David Brooks, New York Times columnist and Bush loyalist, is attracting atttention for this column, which seems on the face of it to break from Bush orthodoxy on the "war on terrorism": War of Ideology New York Times 07/24/04.
Brooks reads the 9/11 Commission report to say, "We're not in the middle of a war on terror ... We're not facing an axis of evil. Instead, we are in the midst of an ideological conflict."
We are facing, the report notes, a loose confederation of people who believe in a perverted stream of Islam that stretches from Ibn Taimaya to Sayyid Qutb. Terrorism is just the means they use to win converts to their cause. ...
When you see that our enemies are primarily an intellectual movement, not a terrorist army, you see why they are in no hurry. With their extensive indoctrination infrastructure of madrassas and mosques, they're still building strength, laying the groundwork for decades of struggle. Their time horizon can be totally different from our own.
Brooks concludes that what we need now is "our own idological offensive."
The commissioners don't say it, but the implication is clear. We've had an investigation into our intelligence failures; we now need a commission to analyze our intellectual failures. Simply put, the unapologetic defenders of America often lack the expertise they need. And scholars who really know the Islamic world are often blind to its pathologies. They are so obsessed with the sins of the West, they are incapable of grappling with threats to the West.
A conversion or a marketing ploy?
Now, on the face of it, this seems to be a refreshing change from the bull-headed arrogance that is characteristic of so many fans of the War on Terrorism who blindly cheered the Iraq War, even though that war increases the danger of anti-American terrorism, rather than reducing it. Including David Brooks.
Which is enough in itself to make us wonder about this sudden conversion. Have war fans like David Brooks seen the error of their ways in cheering a militarized approach to the war on terrorism, which led them to cheer even the Iraq War that was counter-productive to the fight against terrorism? Or is this just a campaign-time shift of marketing to go with Bush's latest flip-flop from "war president" to "peace president" who promises four years of peace?
Time will tell. Laura Rozen is giving Brooks the benefit of the doubt for the moment, calling his argument "compelling." Of course, she's not so confident as Brooks that the Bush Dynasty can handle evem an ideological against the jihadists.
I firmly believe the battle of ideas is as or more important than the military campaign, but that this administration is uniquely ill equipped to wage it. Why? For one, because Bush himself is uniquely uninterested in ideas, in thinking itself, in trying to understand or engage with people who do not see the world as he does. ... Two, Bush's national security team, the Vulcans, share the preeminent fixation on the Pentagon and military force as the vehicle for US foreign policy. America's alienation from and isolation among its allies has never been greater in my lifetime -- a consequence of the administration's striking disdain for and incompetence at persuading allies by diplomatic or other non military means. ... Three, the people who are genuinely interested in the war of ideas in the Bush camp, the neoconservatives, are so deeply discredited . . .
What the report says
When I looked at the strategy section of the 9/11 Commission report, which begins on page 378 of this *.pdf document, I must admit I was underwhelmed (the chapter is called "What To Do? A Global Strategy"). Here are some excerpts, with my first take on them:
Now threats can emerge quickly. An organization like al Qaeda, headquartered in a country on the other side of the earth, in a region so poort that electricity or telephones were scarce, could nonetheless scheme to wield weapons of unprecedented destructive power in the largest cities of the United States.
This kind of rhetoric can easily be appled to any situation that the Bush administration decides to highlight withalarming claims. It reminds me a lot, actually of this:
Before September the 11th, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein could be contained. But chemical agents, lethal viruses and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained. Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans -- this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known. (Bush's 2003 State of the Union address; my emphasis)
Not that the one general statement I quoted from the Commission report is wrong. It's just that there's a lot of fairly general statements in that strategy section that can be used in different ways. More Commission excerpts:
In this sense, 9/11 has taught us that terrorism against American interests “over there” should be regarded just as we regard terrorism against America "over here.” In this same sense, the American homeland is the planet.
In light of the Bush Doctrine of preventive war, the notion that the United States should consider the entire planet our "homeland" can't be comforting to most other nations in the world.
But the enemy is not just “terrorism,” some generic evil. This vagueness blurs thestrategy.The catastrophic threat at this moment in history is more specific
It is the threat posed by Islamist terrorism—especially the al Qaeda net-work, its affiliates, and its ideology.
So far, so good.
As we mentioned in chapter 2, Usama Bin Ladin and other Islamist terror-ist leaders draw on a long tradition of extreme intolerance within one stream of Islam (a minority tradition), from at least Ibn Taimiyyah, through the founders of Wahhabism, through the Muslim Brotherhood, to Sayyid Qutb.
That stream is motivated by religion and does not distinguish politics from religion, thus distorting both.It is further fed by grievances stressed by Bin Ladin and widely felt throughout the Muslim world—against the U.S. military presence in the Middle East, policies perceived as anti-Arab and anti-Muslim, and support of Israel. Bin Ladin and Islamist terrorists mean exactly what they say: to them America is the font of all evil, the "head of the snake,” and it must be converted or destroyed.
At this point, I began to wonder. It's become a truism among American conservatives - at least those who don't feel tied to the Saudi monarchy due to oil issues - that Wahhabism is the source of the West's problems in the Islamic world. The part I just quoted seems to tiptoe around that (it is the product of a commission, after all!), but it doesn't shed much light on the subject.
The conservative, Wahhabi brand of Islam defended by the Saudi monarchy has contributed to the Bin Laden brand of jihadism. But the present-day jihadist ideology emerged in its modern form from the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Probably neither Democrats or Republicans on the Commission wanted to take a hard look at what the bipartisan strategy of supporting the mujahadeen "freedom fighters" in Afghanistan has really cost the US and the world.
It is not a position with which Americans can bargain or negotiate. With it there is no common ground—not even respect for life—on which to begin a dialogue. It can only be destroyed or utterly isolated. … (my emphasis)
It's telling that Brooks quotes that last phrase in his column. It's one thing to say that we have a strategy of not negotiating in particular situations with particualar means, e.g., trading arms for hostages as rightwing hero Oliver North did in what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal.
But this is Bush's Good vs. Evil rhetoric on a somewhat more limited scale. And it sure looks like an open door for rightwing political and Christian-fundamentalist fanaticism to me. Not to mention justification for S&M torture rooms for prisoners accused of being "terrorists."
Should the United States say that we would never negotiate with jihadists in Kashmir in order to help ease tensions between the two nuclear enemies Pakistan and India? This "no common ground ... destroyed or utterly isolated" business sounds all macho and action-movie and so forth. How realistic it is as a policy, or as an ideological vantage point, is more than questionable.
Our enemy is twofold: al Qaeda, a stateless network of terrorists that struck us on 9/11; and a radical ideological movement in the Islamic world, inspired in part by al Qaeda, which has spawned terrorist groups and violence across the globe. The first enemy is weakened, but continues to pose a grave threat.
The second enemy is gathering, and will menace Americans and American interests long after Usama Bin Ladin and his cohorts are killed or captured. Thus our strategy must match our means to two ends: dismantling the al Qaeda net-work and prevailing in the longer term over the ideology that gives rise to Islamist terrorism. …
I can see why a David Brooks might want to endorse this kind of rhetoric, even without a road-to-Damascus conversion experience. Itoffers an open-ended ideological crusade, "decades of struggle," in Brooks' words. And while it is true that the US has a long-term interest in opposing jihadist ideology, what is the extent of our national interest in opposing jihadist movements that restrict themselves to, say, the Phillipines, or Indonesia?
I suspect that Brooks and other fans of what we can still realistically call the military-industrial complex see this as an opening for a new Cold War, which is what the Republicans have tried to create out of this situation. They want an ideology to be dominant in which us Good Americans are forever menaced by Evil Foreigners, and we have to constantly maintain worldwide military commitments and enormous military budgets - the US currently accounts about half the military expenditures of the entire world - to keep us safe.
What should Americans expect from their government in the struggle against Islamist terrorism? The goals seem unlimited: Defeat terrorism anywhere in the world. But Americans have also been told to expect the worst: An attack is probably coming; it may be terrible.
With such benchmarks, the justifications for action and spending seem lim-itless. Goals are good.Yet effective public policies also need concrete objectives. Agencies need to be able to measure success. …
That's true. And this can legitimately be taken as a criticism of the Bush administration's cyncial policy of using "homeland alerts" or whatever they're called to remind people that diligent President Bush is protecting us against the Evil Ones.
Vague goals match an amorphous picture of the enemy. Al Qaeda and its affiliates are popularly described as being all over the world, adaptable, resilient, needing little higher-level organization, and capable of anything.The American people are thus given the picture of an omnipotent, unslayable hydra of destruction.This image lowers expectations for government effectiveness.
It should not lower them too far. Our report shows a determined and capable group of plotters.Yet the group was fragile, dependent on a few key per-sonalities, and occasionally left vulnerable by the marginal, unstable people often attracted to such causes.The enemy made mistakes—like Khalid al Mihd-har’s unauthorized departure from the United States that required him to enter the country again in July 2001, or the selection of Zacarias Moussaoui as a participant and Ramzi Binalshibh’s transfer of money to him. The U.S. government was not able to capitalize on those mistakes in time to prevent 9/11.
We do not believe it is possible to defeat all terrorist attacks against Americans, every time and everywhere. A president should tell the American people:
*No president can promise that a catastrophic attack like that of 9/11 will not happen again. History has shown that even the most vigilant and expert agencies cannot always prevent determined, suicidal attackers from reaching a target.
* But the American people are entitled to expect their government to do its very best. They should expect that officials will have realistic objectives, clear guidance, and effective organization. They are entitled to see some standards for performance so they can judge, with the help of their elected representatives, whether the objectives are being met.
This was also a welcome pragmatic note in the Commission's report. But combined with the other parts quoted above that seem to legitimize a decades-long crusade against an always-present threat, one which could bring a day of horror like none we have ever known, I'm not convinced that the Commission's recommendations represents a radical new direction in anti-terrorism policy, especially with the Bush Dynasty in office.
For now, I'm sticking with the suspicion that Brooks' reading of the report is a selective one, aimed more at dressing up the "war president" in a peaceful aura for the next three months, than any serious break with administration ways.
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