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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 11/27/17

Tomgram: Danny Sjursen, Putting the "War" in the "War on Terror"

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* The U.S. military had occupied bases in the vicinity of Saudi Arabia's holy sites of Mecca and Medina. (Well... that had indeed been the case, at least since 1990, if not earlier.)

* U.S.-imposed sanctions on Iraq had caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. (This was, in fact, a reality that even Secretary of State Madeleine Albright awkwardly acknowledged.)

* America's leaders had long favored Israeli interests to the detriment of Palestinian wellbeing or national aspirations. (A bit simplistic, but true enough. One could, in fact, stock several bookshelves with respected works substantiating bin Laden's claim on this point.)

To state the obvious, none of this faintly justified the mass murder of civilians in New York and Washington. Nonetheless, at that moment, an honest analysis of an adversary's motives would have been prudent. It might have warned us of the political landscape that bin Laden was beckoning us -- in his own bloody, apocalyptic fashion -- to enter. In addition, as journalist Stephen Glain astutely observed, "By obscuring the real motives behind the attacks, Bush relieved the U.S. government of any responsibility for them." This was a fatal error. While the overwhelming majority of Arabs and Muslims worldwide did not approve of bin Laden's methods or his theology, much of his critique of Washington's Middle Eastern policies was widely shared in the region.

Avoiding the Al-Qaeda Script

Al-Qaeda's leadership knew this perfectly well and they dangled it (and their suicidal acts) as a kind of bait, yearning for the sort of conventional U.S. military response that they knew would further inflame the Greater Middle East. Even in 1996, when journalist Abdul Bari Atwan interviewed bin Laden, the Saudi militant had expressed the desire to "bring the Americans into a fight on Muslim soil." Only then, bin Laden surmised, could al-Qaeda buttress its argument, win converts from the apathetic Muslim masses, and -- hopefully -- bankrupt the United States in the bargain.

Suppose, for a moment, that President Bush had taken the high road, a path of restraint focused on twin tracks. First, he might have addressed broadly-shared Arab grievances, pledging a more balanced approach to the question of Israel and Palestine in his still-fresh administration, tailoring Iraq's sanctions to target Saddam and his cronies rather than innocent citizens, and vowing to review the necessity of military bases so close to Mecca and Medina (or even the necessity of so many of the American bases that littered the region). He could have followed that with lethal, precise, targeted action by America's intelligence, law enforcement, and Special Operations forces to hunt down and kill or capture the men actually responsible for 9/11, al-Qaeda's leadership.

This manhunt needed to be ferocious yet measured in order to avoid the very quagmires that, 16 years later, we all know so well. Allies and adversaries would have had to be consulted and cautioned. Remember that, although al-Qaeda was disciplined and effective, on September 12, 2001, it remained diminutive in size and utterly marginal in its regional support. Dismantling its networks and bringing the true criminals of that day to justice never required remaking distant societies or occupying fragile nation-states with conventional military forces.

And keep in mind that such thinking about the situation isn't purely retrospective. Take the Nation magazine's Jonathan Schell. That October, after the invasion of Afghanistan had begun, appearing on the Charlie Rose show he called for "police work" and "commando raids," but not war. He then prophetically observed:

"I think the question doesn't revolve so much around the justification for war but about its wisdom, and I know that's the question for me. I know that, from my point of view, terrorism is chiefly a political issue and secondarily a police issue and then, only in a very minor way, can it be addressed by military means and I think that, on the contrary, the war we're fighting now will tend to worsen our problems. The question I ask myself is, at the end of the day, do you have more terrorists or do you have fewer and I think... today, right now, it looks like there are going to be more."

Of course, at the time, just about no one in this country was listening to such voices.

A prudent president might also have learned from his father. Just as George H.W. Bush had meticulously constructed a broad international coalition, including all-important Arab states, to dislodge Saddam Hussein's military from Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War, George W. Bush could have harnessed widespread international sympathy after the 9/11 attacks to blaze a judicious path. A new, broad, U.N.-backed coalition, which ought to have included several Muslim-majority nations, could have shared intelligence, rooted out jihadis (who represented a serious threat to most secular Arab regimes), and ultimately discredited al-Qaeda, dismantling its networks and bringing bin Laden himself to justice.

The Right Tools

Global sympathy -- Russian President Vladimir Putin was the first world leader to call George Bush after the attacks -- is as rare as it is fleeting. So that moment represented a singular and singularly squandered opportunity. The United States could have led a massive international effort, emphasizing law enforcement, not warfare, and including increased humanitarian aid, U.N.-sponsored peacekeeping operations, and a commitment to live America's purported values by scrupulously avoiding crimes like torture and civilian casualties. Of course, it wouldn't have been perfect -- complex operations seldom are -- but sober strategy demanded a rigorous effort.

One more imperative for the new campaign against al-Qaeda would have been garnering broad support and a legal sanction from Congress and the American people. Two weeks after 9/11, President Bush vapidly suggested instead that this country's citizens should respond by getting in airplanes again and "enjoy[ing] America's great destination spots. Get down to Disney World in Florida." Instead, he might have steeled the population for a tough fight and inspired a new era of public service. Think: John F. Kennedy. Think: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." Bush might have requested from Congress a narrow, targeted authorization for the use of military force rather than the rushed, expansive, open-ended sanction he actually demanded and received and that is still being used two administrations later to justify any acts against any group or country across the Greater Middle East and Africa.

He could have followed this with the presentation of a new National Service Act, rallying the young and incentivizing military or Peace Corps enlistment, infrastructure improvement, inner-city teaching, and various other kinds of public service. Imagine a new "Greatest Generation," pulling together in a time of crisis. This, in retrospect, was a real opportunity. What a pity that it never came to pass.

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Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and, most recently, the author of Mission Unaccomplished: Tomdispatch (more...)
 

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