…Without Losing Elections.
[for the purposes of this analysis, I am going to stipulate that Usama-bin-Laden was responsible for 9/11 and that the hijackers did not receive substantial aid, training, or assistance from any intelligence agency].
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 the Bush administration made a number of errors. I will focus only on the most glaring errors.
On 9/11, at 8:30 PM EDT, a frightened and traumatized America tuned in to see what our President had to say about the attacks. Bush said:
America was targeted for attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world. And no one will keep that light from shining.
This made no sense at the time, and it makes no sense today. As far back as 1996, UBL was making speeches explaining his opposition to American foreign policy.
It should not be hidden from you that the people of Islam have suffered from aggression, iniquity and injustice imposed on them by the Zionist-Crusaders alliance and their collaborators; to the extent that the Muslims blood became the cheapest and their wealth as loot in the hands of the enemies. Their blood was spilled in Palestine and Iraq. The horrifying pictures of the massacre of Qana, in Lebanon are still fresh in our memory. Massacres in Tajikistan, Burma, Kashmir, Assam, Philippines, Fatani, Ogadin, Somalia, Eritrea, Chechnya and in Bosnia-Herzegovina took place, massacres that send shivers in the body and shake the conscience. All of this and the world watch and hear, and not only didn’t respond to these atrocities, but also with a clear conspiracy between the USA and its’ allies and under the cover of the iniquitous United Nations, the dispossessed people were even prevented from obtaining arms to defend themselves.
The latest and the greatest of these aggressions, incurred by the Muslims since the death of the Prophet (ALLAH’S BLESSING AND SALUTATIONS ON HIM) is the occupation of the land of the two Holy Places –
Here, Bin-Laden framed his argument in the form of a conspiracy theory, wherein the U.S. and Israel are responsible for the death and oppression of Muslims all over the globe. But, he clearly stated his number one gripe, and that was the basing of American soldiers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Nowhere in bin Laden’s 1996 fatwa did he complain about American society, our mores, our culture, or our freedoms. This is what he said:
If there is more than one duty to be carried out, then the most important one should receive priority. Clearly after Belief (Imaan) there is no more important duty than pushing the American enemy out of the holy land. No other priority, except Belief, could be considered before it…
So, the President should have come on television as said something like this:
We were attacked by fanatics who have no respect for civilian life. Their stated motivation for carrying out such terrorism is opposition to our stationing of troops within Saudi Arabia. Our troops are there with the blessing of the Saudi government, and our airbase there is essential to maintaining the southern no-fly zone of Iraq.
That would have correctly framed the debate. We could then have had an honest debate about whether removing our soldiers from Saudi Arabia would be wise or whether it would constitute appeasement, reward the attackers, and encourage more attacks.
As for Afghanistan, the President should have committed our troops to going into Afghanistan to capture and kill as many of bin-Laden’s group as we could find, and to destroy their training camps. Together with our NATO allies, we should have made a commitment to rebuild that country, and to keep our focus there until the job of reconstruction was done.
Obviously, Bush did not limit his aims and focus on achievable goals. He made two more framing errors in his 9/11 speech.
We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.
I appreciate so very much the members of Congress who have joined me in strongly condemning these attacks. And on behalf of the American people, I thank the many world leaders who have called to offer their condolences and assistance.
America and our friends and allies join with all those who want peace and security in the world, and we stand together to win the war against terrorism.
When Bush decided to make no distinction between terrorists and the countries that harbor them he made two errors. First, he made no distinction between terrorists that attack Americans and terrorists that have different agendas. Second, he did not give countries that had tolerated radical groups the opportunity to reconsider and to help us in our effort to identify and neutralize members of bin-Laden’s group.
Third, Bush declared a ‘War on Terrorism’, which is not a war that can be won. From that moment forward, we were destined to lose this war, so long as victory was defined in such a way as to be impossible to achieve.
Therefore, the first step in winning the ‘Global War on Terror’, as it is now called, is to stop calling it a war on terror, to focus the goals, to make the goals clear and achievable, and most importantly to stop talking about fighting on to ‘victory’.
By equating the war in Iraq with the war against al-Qaeda, Bush has allowed bin-Laden to conflate them as well. Therefore bin-Laden declares he is winning because of the enormous expenditure in Iraq, the bad morale of the troops, the polls that show Americans do not support the war, etc. Yet, we would support a war against al-Qaeda, we would bear almost any expense to kill bin-Laden, Zawahiri, and anyone else involved in 9/11, and our troops’ morale would never flag in such a fight.
Bush has blown any chance of leaving Iraq better than we found it, or of being able to declare an unambiguous victory there. And therefore, he has lost the war against bin-Laden and his organization. But, we can still cut our losses by deconflating the two efforts.
This starts with rhetoric. Rather than ignoring Afghanistan, Bush should talk about it more, and should work more closely with our European allies to make sure the country does not slip back into chaos. Americans should be prepared to keep a commitment to Afghanistan for a long time to come. In no way should we allow defeat in Iraq to be perceived as a victory over our legitimate effort to destroy the al-Qaeda organization.
We should also stop referring to al-Zarqawi as a member of al-Qaeda. That is only loosely true, if true at all, and it allows al-Qaeda to declare a victory over our efforts in Iraq, when the true victors are the Iraqi nationalists that will not submit to foreign occupation and incompetent administration of their country.
This brings me to the big enchilada: preparing for defeat in Iraq.
Sometime in the next three years we are going to remove our troops from Iraq and there will be no spin that will disguise that we failed in advancing our national interests. So, the best that we can do is lessen the perception that we have been defeated, and that means attaching ourselves to the likely victors now, and making it a goal that the likely victors win.
Rather than bemoan the dominance of a religiously conservative Shi’a government that is closely aligned with Iran, we should extol the accomplishment that these long oppressed people now have representation in line with their population. It may not be perfect, they may not make very good allies, but at least the country is no longer dominated by a vicious minority.
It will be difficult for the Sunni-dominated al-Qaeda organization to claim an unambiguous victory if the end result is the end of a Sunni dominated Iraq.
A real victory over Islamic extremism will not come from tinkering with perceptions, but in making sweeping and major changes in the way our country engages with the Middle East.
We have repositioned our airbase from Saudi Arabia to Qatar. That removed the original casus belli of 9/11, but it has now been replaced with new provocations. And 9/11 was never about Saudi Arabia alone. Resentment of American foreign policy has been building from the 1950’s on.
We need to reexamine our relationships with the governments of Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, as well as the Emirates. We need to make efforts to convince and assist those governments in providing more opportunity, health care, and political representation to their people. This will not be easy, because true democracy would sweep those rulers from power.
We also need to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with at least the same effort and even-handedness that Bill Clinton employed.
We cannot solve all the problems of the Middle East, or the Islamic world generally. But we can make good faith efforts at progress, and it starts by recognizing that we are not hated, and therefore at risk, because of our freedoms, but because of our policies. Not all of our policies are good policies, nor are they all necessary. Where we can make changes that are widely desired by the Muslim community, we should make those changes.
If we do not begin to talk about the conflict in the Middle East on different terms than the President, we will not be able to advance an alternative policy. If we allow Bin Laden to taunt us with defeat in Iraq, the Republicans will always win the argument for staying in Iraq (to avoid caving into bin-Laden’s taunts). We must, therefore, deny even the perception of victory for bin-Laden. And that means aggressively deconflating defeat in Iraq from progress in Afghanistan and progress against the al-Qaeda organization.
