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Jewish World Review August 23, 2005 / 18 Av, 5765
A war or a struggle: Just what're we fighting here?
By Robert Robb
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Earlier this month, there was an intriguing and potentially instructive
tussle within the Bush administration over what to call the effort to
protect the United States against terrorism.
Pentagon officials had begun referring to the "global struggle against
violent extremism" rather than the previously prevailing "war on terror."
The New York Times ran a piece indicating that this was a concerted
strategy by the administration to signal the broader scope of the effort
beyond the use of military force. National Security Adviser Steven Hadley
seemed to confirm that this, indeed, was a conscious change in public
positioning by the administration.
Someone, however, apparently forgot to give President Bush the memo. And he
didn't like the change in description. Shortly after, he gave a speech in
which he pointedly used the term "war" fifteen times and the specific
phrase "war on terror" five times.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld got the message, and was quickly back to
describing the effort as a "war."
Most of the Washington press corps treated this as an inside-the-Beltway,
who's-up-and-who's-down story. "Rummy tried to get cute and got spanked"
sort of thing.
Those on the right who favor a muscular U.S. international role took it
more seriously, detecting defeatism and blame-shifting coming from the
Pentagon. Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, went so far as to
suggest that Bush should cashier Rumsfeld over it.
The infighting is intriguing. But there are substantive issues involved in
the question of what to call the effort to protect the United States
against terrorism.
There are many respects in which the effort has the attributes of war.
After all, bin Laden has twice declared war against the United States.
After the 9/11 attacks, I advocated a formal declaration of war against
al-Qaida, which I still believe would have provided useful clarification
and orientation for the country.
Saying that the effort is a war means that the country is going to use the
instruments of war to protect itself, and not limit its response to law
enforcement activities.
That means being willing to use military force to topple the Taliban and
dislodge al-Qaida from its safe sanctuary. It means being willing to detain
combatants for being combatants, without necessarily charging them with
criminal offenses. And it means being willing to kill terrorists rather
than limiting ourselves to attempting to arrest and try them.
But there are other vital attributes of the effort to protect the United
States against terrorism for which the term "war" is both misleading and
distracting.
President Bush is simply wrong that Iraq is the central battleground in the
effort to protect the United States against terrorism. Buttoning up
internal U.S. security is. And the federal government isn't doing a very
good job of it.
The Department of Homeland Security has added much more bureaucracy than
protection. Its new secretary, Michael Chertoff, recently announced a
reorganization to try to get the department's resources more aligned with
actual risk. The FBI recently announced its second reorganization, after a
scathing critique of its counterterrorism activities by the Silverman-Robb
Commission.
If U.S. immigration laws had been followed, most of the 9/11 hijackers
never would have been in the United States or would have already have
departed. Yet, nearly four years later, the government is no where near the
point of controlling who gets into our country or ensuring their compliance
with our immigration laws while here.
The term "war" suggests the most important action is where the bullets are
flying. In the effort to protect the United States against terrorism,
that's not necessarily true.
President Bush appears to be losing the country somewhat on the issue of
national security. A sense that there is an excessive "war" orientation to
the effort to protect the United States against terrorism may be a part of
that, particularly given the growing number of Americans who believe that
the Iraq war was imprudent.
The Democrats — dominated by the MoveOn.org/Michael Moore,
see-no-evil-fight-no-evil sentiment — are poorly positioned to take
advantage of this.
Nevertheless, Republicans, and the country, could benefit from greater
precision in describing the effort to protect the United States against
terrorism, which can in turn lead to better priorities and policies.
It also suggests a consuming national commitment. Protecting the country
against terrorism, however, requires certain government operations to
perform extraordinarily well — precisely so the rest of us can go about our
normal lives with a sense of security.