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9-26-01
Bin Laden or Terrorism: Getting Clear about the Real Enemy
By Michael Gottsegen
The United
States is engaged in creating a global coalition against terror, but we must be clear
about our aims and careful about whom we permit to join this alliance. When President Bush
declares to all the people of the world that they are either for us or against us, and
promises that all states that harbor terrorists will be punished, it is not surprising
that almost every country hastens to declare its condemnation of the terrorists and to
pledge its support for the United States. We welcome these declarations of support, of
course, and if our goal is limited to routing out and destroying Osama bin Laden – or
whomever else is found to be responsible for the attacks upon the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon – accepting all who desire to join with us in our fight might make
sense. On this basis, we might even accept
the Taliban into our coalition if its leaders reversed themselves and declared their
desire to make common cause with us in ridding Afghanistan of bin Laden. If, however, our
overriding goal is to eradicate global terrorism, then we cannot allow governments that we
believe to harbor, aid or abet terrorism to be part of this alliance. If we turn a blind
eye to their support of terrorism today because they promise to join us in our fight
against bin Laden, then we shall find tomorrow that though bin Laden is gone, there are
other bin Ladens who stand ready to take his place, and that these successors have been
nurtured by states that we permitted to join the anti-bin Laden coalition.
Consider
such states as Syria, Iran and Libya, each of which has condemned the attack upon the
World Trade Center. What should this condemnation earn them? Membership in our coalition
against terrorism? Freedom from American wrath when we take military measures or impose
economic sanctions against countries that harbor terrorists? To grant these benefits would
be a grave mistake. No states that support or harbor terrorists should be permitted to
join our coalition because once such states have joined the coalition, it will become
impolitic for Washington to call the behavior of our “allies” into question.
Instead, our leaders will feel compelled to declare that “The Syrians have turned
over a new leaf,” or that “The moderates now have the upper hand in Iran,”
even though these countries continue to support their own favorite terrorists and
terrorist networks because they believe it serves their own political purposes to do so. But it is just this distinction between useful
proxies and inconvenient and hence expendable terrorists that cannot be allowed to stand
if the fight against terrorism is to have any chance of making a real difference. For it
must be remembered that many of the relatively autonomous terror-wielding “non-state
actors ” of today – including Osama bin Laden -- are top-of-the-class
“graduates” of state-sponsored terrorist organizations.
Accordingly,
our war against terrorism must be waged against the terrorist “schools,” the
“teachers,” the “graduates” and the “students,” as well as
the “superintendents” and their state supporters. In short, only after a state
has proven that its own house is in order – by ceasing to provide direct or indirect
financial and logistical support to terrorist organizations, by shutting down local
terrorist training camps and related political or financial front organizations, and by
ceasing to be a safe haven for terrorists more generally -- should it be freed from the
threat of finding itself on the receiving end of our military force. And certainly no
state that has not passed this litmus test should be allowed to become part of our
coalition against terror unless the argument for making an exception in a particular case
is overwhelming. (We might, for instance, need to grant an exception in exchange for the
use of a country’s airfields – though not, I would argue, in exchange for
over-flight rights, since the airspace of a state that supports terror – an outlaw
state really -- should not be regarded as sacrosanct.)
Many argue,
of course, that we should be willing to accept a country like Iran or Syria as a coalition
partner because we need these countries as allies, at least in the initial stages of the
military campaign against the Taliban and bin Laden, both for logistical reasons and, more
importantly, to inoculate the U.S. against the charge that it is making war on Islam, a
charge that would be blunted somewhat if a number of Arab countries were willing to be
counted among the members the coalition. It
is further argued that it would be easier for the more conservative Arab regimes –
such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states -- to give public support to the
anti-terror coalition if the more radical members of the Arab League were to sign on as
well, since the latter would in effect provide political cover for the former. Finally, it
is argued that accepting the support of such regimes for the first – the bin Laden --
stage of this campaign does not mean that we must accept them for the second stage of our
campaign when we shift our focus to the state sponsors of terrorism.
Such
arguments do have some validity, but they should be outweighed by the fact that accepting
such regimes as members of the coalition against terror from the outset will make it far
harder for us to achieve our more general objective of ending global terrorism. Not only
is it unlikely that we will have the political will to pressure our “allies”
into compliance in the future if we have not required it from them at the outset, but the
moral fudge and sheer hypocrisy that the “big tent” would represent would surely
engender widespread cynicism about our real aims in this war and undermine public support
in America and around the world. To this same
end, it is important that the United States be prepared to review (and, where necessary,
make changes in) its own foreign policy and foreign aid programs to insure that it is not
perceived as directly or indirectly aiding and abetting regimes that in effect terrorize
their own citizens. Certainly the United States has supported such regimes in the past
both in Latin America and in Asia. To acknowledge this is not intended to imply a moral
equivalence between the practices of (e.g.) the Chilean military and the terrorists who
attacked the World Trade Center. There are crucial differences of scale and intent. And
debates about moral equivalence aside, the United States’ government has an
undeniable moral duty to defend its citizens and to punish those who have inflicted
grievous injury upon the American people. Nonetheless, if we are to prevail in the court
of global opinion we must understand that moral consistency – and the appearance of
moral consistency -- are imperative if our war on global terrorism is not to be perceived
as merely self-serving.
Before we
attack anyone it is essential that we have unequivocal proof if who is responsible and we
must place this proof before the court of world opinion. Those whom we deem to be
responsible – either directly or indirectly -- for the attacks upon the American
homeland on September 11th must be brought to justice. An object lesson must be
taught to deter other terrorists and their state supporters who might otherwise be
inspired to follow in the footsteps of the perpetrators of these murderous deeds. But as President Bush has emphasized, our fight
against terrorism cannot stop there. In addition we must act to put an end to state-based
terrorism more generally. In this fight against the state sponsors of terror military
force is not the only weapon in our arsenal, and while it is the most dramatic, it is
probably not the most important. Where it is deemed that military action would be
imprudent or ineffective, we must be equally ready to employ political and economic means
to force those who aid and abet terror into compliance with the norms of the civilized
community. Political isolation and economic sanctions are also admittedly imperfect means
and are not always effective in bringing about the desired end. In the case of Iraq, for
example, they have failed to have the desired effect, and yet in the cases of Yugoslavia
and South Africa they have proven most effective. But because of the inherent limits in
the efficacy of military means against such an enemy as we are presently facing, we must
employ the full range of means and be willing to apply them against all states that we
deem to have placed themselves on the side of terror. More important still, we must demand
from members of the anti-terrorism coalition that they join with us in this broader
campaign and that they cooperate in the imposition of military and economic sanctions.
In fact,
while America has the ability to go it alone militarily – since the terrorists and
the governments that support them are hardly a match for the power of the American
military – we do not have the power on our own to isolate rogue states politically
and economically, which must be done if we are to gain the upper hand in this war. But
this we certainly cannot do without the utmost level of international cooperation in the
imposition and maintenance of political and economic sanctions against these outlaw
states. We must enlist both NATO and the
United Nations to this end, in support of a new international norm that declares that
those countries that provide direct or indirect (active or passive) support for terrorism
and terrorists will be placed beyond the pale of the civilized community, as we did with
Rhodesia and South Africa in an earlier era. Our war against terrorism will be long and
the challenges in our way are many. But we will condemn ourselves, right from the start,
to ultimate failure if we begin by recruiting into our coalition against terror countries
that, even as they offer their condolences for our losses, continue to support terror as a
political expedient in their own neighborhoods.
One great
fear as we go forward is that the coming war will be unending and terribly costly in human
terms. But this fear presupposes that we will need to make war upon each and every state
that aids or abets the terrorists. This hardly seems likely, however. Once the regimes in
Iraq or Syria, for example, have been toppled or made to pay an extremely high price for
their continuing support of terrorism, it is likely that other state sponsors of terrorism
will be impelled to clean up their act forthwith, lest the sword of rough justice come
down upon their regimes as well. As a general rule, military force should be the last and
not the first resort, even against regimes that support terrorism. Before we reach for the
sword, economic and political carrots and sticks ought to be tried. But when the use of
these sanctions proves ineffective at producing the modification of behavior that we seek,
we must not shrink from the application of force. The problem until now has been our
willingness to endlessly tolerate behaviors that should have no place in the civilized
world. As a result, terrorists and their state sponsors have been able to operate with
relative impunity and thus without the fear of punishment that should have acted as a
check upon their behavior. Our challenge today is to act decisively and to make clear to
all the terrorists and their sponsors that the global community, under the leadership of
the United States, is no longer willing to look the other way.
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