Wednesday, Jul 9, 2008
We don't know who's winning, because President Bush -- for political reasons -- has never defined our aims or enemies.
Sep 6, 2002 | The word "war" seemed to make perfect sense as the embers of the World Trade Center still burned. The United States had most certainly been attacked, and when you're attacked, you fight back. Though some argued that a response to 9/11 couched in the terms of global policing made more sense than a military reaction -- this was an international crime we were fighting, not a legitimate battlefield enemy -- the Bush administration chose to rally the nation behind a standard of war. The president first used the phrase "the war against terrorism" in his speech on Sept. 11, and we have been at war ever since.
Yet now, as this war passes its first birthday, its terms remain a perplexing and increasingly disturbing enigma. When President Bush told us, in his speech to Congress on Sept. 21, that we were engaged in a "war on terror" that would "not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated," we might have figured he'd fill in the blanks before much longer. But somehow, a year later, we're still sitting here wondering: Who exactly are we fighting? How do we define our enemy? What are our goals? And are we winning or losing?
By refusing to clarify these questions with any kind of precision, Bush and his administration have created a void in the public arena. They've left Americans confused and uncertain about the nature of the war we've been asked to support, and increasingly suspicious of the constitutional rule-bending taking place under its banner.
If fate had treated the U.S. more kindly, we would have a leader today who was able to answer these questions, to articulate why we're fighting -- and what we're fighting for -- as well as FDR explained the Second World War to his nation, or JFK explained the Cold War to his. We don't. But the questions still demand answers. We need to try to fill in the blanks ourselves.
The closest to a definition of our opponent in this war that the president has provided is "every terrorist group of global reach." We can assume a national consensus that the list of such groups begins with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida. Does it include other groups? Who knows? As the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has flared since 9/11, Bush has increasingly applied the "terrorist" label to a wider swath of Palestinians, and the cruel campaign of suicide bombing aimed at civilians has certainly earned it. But this terrorism remains confined to Israel and the occupied territories; "global reach" does not seem to be within its aims or grasp.
On Sept. 21, Bush specifically said, "Our war on terror begins with al-Qaida, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated." So what and where are these other "terrorist groups of global reach"? Are they all Islamic extremists, or are there other types? Shouldn't we have heard a little more about them over the course of the past year?
The president also said that "we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism," but though the number of such nations is probably in the dozens -- and certainly includes some of our allies -- Bush has so far left us in the dark about what exactly puts a nation on his "axis of evil" list. What criteria mark an Iraq as in need of immediate "regime change," while an Iran or a North Korea, not to mention a Saudi Arabia or a Pakistan, are free to continue to develop dangerous weapons and harbor terrorist organizations? Bush refuses even to acknowledge the question.
Saddam is surely a brutal and murderous dictator. But the case that the war on terrorism that began on Sept. 11, 2001 -- the effort to end the threat of future 9/11s -- demands an immediate invasion of Iraq remains tenuous at best. The conflation of "war on terror" with "war on Iraq" remains the Bush administration's most unconvincing maneuver since 9/11. In fact, it's hard not to suspect that Bush has been so reluctant to define the war's terms precisely because he wants to blur together these two different enterprises -- one that was forced upon him by circumstance (terrorism was low on the administration's priorities before the 9/11 attacks), and one that has long been close to his heart.
Before marching on Baghdad -- before another bombing campaign, another shooting war, another wave of international turmoil steal the headlines and turn our minds away from the recent past -- we need to stop and take stock of the war so far. No matter how hard Bush has made this for us, by failing to define our enemy or our goals, we owe it to everyone who has died so far and everyone who may die in the future to do so.
For the sake of clarity in discussion, let's consider our prime enemy in the war on terrorism -- at least its first phase -- to be al-Qaida. They, after all, started it. Here are some of the goals we can assume are, or ought to be, on the White House blackboard, along with a scorecard of how we're doing. This is a pragmatic exercise, looking at the practical realities of the war to date, rather than an idealistic brainstorm.
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