Rather than respond in the comments section of Ian’s last fascinating post, I want to draw attention to a recent article by Evan Kohlmann, posted at the Counterterrorism Blog, an online collective of counterterrorism experts and scholars.
I tend to find myself skeptical of the articles posted at this site–many of the writers come across as ideologically right-wing, though the quality of analysis varies from author to author–but Kohlmann’s posting is notable because he argues, persuasively in my view, that
the idea that Al-Qaida has any long-term viable future in Iraq—or that Iraq somehow poses more of a terrorism problem than the lawless regions along the Afghan-Pakistani border—which have become a hotbed for terrorist guesthouses and training camps of every shape, size, and variety—plainly ignores the basic facts.
The “basic facts” are that “there is near universal agreement—among senior U.S. military commanders, terrorism experts, Iraqi insurgents, and even former colleagues of Usama Bin Laden—that [a U.S. counterterrorism] campaign should be squarely targeted on Pakistan and Afghanistan, and not the counterproductive occupation of Iraq.” Kohlmann bolsters this claim with a reported database analysis of “the shifting patterns in propaganda releases by the Taliban in Afghanistan versus Al-Qaida’s “Islamic State of Iraq” (ISI) over approximately a one year period (from April 2007 to July 2008).”
In short: the Taliban is increasingly active, and the ISI is greatly in decline. The meaning of these statistics is not entirely straightforward, it seems to me, but even if you accept the claim that there is a coherent thing called the “Global War on Terror” (GWOT)–I, for one, do not–you simply can’t make the argument that its center is located in Iraq.
As a 2005 interview with a “British jihadist” in the (U.K.) Prospect suggests, its center is more plausibly located not in the Middle East or on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, but rather in London. The U.S. ought to invade Britain if it is serious about conducting a genuine GWOT.
Kohlmann’s analysis glosses quickly over the fact that there was no Iraqi front in the GWOT before the U.S. invaded the country in 2003, though he does quote Richard Clarke as saying of Bush’s decision to invade Iraq: “It was as if Osama bin Laden, hidden in some high mountain redoubt, were engaging in long-range mind control of George Bush, chanting ‘invade Iraq, you must invade Iraq.’”
More to the point, I am skeptical of those who use the term “war” to describe the difficult work of stopping the diffuse global network of violent ideological fanatics who threaten the U.S. and Europe with terrorism. ((Not to mention Iraqis, Pakistanis, Afghanis, and many others who are far more often than “Westerners” the victims of terrorism.)) Waging war on countries–even “terrorist sanctuary” countries, like Great Britain–seems far less important, to my mind, than securing and destroying every shred of nuclear-bomb-making material on the planet. Forget the fact that invading Great Britain would kill a great many innocent people, and that regardless of how smoothly it went the occupation would likely increase terrorism against the U.S.
In addition to stopping drastic climate change, preventing nuclear terrorism should be on the top of our collective political priority list. As many foreign affairs analysts have reported, nuclear terrorism is one of the gravest threats to our freedom, prosperity, and safety. But calling the effort to prevent such acts a “war” grossly mischaracterizes what we must achieve. The Pentagon and its army of defense subcontractors are not going to be able to eliminate the risk of nuclear terrorism because, I think, that problem is primarily political–not tactical–in nature.
To eliminate that risk, we must eliminate nuclear arms on a worldwide scale, no easy task.
Great post. If I recall correctly, both John Kerry and George Bush responded with the same answer when asked what was the greatest threat to America’s security: they both said it was the proliferation of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. And yet the American people, the politicians and the media seem content to go without any meaningful national conversation about this issue.
I recently re-watched Philip Morris’ documentary “The Fog of War,” which includes a sustained interview with Robert S. McNamara, who served as Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. McNamara recalls opposition from conservatives in the military to Kennedy’s efforts to negotiate arms control treaties. McNamara recalls being told that the U.S. couldn’t trust the Soviet Union to abide by any test-ban treaty, and thought the Soviet Union would take advantage of any such treaty by testing nuclear weapons in secret. McNamara asked them how, and they said the Soviets would test the weapons “behind the moon.” McNamara thought that was ridiculous, and I (in my very humble opinion) agree. Now the Bush administration is stoking fears in the U.S.S.R. with talk of a missile defense system. In my opinion, every time we launch a war without broad international support (and freak everybody out all over the world with our cavalier attitude) we seriously damage the likelihood that we’ll be able to entice these nations into working with us on nuclear arms reductions. If these other countries think we’re a bunch of cowboys, they’ll cling to their nuclear weapons tight. But if they think we can be trusted to work toward peace, they’ll be more likely to join us — because they don’t like the prevalence of nuclear weapons any more than we do.
Comment by Ian — July 30, 2008 @ 8:38 pm