critiquing 'war on terrorism'

[Koranteng_Ofosu-Amaah@lotus.com]

There is nothing like having a relatively stuffy British Don, in this case
military historian, Sir Michael Howard, delivering choice critiques of
policy... Somehow US critics can't seem to put it together in the same way
that the Brits do ...

You may have seen this speech quoted in Slate and other places... I
particularly like this sound-bite apropos the current attack on
Afghanistan: 'trying to eradicate cancer cells with a blow-torch'...

obligatory citation
<http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/dynamic/news/story.html?in_review_id=470295&in_review_text_id=424158>

"When in the immediate aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center
the American Secretary of State Colin Powell declared that America was 'at
war', he made a very natural but a terrible and irrevocable error. Leaders
of the Administration have been trying to put it right ever since.

"What Colin Powell said made sense if one uses the term 'war' in the sense
of war against crime or against drug-trafficking: that is, the mobilisation
of all available resources against a dangerous anti-social activity; one
that can never be entirely eliminated but can be reduced to, and kept at, a
level that does not threaten social stability.

"The British in their time have fought many such 'wars'; in Palestine, in
Ireland, in Cyprus and in Malaya, to mention only a few. But we never
called them 'wars': we called them 'emergencies'. This meant that the
police and intelligence services were provided with exceptional powers, and
were reinforced where necessary by the armed forces, but all continued to
operate within a peacetime framework of civil authority. If force had to be
used, it was at a minimal level and so far as possible did not interrupt
the normal tenor of civil life. The object was to isolate the terrorists
from the rest of the community, and to cut them off from external sources
of supply. They were not dignified with the status of belligerents: they
were criminals, to be regarded as such by the general public and treated as
such by the authorities.

"To 'declare war' on terrorists, or even more illiterately, on 'terrorism'
is at once to accord them a status and dignity that they seek and which
they do not deserve. It confers on them a kind of legitimacy. Do they
qualify as 'belligerents' ? If so, should they not receive the protection
of the laws of war? This was something that Irish terrorists always
demanded, and was quite properly refused. But their demands helped to muddy
the waters, and were given wide credence among their supporters in the
United States.

"But to use, or rather to misuse the term 'war' is not simply a matter of
legality, or pedantic semantics. It has deeper and more dangerous
consequences. To declare that one is 'at war' is immediately to create a
war psychosis that may be totally counter-productive for the objective that
we seek. It will arouse an immediate expectation, and demand, for
spectacular military action against some easily identifiable adversary,
preferably a hostile state; action leading to decisive results.

"The use of force is no longer seen as a last resort, to be avoided if
humanly possible, but as the first, and the sooner it is used the better.
The press demands immediate stories of derring-do, filling their pages with
pictures of weapons, ingenious graphics, and contributions from service
officers long, and probably deservedly, retired. Any suggestion that the
best strategy is not to use military force at all, but more subtle if less
heroic means of destroying the adversary are dismissed as 'appeasement' by
ministers whose knowledge of history is about on a par with their skill at
political management.

"Figures on the Right, seeing themselves cheated of what the Germans used
to call a frisch, frohliche Krieg, a short, jolly war in Afghanistan,
demand one against a more satisfying adversary, Iraq; which is rather like
the drunk who lost his watch in a dark alley but looked for it under a lamp
post because there was more light there. As for their counterparts on the
Left, the very word 'war' brings them out on the streets to protest as a
matter of principle. The qualities needed in a serious campaign against
terrorists - secrecy, intelligence, political sagacity, quiet ruthlessness,
covert actions that remain covert, above all infinite patience - all these
are forgotten or overriden in a media-stoked frenzy for immediate results,
and nagging complaints if they do not get them.

"All this is what we have been witnessing over the past three or four
weeks.

"Could it have been avoided ? Certainly, rather than what President Bush so
unfortunately termed 'a crusade against evil', that is, a military campaign
conducted by an alliance dominated by the United States, many people would
have preferred a police operation conducted under the auspices of the
United Nations on behalf of the international community as a whole, against
an criminal conspiracy; whose members should be hunted down and brought
before an international court, where they would receive a fair trial and,
if found guilty, awarded an appropriate sentence. In an ideal world that is
no doubt what would have happened.

"But we do not live in an ideal world. The destruction of the twin towers
and the massacre of several thousand innocent New York office-workers was
not seen in the United States as a crime against 'the international
community' to be appropriately dealt with by the United Nations; a body for
which Americans have little respect when they have heard of it at all. For
them it was an outrage against the people of America, one far surpassing in
infamy even the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Such an insult to their
honor was not to be dealt with by a long and meticulous police
investigation conducted by international authorities, culminating in an
even longer court case in some foreign capital, with sentences that would
then no doubt be suspended to allow for further appeals. It cried for
immediate and spectacular vengeance to be inflicted by their own armed
forces .

"And who can blame them ? In their position we would have felt exactly the
same. The courage and wisdom of President Bush in resisting the call for a
strategy of vendetta has been admirable, but the pressure is still there,
both within and beyond the Administration. It is a demand that can be
satisfied only by military action - if possible rapid and decisive military
action. There must be catharsis: the blood of five thousand innocent
civilians demands it.

"Again, President Bush deserves enormous credit for his attempt to
implement the alternative paradigm. He has abjured unilateral action. He
has sought, and received, a United Nations mandate. He has built up an
amazingly wide-ranging coalition that truly does embody 'the international
community' so far as such an entity exists.

"Within a matter of days, almost, the United States has turned its back on
the unilateralism and isolationism towards which it seemed to be steering,
and resumed its former position as leader of a world community far more
extensive than the so-called 'free world' of the old Cold War. Almost
equally important, the President and his colleagues have done their best to
explain to the American people that this will be a war unlike any other,
and they must adjust their expectations accordingly. But it is still a war.
The 'w' word has been used, and now cannot be withdrawn; and its use has
brought inevitable and irresistible pressure to use military force as soon,
and as decisively as possible.

"Now a struggle against terrorism, as we have discovered over the past
century and not least in Northern Ireland, is unlike a war against drugs or
a war against crime in one vital respect. It is fundamentally a 'battle for
hearts and minds'; and it is worth remembering that that phrase was first
coined in the context of the most successful campaign of the kind that the
British Armed Forces have ever fought - the Malayan Emergency in the 1950s
(a campaign incidentally that it took some fifteen years to bring to an
end). Without hearts and minds one cannot obtain intelligence, and without
intelligence terrorists can never be defeated.

"There is not much of a constituency for criminals or drug-traffickers, and
in a campaign against them the government can be reasonably certain that
the mass of the public will be on its side. But as we all know, one man's
terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Terrorists can be successfully
destroyed only if public opinion, both at home and abroad, supports the
authorities in regarding them as criminals rather than heroes.

"In the intricate game of skill played between terrorists and the
authorities, as we discovered in both Palestine and Ireland, the terrorists
have already won an important battle if they can provoke the authorities
into using overt armed force against them. They will then be in a win-win
situation. Either they will escape to fight another day, or they will be
defeated and celebrated as martyrs. In the process of fighting them a lot
of innocent civilians will certainly be hurt, which will further erode the
moral authority of the government.

"Who here will ever forget Black Sunday in Northern Ireland , when a few
salvos of small-arms fire by the British Army gave the IRA a propaganda
victory from which the British government was never to recover ? And if so
much harm can be done by rifle fire, what is one to say about bombing ? I
can only suggest that it is like trying to eradicate cancer cells with a
blow-torch. Whatever its military justification, the bombing of
Afghanistan, with the inevitable 'collateral damage' it causes, will
gradually whittle away the immense moral ascendancy that we enjoyed as a
result of the bombing of the World Trade Center.

"I hate having to say this, but in six months time for much of the world
that atrocity will be, if not forgotten, then remembered only as history;
while every fresh picture on television of a hospital hit , or children
crippled by land-mines, or refugees driven from their homes by western
military action, will strengthen the hatred of our adversaries, recruit the
ranks of the terrorists and sow fresh doubts in the minds of our
supporters.

"I have little doubt that the campaign in Afghanistan was undertaken only
on the best available political and military advice, in full realization of
its military difficulties and political dangers, and in the sincere belief
that there was no alternative. It was, as the Americans so nicely put it,
an AOS situation: 'All Options Stink'. But in compelling us to undertake it
at all, the terrorists had taken the first and all-important trick.

"I can also understand the military reasoning that drives the campaign. It
is based on the political assumption that the terrorist network must be
destroyed as quickly as possible before it can do any more damage. It
further assumes that the network is master-minded by a single evil genius,
Osmana bin Laden, whose elimination will demoralise if not destroy his
organisation. Bin Laden operates out of a country whose rulers refuse to
yield him up to the forces of international justice. Those rulers must be
compelled to change their minds. The quickest way to break their will is by
aerial bombardment, especially since a physical invasion of their territory
presents such huge if not insoluble logistical problems. Given these
assumptions, what alternative did we have ?


"But the best reasoning, and the most flawless logic, is of little value if
it starts from false assumptions. I have no doubt that voices were raised
both in Washington and in Whitehall questioning the need and pointing out
the dangers of immediate military action; but if they were, they were at
once drowned out by the thunderous political imperative: Something Must be
Done. The same voices no doubt also questioned the wisdom, if not the
accuracy, of identifying bin Laden as the central and indispensable a
figure in the terrorist network; demonising him for some people, but for
others giving him the heroic status enjoyed by 'freedom-fighters'
throughout the ages.

"We are now in a horrible dilemma. If we 'bring him to justice' and put him
on trial we will provide him with a platform for global propaganda. If we
assassinate him - perhaps 'shot while trying to escape' - he will be a
martyr. If he escapes he will be a Robin Hood. He can't lose. And even if
he is eliminated, it is hard to believe that a global network that
apparently consisting of people as intelligent and well-educated as they
are dedicated and ruthless will not continue to function effectively until
they are traced and dug out by patient and long-term operations of police
and intelligence forces, whose activities will not, and certainly should
not, hit the headlines. Such a process that , as the Chief of the Defence
Staff rightly pointed out, may well take decades.

"Now that the operation has begun it must be pressed to a successful
conclusion; successful enough for us to be able to disengage with a
reasonable amount of honour and for the benefit of the tabloid headlines to
claim 'victory' (though the very demand for 'victory' and the
sub-Churchillian rhetoric that accompanies it shows how profoundly press
and politicians still misunderstand the nature of the problem that
confronts us.) Only after we have done that will it be possible to continue
with the real struggle that I have described above; one in which there will
be no spectacular battles, and no clear victory.

"Sir Michael Boyce's analogy with the Cold War is valuable in another
respect. Not only did it go on for a very long time: it had to be kept
cold. There was a constant danger that it would be inadvertently toppled
into a hot nuclear war, which everyone would catastrophically lose. The
danger of nuclear war, at least on a global scale, has now thank God ebbed,
if only for the moment, but it has been replaced by another, and one no
less alarming; the likelihood of an on-going and continuous confrontation
of cultures, that will not only divide the world but shatter the internal
cohesion of our increasingly multi-cultural societies. And the longer the
overt war continues against 'terrorism', in Afghanistan or anywhere else,
the greater is the danger of that happening.

"There is no reason to suppose that Osmana bin Laden enjoys any more
sympathy in the Islamic world than , say, Ian Paisley does in that of
Christendom. He is a phenomenon which has cropped up several times in our
history - a charismatic religious leader fanatically hostile to the West
leading a cult that has sometimes gripped an entire nation. There was the
Mahdi in the Sudan in the late nineteenth century, and the so-called 'Mad
Mullah' in Somaliland in the early twentieth. Admittedly they presented
purely local problems, although a substantial proportion of the British
Army had to be mobilised to deal with the Mahdi and his followers.

"The difference today is that such leaders can recruit followers from all
over the world, and can strike back anywhere in the world They are neither
representative of Islam nor approved by Islam, but the roots of their
appeal lies in a peculiarly Islamic predicament that has only intensified
over the last half of the twentieth century : the challenge to Islamic
culture and values posed by the secular and materialistic culture of the
West, and their inability to come to terms with it.

"This is a vast subject on which I have few qualifications to speak, but
which we must understand if we are to have any hope, not so much of
'winning' the new 'Cold War', but of preventing it from becoming hot.

"In retrospect, it is quite astonishing how little we have understood, or
empathised with, the huge crisis that has faced that vast and populous
section of the world stretching from the Mahgreb through the Middle East
and central Asia into South and South-East Asia and beyond to the
Philippines: overpopulated, underdeveloped, being dragged headlong by the
West into the post-modern age before they have come to terms with
modernity. This is not a problem of poverty as against wealth, and I am
afraid that it is symptomatic of our western materialism to suppose that it
is. It is the far more profound and intractable confrontation between a
theistic, land-based and traditional culture, in places little different
from the Europe of the Middle Ages, and the secular material values of the
Enlightenment .

"I would like to think that , thanks to our imperial experience, the
British understand these problems - or we certainly ought to - better than
many others. So, perhaps even more so, do our neighbours the French. But
for most Americans it must be said that Islam remains one vast terra
incognita - and one, like all such blank areas on medieval maps, inhabited
very largely by dragons.

"This is the region where we have to wage the struggle for hearts and minds
and win it if the struggle against terrorism is to succeed. The front line
in the struggle is not Afghanistan. It is in the Islamic states where
modernising governments are threatened by a traditionalist backlash:
Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, to name only the most obvious. And as we know very
well, the front line also runs through our own streets. For these people
the events of September 11th were terrible, but they happened a long way
away and in another world. Those whose sufferings as a result of western
air raids or of Israeli incursions are nightly depicted on television are
people, however geographically distant, with whom they can easily identify.

"That is why prolongation of the war is likely to be so disastrous. Even
more disastrous would be its extension, as American opinion seems
increasingly to demand, in a 'Long March' through other 'rogue states'
beginning with Iraq, in order to eradicate terrorism for good and all so
that the world can live at peace. I can think of no policy more likely, not
only to indefinitely prolong the war, but to ensure that we can never win
it.

"I understand that this afternoon, perhaps at this very moment, the Prime
Minister is making a speech exhorting the British People to keep their
nerve. It is no less important that we should keep our heads.