security - batten down the hatches, shore up all the defenses and internal security and hope to deflect, detect or deter another attack before it happens. The problem however is that the U.S. is a target rich environment and a free country. If the US only plays defense against this enemy, it will get hit again by a 911 level attack. The terrorists take a long view, they are smart and patient. Its only a matter of time (remember that the trade center was attacked multiple times over a decade). As Condoleeza Rice said before the 911 commission "We have to get it right 100% of the time; the terrorists only have to get it right once". So this can't be the only approach.

2. Global covert war: CIA, NSA hit teams, busboys with silencers, Hellfire missles mounted on robot planes, the full employment of offensive intelligence assets to nail the terrorists one at a time. The problem here is that there are a large number of them, spread out over many countries, many of whom have governments hostile to the U.S. so you wont get cooperation from their intelligence or law enforcement services. You have to do it, but this can't be the major offensive part of a strategy. Its too slow, the U.S. will still get hit.

3. Take the war to the terrorists: The president initiated 1 and 2 above, but this third way is the major thrust of the strategy. People are right to say that WMD was not the primary reason for invading Iraq. The real reason was to convert Iraq into a forward base of operations for the war on terror.

Consider the problem the president is faced with afte 911. Well financed and trained terrrorist cells in multiple countries, many of which have hostile governments to the U.S. In the wake of 911 as the Bush administration got a handle on the issues, they put other countries, friend and foe alike, on notice, essentially saying "look, you have a terrorist problem on your soil that threatens us, a threat we cannot tolerate. You need to fix that problem. If you can't or won't, we'll fix it for you".

Well, in the case of many of the countries in the middle east, like Syria, Iran, and others that are hostile to us, even Saudi Arabia where the terrorist threat is being harbored, supported or tolerated, this is not a credible a threat when all of our military might is sitting across the ocean unmobilized. But that threat is much more credible for Iran and Syria, Saudi Arabi and others when we have upwards of 130,000 crack troops sitting on their borders, backed up with the deadliest weapons available, and a U.S. government with the will to use them.

Iraq is now a forward base of operations for military and intelligence operations against the terrorist networks in their own backyards. The administration could not have gone to the UN and gotten a resolution supporting that result. WMD was their best argument to win UN approval. To be sure, the administration had a belief that they would find WMD, beliefs to some degree fed by the likes of Ahmed Chalabi (now out of favor) But WMD was not the real purpose for going into Iraq.

This strategy has been effective. Bin Laden is on the run and largely confined to the mountains of Pakistan. Terrorist cells around the world have been disrupted and broken up. There has not been another major attack on American soil, though assets overseas are still at risk. Al-Queda's capabilities have been degraded. They are not down by any stretch, but America is playing the resource card to full effect. Chasing down their money flows still has a long way to go because the vast majority of the banking and finacial systems of the arab world are not part of the international finance system, and therefore largely untouchable.

But thats the strategy. Iraq is a staging area for attacking the terror networks both directly and indirectly by pressuring the countries that harbor them or allow them to use their territory, and by getting countries to change their behavior, hand over terrorists and cooperate to suppress them. Our diplomatic pressure is much more credible when the full might of our military is sitting on their doorsteps. Thats the point of Iraq, as well as complementary to the establisment of military bases in the former soviet republics such as Georgia and others.

What you see in the news makes much more sense if you approach it from this stand point.