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COMMENTARY
September 27, 2001
The subtle beast
Why has the United States not already launched a massive retaliatory strike on Afghanistan? Though simple this is a good question and the answer tells us much about what lies ahead. Begin with the bald fact. If President Bush had wished to order a huge strike against the more obvious targets of the Taliban regime say last weekend there would have been no great difficulty in carrying out his orders. Strikes could have been made from bombers based even in the U.S. and the two carrier groups already deployed in the Gulf area could support a turnover of at least 200 air sorties per day with two more carrier groups soon to be in formation. The safe overflight of Pakistan is at least temporarily guaranteed by Gen. Pervez Musharraf's public announcement of last week. Moreover American strike aircraft are already on runways in I believe at least three of the republics of ex-Soviet Central Asia. The Uzbeks seem especially eager for prompt action against the Taliban; the united anti-Taliban forces within Afghanistan itself have already taken the inititiative towards the city of Mazar-i-Sharif and are pleased to offer forward support. And there is no shortage of immediate decently non-civilian targets within the country that would be worth hitting contrary to media belief: Kabul and even more Kandahar are laden with Taliban ministries and operations both official and unofficial. The ruling Afghan regime has control of conventional air and ground forces which offer a variety of tempting targets. The visible search for camps hideouts and other assets associated with Al Qaida could as well have begun sooner as later. Moreover the argument for an initial and unmistakeable act of retribution from the U.S. is not so irresponsible nor foolish as pacifists would assume. Part of a war effort is keeping the home front galvanized and President Bush still enjoys support for military action that runs above 90 per cent in U.S. polling but must fall in time. It made strong psychological sense to seal this compact -- I shall use a horrific phrase -- in an enemy's blood. And beyond this it made sense to put the world on notice that the U.S. could not be toyed with could not be "negotiated" into a state of torpor; to illustrate that now action would follow action. The fallout from such a strike would also have been easier to contain sooner instead of later. The cries of outrage from the Arab world and from the usual cast of America-haters around the globe would have been muted in the fresh memory of what was done to New York. The Americans are going to hear the chorus anyway why not now? The more distance from the events of Sept. 11 the more confidence U.S. enemies have in exploiting the disconnection between cause and effect that is at the root of their propaganda. Quick action would short-circuit this. Retribution is anyway more effective when swift. The chances of a serious disaster -- for sabotage of the American supply line or for something else to go seriously wrong -- could also be contained. Best not to give enemies on the ground and terrorists anywhere time to prepare against targets emerging from a slow build-up. By now it is clear that the Bush administration has considered and rejected this course. In doing so it has taken a big risk counting on the maturity of American public opinion -- and on the reliability over time of its most important allies. It would follow from past experience that the U.S. intends to build the sort of coalition it used against Iraq and strike massively but months later after all the ducks have been assembled in their rows. But this cannot be the case for the enemy now in the field is entirely different from the one that was surgically removed from Kuwait. The Bush administration is vividly aware that Afghanistan does not hold its only adversaries that efforts must be conserved for many others beyond it lurking not only within such "rogue states" as Iraq Syria Libya Sudan North Korea but also within outwardly friendly ones such as Egypt Saudi Arabia and even ... Germany Canada and the U.S. itself. "Right-wing" commentators in the U.S. have tended to interpret the U.S. hesitation as a battle between "hawks" and "doves" within Mr. Bush's war cabinet. Colin Powell is presented as the "diplomat" who opposed taking the last big war to Baghdad and finishing off Saddam Hussein for good; they think he is doing something similar again enmeshing the U.S. in a coalition so cumbersome that nothing can be achieved; trying to get his country to repeat the historical mistake that George Bush the Elder made by calling off the allied ground advance into Iraq after just four days. They postulate some sort of "power struggle" between say Donald Rumsfeld the "hawkish" Pentagon boss and the milquetoast Powell at Foggy Bottom. A great deal has been made of apparent contradictions between Secretary Powell and the deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz about immediate war aims. It is a pointless discussion which President Bush himself attempted to squelch in his magnificent speech to Congress last Thursday in the course of actually spelling out the U.S. war aims as clearly as he could. He made it abundantly clear that the target was not restricted to Afghanistan and that regimes sheltering terrorists would not finally be distinguished from the terrorists themselves; that the U.S. would make the best use of its allies but not finally be restricted by them. It is naive to think that such a man would spell out his intentions so clearly only to change them whimsically in another few days. (Did he wobble on the Kyoto pact after visiting Europe? On his missile plans after "befriending" Vladimir Putin?) He will be repeating himself extensively and necessarily through the coming months. The truth that emerges from the U.S. hesitation to strike quickly with overwhelming force has nothing to do with hawks and doves. While there must indeed be a wide-ranging discussion within the Bush administration and the newly-minted war cabinet about ways and means there is no detectable variance on ends. And as we have seen in his very public dealings with Pakistan as in more discreet dealings with Egypt and Saudi Arabia Secretary Powell himself can be the master of a very strong-armed diplomacy. There is as much bludgeoning as horsetrading in the U.S. effort to get "moderate" undemocratic governments unambiguously onside and committed to courses from which they cannot retreat. The truth is rather that after reviewing the evidence before it the U.S. is refusing to fight by the terrorists' rules. What they wanted above all else was for America to lash out precipitately but ineffectively. What they needed to secure their own "coalition" of forces opposing U.S. interests was something equal and opposite to what we saw at the World Trade Centre. Tactically the terrorists had the initial advantage. We cannot be sure how many terrorist cells there are where they are hiding and what they could do. This ties down immense U.S. resources covering every possibility. The terrorists themselves remain reasonably free in this offensive posture. They counted on their ability to "tease" the U.S. into acting predictably and in the short run foolishly. The U.S. response is instead careful calculating and systematic. The first efforts are vested in special forces movements and in surprising deployments (such as the very rapid ones accomplished in Central Asia). The American diplomatic effort is itself taking a novel course building not one coalition around a single object but in the expression of Secretary Rumsfeld yesterday rotating coalitions in each of which the mission needs to define the coalition rather than vice versa. In other words the U.S. is building coalitions like cells around itself and its own intentions rather than around some external object (such as previously the liberation of Kuwait or chasing of Serbian forces from Kosovo). It is in fact acting more comprehensively than ever before. This in turn puts the terrorists and the states with which they are fundamentally allied onto the defensive. They cannot guess how America will act only that it will. And they can already discard all precedents for the prediction of U.S. action. They must themselves now begin to enlarge their defences to consider possibilities never previously contemplated. They have aroused indeed a mighty beast but did not expect it would move subtly. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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