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COMMENTARY
October 6, 2004
Geostrategies
In a book published this week Dr. George Friedman the founder of the lucid Stratfor a private for-profit think-tank and intelligence-gathering organization which has been dubbed "the shadow CIA" proposes to explain what the war in Iraq and the larger "war on terrorism" is really all about. It sure wasn't about WMD hidden in Iraq -- one of several public arguments for removing Saddam Hussein which because it didn't work out has been hailed by our media (which once bought into the argument but has since cashed out) as the only reason. Yet as both parties in the U.S. election maintain the threat of nuclear or other mass-destructive weaponry in the hands of terrorists -- and quite possibly terrorists trained and directed by a foreign state or states -- is real and must be dealt with. The arguments are only over how to prevent carnage on a scale seldom before seen. In America's Secret War Dr. Friedman argues that the enemy grew out of the Cold War an artefact of Jimmy Carter's decision to use Saudi Arabian money and Pakistani expertise to create a guerrilla army that could harass the Soviets then occupying Afghanistan. "Al Qaeda" the product mastered the art of covert operation and as the Soviets collapsed began turning it against the West biting the hand that fed them. Their large ambition is the creation of a new pan-Muslim caliphate however and they attack Western targets as a means of advancing an Islamist revolution at home. The U.S. is fighting back Dr. Friedman argues with an equally indirect strategy. Despite dysfunctional intelligence services and post-Cold War military forces re-designed under the Clinton administration for some other conflict the Americans realize you cannot win a war by staying on defence. He believes Afghanistan was just a flourish liberated mostly thanks to another local irregular army rented through the Russians and Iranians; that in fact the Taliban and Al Qaeda retreated in fairly good order. Realizing they couldn't win like this after Tora Bora (in which Osama bin Laden and company slipped away) and that they couldn't depend on the Saudis for help in cutting the enemy's financial resources they embarked on a mission to change Saudi Arabia by first changing Iraq and then probably Iran alternately playing Sunni and Shia radicals against one another. It is Dr. Friedman thinks a strategy that appears to be blundering to success. After subtracting some hype there is much truth in this view. Both Afghanistan and Iraq have been indirect conflicts justified in a geostrategic calculation that would be impossible to communicate in election-year soundbites. President Bush is trying to do the fighting "over there" instead of "over here" and in my view he could have started in any one of half-a-dozen Middle Eastern countries with the same chaotic results Saudi Arabia being my own first choice. His intention through judicious regime changes is to change the overall complexion of the region to make it impossible for the Jihadis to hide. I find Dr. Friedman's account of President Bush's strategy coherent but narrower than the thing itself; yet President Bush's strategy also narrower than required by the reality. Senator Kerry's proposals I find recklessly incoherent. For according to me we are facing a gathering Islamist ideological challenge that was not invented by Osama bin Laden. It has a Shia Iranian version (that triumphed in 1979 with the fall of the Shah) and a Sunni Arabian version; the two being capable of co-operation as well as mutual antipathy. Terrorism is only the weapon of convenience on both the "Hezbollah" (Shia) and "Hamas" (Sunni) sides. Dr. Friedman and President Bush are fundamentally agreed that the war is being won. The very fact that no Islamist revolution has overthrown any Muslim regime on the latter's watch is to both men an indication the U.S. can prevail. I support them for their willingness to fight the war but am not so sanguine about the outcome. On the one hand the Americans remain under extraordinary international pressure to retreat; on the other the appeal of the Islamist ideology is still growing and finding its voice through such mass media as Arab satellite television. If for instance a President Kerry were to take the Americans out of Iraq mission unaccomplished as in Vietnam we would see a storm-tide of Islamist triumphalism and the belief would quickly spread through the Muslim world that an aggressive Jihadist politico-religious Islamism is the wave of the future. The same of course would happen if a President Bush did that. But everything we know about the man suggests he wouldn't. One of my reasons to pray for his victory in the coming U.S. election is because he wouldn't. I don't think he fully grasps the dimensions of the conflict -- nobody does. But he knows they are large he knows the difference between advancing and retreating and that's really all he needs to know for now. The rest we learn as we go along. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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