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COMMENTARY
October 1, 2003
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When the "war against terrorism" -- we still don't have a decent memorable name for this unwarlike war -- began precisely in the morning of Sept. 11 2001 it was obvious how to proceed. Those who had doubts 9/11 was an Al Qaeda job soon got over them. Al Qaeda was then centred in Afghanistan. It was patronized by the Taliban regime and vice versa. It was clear within a week that the U.S. would depose Mullah Omar and hunt down the terrorists in their camps. The Iraq invasion was likewise predictable almost from the beginning. It was unfinished business that could no longer be ignored. Colin Powell's delightfully vulgar old Bronx expression of the other week calling Saddam Hussein "a piece of trash waiting to be collected" succinctly expressed the mission as a whole. The United States did not go into Iraq for the sake of weapons of mass destruction alone though the Bush administration did sincerely expect to find many. (And as U.S. intelligence is discovering went in against a Saddam Hussein who sincerely thought he had many to hide.) That reasoning was emphasized because it was germane to the U.N. Security Council resolution the administration sought -- but didn't get. There were many other reasons which various members of the administration spelled out on alternate days. The single most important received the least emphasis however. It was that no progress against the background conditions of Islamist terrorism would be possible without changing the nature of the Middle East. There were plausible reasons to invade or otherwise physically molest Iran Syria Libya Sudan even Saudi Arabia. The task had to start somewhere and the Saddamite regime had earned its position at the top of the list. Most unanswerably every other candidate among the regimes that openly sought hideous weapons and conspired with terrorists could arguably be changed without the use of main force. The Iraqi regime was -- perhaps after North Korea's -- the world's most ruthless and brutal. Saddam and his sons could not be displaced without direct external force for they had annihilated internal opposition too efficiently. Whereas the change of the Iraqi regime would add pressure elsewhere. It would -- it already has contributed to new and more constructive attitudes in the totalitarian or nearly-totalitarian states around it. Democracy or rather something somewhat resembling democracy in Iraq is indeed a means to open to the air and light a region increasingly closed by terror and Islamist ideology. The new Iraqi regime if stable and successful becomes the opposite pole to that of Osama bin Laden. There is a visible way up as well as a way further down. There was no way forward without invading Iraq. But it remains to be seen whether even invading Iraq was a way forward. The international opposition and even the domestic American opposition to doing what had to be done there did not relent when the country was liberated. The reality is that the Bush administration now finds itself in the position of the one adult in a room full of unhappy children. The adult carries responsibilities that none of the children fully understand. A mortal threat presents itself to adult and children alike but only the adult appreciates this. He must find a way to proceed in spite of the children's very active non-cooperation. I realize this is not a flattering account of the spectacle of the "United Nations" at work but it is unfortunately true. And it is the most useful analogy I have found to guess how the Bush administration must proceed given the nature of its actual problem -- an enemy vowed to the destruction of the West which will stop at nothing and must soon be armed with unimaginably lethal weapons and nearly undetectable methods for delivering them. My impression from speaking with several administration especially Pentagon insiders and by observing what one can discover of the extension of U.S. operations overseas (through the securing of basing and landing rights and other joint agreements) is that we should expect the field struggle against international terrorism to disappear off our television screens. The media have been discovered to be an enemy pure and simple and no attempt to brief or include them in operations makes any sense. Indeed shaking off media attention is now intrinsic to the strategy. Moreover it has been discovered that for both political and tactical reasons it is counter-productive to build up forces in any one location. Since this is necessary to full-scale invasions full-scale invasions have to go. They only give the enemy a chance to prepare his resistance whether directly or indirectly. U.S. troop navy and air force deployments are now entirely to a network of remarkably small numerous almost portable bases across what in Pentagon jargon is called "the arc of instability" -- which is to say wherever there are weak governments or rogue regimes not only in the Middle East but in Central Asia South-east Asia Africa and Latin America. And technological innovation is likewise being focused upon improving the ability to strike suddenly "out of the clear blue sky" then disappear. There are some resemblances to the ancient piracy wars or frontier wars but really nothing like it before in history. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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