Specifically, our freedom to do whatever it is we want to do to them and their part of the world without consequence.
Disclaimer: I don’t support terrorism as an expression of political or ideological frustration, or in any event, but I understand the impulse and one has to admit that as a negotiating technique, it sometimes works.
The escalating al Qaeda campaign against the US—the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center’s North Tower, the embassy bombings in 1998, the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 (note the Saddam connection!), and 911—was clearly a high-profile attempt by al Qaeda to tell the US that we can’t keep screwing around in their neck of the woods without consequence, and the US response to 911 has been at least in part an attempt by the US to persuade al Qaeda and the world that yes, we can.
(“Yes we can!” A whole new interpretation of the Obama mantra. And yes, I know that’s unfair, sort of. But increasingly less so.)
We have indeed demonstrated that we can keep screwing around over there in a very big way, but we haven’t managed the “without consequence” part at all well. Setting aside all other concerns, the defense appropriations for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan just passed the trillion dollar milestone. And for the first time, Afghanistan nosed into the lead over Iraq–$64.5 billion for Iraq and $72.3 billion for Afghanistan in fiscal year 2010. And that doesn’t even include the Obama escalation, which should send Afghanistan over $100 billion for the year.
Yay, Afghanistan!
$100 billion is about 1,000% of Afghanistan’s 2008 opium-fueled Gross Domestic Product, if you were wondering.
Bush’s rhetorical approach to the contest was basic: Good/Evil. Life/Death. Cowboys/Raiders. Our new president’s rhetoric on the why of the contest is more gracefully delivered than his predecessor’s but it’s still navigating the same conceptual low ground. During his January 7 speech regarding the various failures surrounding the Crotch Bomber’s foiled attack, Obama said that “we must communicate clearly to Muslims around the world that al Qaeda offers nothing except a bankrupt vision of misery and death –- including the murder of fellow Muslims –- while the United States stands with those who seek justice and progress.”
My suggestion is that we make some big “Justice and Progress” banners that our Predator drones can haul behind them. And paint some “Justice and Progress” slogans on our bombs and missiles. And put some “Justice and Progress” engravings on our cluster bomblets for those young people fortunate enough to happen upon the unexploded ones. Because really, in most cases, it’s all just a big misunderstanding.
Anne Applebaum wrote a column for Slate a few days ago in which she asked, “How can we counter educated, eloquent, well-connected Islamists?” The proximate cause for her inquiry is Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi. the guy who blew up the CIA employees and contractors in Afghanistan, although she dismisses him by saying that he’s mostly interesting because of his wife, which I don’t get. She’s anti-American, she’s the author of a book Applebaum hasn’t read, and she’s smart and literate and religious.
That is interesting, but what’s more so is that never once in the whole story does Applebaum even hint at an explanation of why al-Balawi and his wife, Defne Bayrak, are (were, in his instance) anti-American. She says that the US needs more intellectual boots on the ground to counter the arguments Bayrak and her husband and their fellow travelers proffer in “in Internet chat rooms, in the halls of publishing houses, in mosques.”
But what are those arguments? If among the grievances advanced by the anti-Americans is that the US has a history of meddling in the middle east and South Asia, often violently, and, as apparently was the case with al-Balawi, that Israeli treatment of Palestinians is harsh to the point of criminality, what is the counterargument? That we don’t meddle? That we aren’t violent? That Israelis didn’t go postal on Palestinian civilians during the last assault on Gaza?
Targeting civilians is unconscionable no matter who does it. Terrorists do it deliberately because it sows terror. The US will argue that we don’t target civilians, that their deaths at our hands are just unfortunate accidents or the result of heinous tactics by the intended targets, but our invasion of Iraq nevertheless cost hundreds of thousands of Iraqis their lives and sent millions more into exile, and we’re proceeding down the same path in Afghanistan.
So, what are we to say in defense of ourselves? That it’s for their own good? That rarely works with spanking a child or grounding a teenager; is it supposed to be more effective in the face of death and destruction intentionally rained down upon their countries and their co-religionists by the US? Cluster bombs that we sold to the Israelis for use in a war against Lebanon that we supported are still killing and maiming people, mostly children and farmers, there; will “blame it on Hezbollah” defuse the anger over that?
A great many people in the Middle East and South Asia clearly despise the murderous religious intolerance of the Taliban and other sectarian absolutists, but that has obviously not been sufficient to derail their continuing and successful recruiting and fundraising. And even where we successfully make that argument, that those absolutists are killing their own neighbors from completely despicable motives, how do we counter those who say, “Yeah, you’re right, but what’s your excuse?”
But I digress. The point of this is that if people such as Applebaum, who is inexplicably regarded as a shrewd observer of foreign affairs, and US presidents past, present and no doubt future, are advancing certifiably juvenile arguments to their own constituencies, then it’s hardly likely that they’re going to come up with anything coherent enough to persuade al-Balawi and those other “international jihadist elite[s]” and their followers to hang up their suicide belts and britches.
