NEW YORK — President Bush recently came in for some severe
criticism when he suggested that there would be no absolute victory
in the war on terrorism. “I don’t think you can win,” Bush told NBC
News. “But I think you can create conditions so that those who use
terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world.”
This perceived diffidence invited a spate of scathing ripostes
from Democratic strategists, who contended that the presidents’
remarks called into question his leadership in the war on
terrorism. Meanwhile, the known terrorism expert, John Edwards,
took the opportunity to point out that the Democratic ticket
suffered from nothing so embarrassing as balanced reasoning. “The
war on terrorism is absolutely winnable,” he gleefully
declared.
All of which forced the Bush campaign, under assault for an
alleged flip-flop, to beat a hasty retreat from the president’s
comments. Nuance, alas, had proved too much of a nuisance.
NO DOUBT THIS WOULD dismay the Walter Laqueur. In the current issue
of Policy Review, the venerable historian marshals his
considerable expertise to explain the very point made by the president:
terrorism, as a phenomenon, is insuperable.
After persuasively striking down the notion, extolled by
left-leaning detractors of the war on terror, that terrorism can
simply be attributed to economic causes — Laqueur cites several
studies of the Indian subcontinent noting that terrorism is far
more common in affluent provinces, like Punjab, than comparatively
poorer regions, like North Bihar — or to the stalemated
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Laqueur writes:
There can be no final victory in the fight against
terrorism, for terrorism (rather than full-scale war) is the
contemporary manifestation of conflict, and conflict will not
disappear from earth as far as one can look ahead and human nature
has not undergone a basic change.
Ill as such a peroration would seem to bode for the fate of the
free world, the portrait Laqueur paints of the terrorism threat is
not entirely pessimistic; a terrorism girlie-man Laqueur assuredly
is not. True, Laqueur does not foresee the wholesale extirpation of
global terrorism. However, he does point to several possibilities
for its eventual restraint. For instance, he notes the Egyptian
phenomenon called “Salafi burnout,” in which Muslim youth, as they
near their late thirties, outgrow and discard their erstwhile
extremism. The effect of such second thoughts is, in Laqueur’s
estimation, to curb the fanatical activist movements these young
Muslims comprise, and which serve as fertile recruiting grounds for
international terrorist networks. Here is how Laqueur puts it:
Like all other movements in history, messianic groups
are subject to routinization, to the circulation of generations, to
changing political circumstances, and to sudden or gradual changes
in the intensity of religious belief. This could happen as a result
of either victories or defeats.
It is perhaps not too presumptuous to suggest that, barring only
the Michael Moore-margins of the terror-cheering Left, we in the
Western world would prefer the latter course. But how to defeat
terrorism? Laqueur has two strategies in mind.
First, governments should launch an anti-terrorist
campaign only if they are able and willing to apply massive force
if need be. Second, terrorists have to ask themselves whether it is
in their own best interest to cross the line between nuisance
operations and attacks that threaten the vital interests of their
enemies and will inevitably lead to massive
counterblows.
In brief, terrorists have to be made to understand that the
total victory they seek is impossible. When dealing with fanatics
who take their cues from a higher power, and even then with
considerable improvisation, this is no small challenge. But Laqueur
believes that willing nations are equal to it. Willing being the
key word. For, as Laqueur notes, unless there is overwhelming
public support for combating terrorism, its defeat will remain an
impossible goal. You can’t very well win if you don’t fight.
MOUNTING A SUSTAINED enthusiasm for warfare is, as Alexis de
Tocqueville pointed out, a particular problem for democratic
countries like ours. How, then, to persuade the American people of
the merits of such a war and the need for its continued
prosecution?
Enter Norman Podhoretz. In a sweeping essay in the September issue of
Commentary, the magazine’s longtime editor-in-chief calls,
with characteristic no-holds-barred brio, for a renewed effort in
the fight against terrorism. In its global scope and its essential
aim — the preservation of liberty at home and its extension abroad
— our current war resembles nothing so much as the last global war
in defense of liberty, the Cold War, which Podhoretz calls World
War III. As such, Podhoretz writes, our current battle against
communism’s totalitarian successor — radical Islam —deserves to
be called nothing less than World War IV.
More than a ringing endorsement of President Bush, though it
certainly is that, Podhoretz intends a powerful defense of the Bush
administration’s vision for winning the war on terrorism, the Bush
doctrine. Critics of the Bush doctrine increasingly claim that this
doctrine is a radical detour from once-sound American foreign
policy. Podhoretz strongly disagrees. Indeed, he notes that the
Bush administration’s strategy for the war on terrorism stands on
solid historical ground: Just as the Truman doctrine of 1947 rested
on the proposition that “it must be the policy of the United States
to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by
armed minorities or by outside pressure,” the Bush doctrine seeks
to succor freedom’s cause in the Middle East. Necessary to this
end, Podhoretz argues, are the underpinnings of the Bush doctrine,
which he dubs the “four pillars.”
The first pillar is defined as a new “moral attitude” toward
terrorism, a Reaganite certainty in the justness of our cause that
disclaims relativism and dares to call terrorism evil. The second
pillar is a fundamental revision of the definition of terrorism.
Effacing the line between terrorists and their rogue-state patrons,
the Bush doctrine places undemocratic regimes on notice. The third
pillar is perhaps the most controversial: the concept of
preemption. Here Podhoretz is at his finest, taking to task both
Scowcroftian plenipotentiaries (the “unrealist realists” as
Podhoretz later describes them) who favor stability at the expense
of all else, and the Buchananite paleoconservatives who traffic in
conspiracy theories of neoconservatives under every bed and are
eager to ascribe the nefarious influence of Israel to any foreign
policy turn that rankles them. Detailing useless arms control
treaties and the other diplomatic detritus of our foreign policy
failures, Podhoretz contends that preemption is vital to preventing
WMD proliferation. The fourth pillar of the Bush doctrine extends
the same no-nonsense approach to terrorism to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, pledging support to democratic allies
(like Israel) and holding terrorist regimes (like the Arafat-led
Palestinian Authority) to account.
Of course, even those who accept the wisdom of the Bush doctrine
— and polls suggest this is, for now, a majority of Americans —
remain understandably skeptical about the prospects of the Middle
East to undertake serious reform, let alone evolve democratic
governments. Podhoretz, too, is mindful of this great challenge.
But even as he concedes that it is formidable, Podhoretz dismisses
the notion that it is impossible. It is worth excerpting him at
length:
As with democratization, so with the reform and
modernization of Islam. In considering this even more difficult
question, we found ourselves asking whether Islam could really go
on for all eternity resisting the kind of reformation and
modernization that had begun within Christianity and Judaism in the
early modern period. Not that we were so naive as to imagine that
Islam could be reformed overnight, or from the outside. In its
heyday, Islam was able to impose itself on large parts of the world
by the sword; there was no chance today of an inverse instant
transformation of Islam by the force of American arms.
There was, however, a very good chance that a clearing of the
ground, and a sowing of the seeds out of which new political,
economic, and social conditions could grow, would gradually give
rise to correlative religious pressures from within. Such pressures
would take the form of an ultimately irresistible demand on
theologians and clerics to find warrants in the Quran and the
sharia under which it would be possible to remain a good Muslim
while enjoying the blessings of decent government, and even of
political and economic liberty. In this way a course might finally
be set toward the reform and modernization of the Islamic religion
itself.
So is the World War IV winnable? Walter Laqueur is probably
correct that, in the end, we cannot defeat terrorism any more than
we can exorcise human nature’s propensity for doing evil. But
Norman Podhoretz is surely correct that we must continue to wage
the war on terrorism, and that President Bush, and the Bush
doctrine, are essential to our success.
As for the potential of democracy to find purchase in the Arab
world, that question must remain open-ended. But if there is any
hope, I would submit that it lies in the wake of the tragedy in
Beslan, Russia. In an interview with the Telegraph, Omar
Bakri Mohammed, head of the extremist sect al-Muhajiroun, did what
has become standard for Islamist leaders: he found away to excuse
the murder of women and children. “The Mujaheden would not have
wanted to kill those people,” he explained, “because it is strictly
forbidden as a Muslim to deliberately kill women and children. It
is the fault of the Russians.”
Dismaying as such statements are, they may hold out the promise
of reform. After all, if Muslim fanatics can find a way to justify
the murder of women and children, it is not too much to suppose
that, under enough pressure, they will find a way to justify the
virtues of modernity and the freedoms of democratic government.
