Tuesday, June 22, 2004
Our safety is at stake, not our survival
Here are some quotes from "Anonymous", a senior US intelligence official, posted on TPM:
Spencer Ackerman asked Anonymous to clarify these comments:
I have serious problems with this line of thought.
First, we aren't in a war of survival. There is no remotely plausible scenario by which the terrorists could wipe out the population of America. (In contrast, the US could rather easily exterminate any non-nuclear country on the globe). The US has fought for its survival before---in the Cold War, we faced the extinction of humanity through global nuclear war; in WWII, we faced implacable enemies who sought to conquer and tyrannize the world; in the Civil War, millions of Americans died in a struggle for our national soul. The "war on terror", in contrast, is a struggle to protect our citizens from the weapons of the weak---suicide bombs and the like. Even if we suffer a nuclear terror incident---and such an attack is inevitable, whether in this conflict or in some future struggle---we must resist the temptation to enlarge the conflict. Because enlarging problems, contra our idiotic Secretary of Defense, doesn't help solve them. It usually makes them irreversably bigger.
Second, it is the height of irresponsibility to talk of the war on terror as if our existence were at stake. Most voters know little about warfare, the capabilities of states and terrorist groups, the interests of key geopolitical actors, etc. Tell them that Saddam can destroy us all, and a significant proportion will believe it, even if it's ridiculous. I am sure that even today, a significant fraction of Americans would support brutal total war on Islamic societies, just because the 9/11 bombers were Muslim. To blame---and massacre---the innocent to punish terror acts by a few, or even in the misguided hopes of preventing or discouraging future attacks, is to descend to exactly the same level of depravity and evil as the terrorists themselves. And with our military's far greater capabilities, the US could unleash death and murder on a scale that would leave Hitler and Stalin in awe. No, to loosely talk of turning Muslim countries into Dresden is to engage in a very dangerous game, because many in the audience don't realize how sick, how horrible, and how unnecessary that would be.
Third, and separately, massive retaliation for terror has been shown, again and again, to escalate conflicts, not to end them. Chechen rebels today killed about 60 Russians in a sneak attack, the latest sordid episode in a pointless civil war. The Russians could have let the Chechens go, sealed the border and refused Chechens entry to Russia, but instead chose to respond to each attack in kind, often with interest. As much as this might satisfy the people's lust for vengeance, it has sown only more violence. The survivors in Chenchnya spring up like dragon's teeth to perpetuate the cycle of violence; international terror groups looking for a battlefield hone in, and everything goes to hell. A tit-fot-tat strategy only discourages violence when the opponent fears retaliation. Often, terror groups welcome it. It helps draw the innocent of their societies into the struggle. When we bomb innocents, we sow terrorists.
So if proportionate response is off the table, what's left? Law enforcement, to prevent attacks and undermine terror networks; selected use of force, to wipe out terror resources (what Afghanistan should have been, if Bush hadn't pulled away resources to fight in Iraq); and smart policies to remove the sources of conflict without much sacrifice (get troops out of the Middle East; reduce oil dependence).
It doesn't have the macho satisfaction of smiting our enemies. But it will keep us much safer, and protect us from turning a war for safety into a war of kill-or-be-killed.
To secure as much of our way of life as possible, we will have to use military force in the way Americans used it on the fields of Virginia and Georgia, in France and on Pacific islands, and from skies over Tokyo and Dresden. Progress will be measured by the pace of killing …
Killing in large numbers is not enough to defeat our Muslim foes. With killing must come a Sherman-like razing of infrastructure. Roads and irrigation systems; bridges, power plants, and crops in the field; fertilizer plants and grain mills--all these and more will need to be destroyed to deny the enemy its support base. … [S]uch actions will yield large civilian casualties, displaced populations, and refugee flows. Again, this sort of bloody-mindedness is neither admirable nor desirable, but it will remain America's only option so long as she stands by her failed policies toward the Muslim world.
Spencer Ackerman asked Anonymous to clarify these comments:
ANONYMOUS: The war we need to conduct is simply to protect America. It's to stop the enemy, to have him cease and desist from attacking us. It is not--I hope it's not--to make them democratic, or to make them become libertarians or whatever, whereas the Indian intention in Kashmir is to install Hindu domination. The Chinese intention in western China is genocide: a silent genocide as they're doing in Tibet by inundating the Uighurs with Han Chinese. And the Russians are intent on doing what they tried to do in Afghanistan: to subject the population and eliminate whatever percentage of that population is necessary.
TPM: But isn’t it enough like those governments, or certainly like Russia in Chechnya, in that you’re calling for scorched-earth tactics? And isn't that at the heart of what the Islamic resistance in Chechnya views as Russia’s attempt to destroy Chechnya--and what in fact fuels the Islamicization of Chechnya?
ANONYMOUS: I think that's a good argument. My argument, I think, taken from the whole book, is that we've left ourselves with no option but the military option, and our application of military force against our foe, whether it's Iraq or Afghanistan or anywhere else, has not been particularly intimidating. They've ridden out two wars. They're on the offensive at the moment. What are we left with? If we don't use our military power, we really just sit and take it. …
TPM: But isn't the argument that we'd be using our military force disproportionately?
ANONYMOUS: The question is survival. What are we going to do, dive an airplane into the Grand Mosque at Mecca? No, we're not going to do that. Proportional war ends up being war forever, because they'll never stop being able to attack us, and if the cost they pay is minimal, it just goes on forever. That's where we are now.
I have serious problems with this line of thought.
First, we aren't in a war of survival. There is no remotely plausible scenario by which the terrorists could wipe out the population of America. (In contrast, the US could rather easily exterminate any non-nuclear country on the globe). The US has fought for its survival before---in the Cold War, we faced the extinction of humanity through global nuclear war; in WWII, we faced implacable enemies who sought to conquer and tyrannize the world; in the Civil War, millions of Americans died in a struggle for our national soul. The "war on terror", in contrast, is a struggle to protect our citizens from the weapons of the weak---suicide bombs and the like. Even if we suffer a nuclear terror incident---and such an attack is inevitable, whether in this conflict or in some future struggle---we must resist the temptation to enlarge the conflict. Because enlarging problems, contra our idiotic Secretary of Defense, doesn't help solve them. It usually makes them irreversably bigger.
Second, it is the height of irresponsibility to talk of the war on terror as if our existence were at stake. Most voters know little about warfare, the capabilities of states and terrorist groups, the interests of key geopolitical actors, etc. Tell them that Saddam can destroy us all, and a significant proportion will believe it, even if it's ridiculous. I am sure that even today, a significant fraction of Americans would support brutal total war on Islamic societies, just because the 9/11 bombers were Muslim. To blame---and massacre---the innocent to punish terror acts by a few, or even in the misguided hopes of preventing or discouraging future attacks, is to descend to exactly the same level of depravity and evil as the terrorists themselves. And with our military's far greater capabilities, the US could unleash death and murder on a scale that would leave Hitler and Stalin in awe. No, to loosely talk of turning Muslim countries into Dresden is to engage in a very dangerous game, because many in the audience don't realize how sick, how horrible, and how unnecessary that would be.
Third, and separately, massive retaliation for terror has been shown, again and again, to escalate conflicts, not to end them. Chechen rebels today killed about 60 Russians in a sneak attack, the latest sordid episode in a pointless civil war. The Russians could have let the Chechens go, sealed the border and refused Chechens entry to Russia, but instead chose to respond to each attack in kind, often with interest. As much as this might satisfy the people's lust for vengeance, it has sown only more violence. The survivors in Chenchnya spring up like dragon's teeth to perpetuate the cycle of violence; international terror groups looking for a battlefield hone in, and everything goes to hell. A tit-fot-tat strategy only discourages violence when the opponent fears retaliation. Often, terror groups welcome it. It helps draw the innocent of their societies into the struggle. When we bomb innocents, we sow terrorists.
So if proportionate response is off the table, what's left? Law enforcement, to prevent attacks and undermine terror networks; selected use of force, to wipe out terror resources (what Afghanistan should have been, if Bush hadn't pulled away resources to fight in Iraq); and smart policies to remove the sources of conflict without much sacrifice (get troops out of the Middle East; reduce oil dependence).
It doesn't have the macho satisfaction of smiting our enemies. But it will keep us much safer, and protect us from turning a war for safety into a war of kill-or-be-killed.
