WASHINGTON - If US President George W Bush
is counting on Sunday's "Freedom Walk" and country
music festival at the Pentagon to revive the
patriotic spirit (and rally his sagging approval
ratings) that followed the September 11, 2001
terrorist attacks, he is likely to be very
disappointed.
And it won't be just because
of his administration's fatal bungling of the
Hurricane Katrina disaster, which will certainly
overshadow the Pentagon's fourth-anniversary
commemoration of September
11,
nor even due to the growing popular discontent
over the way things have been going in Iraq.
Although both developments pose
potentially lethal threats to Bush's continued
effectiveness, the president's management of his
"global war on terrorism", which he declared in
the immediate aftermath of the September 11
attacks, is increasingly under siege.
Public approval of his handling of that
war, which, in contrast to steadily declining
confidence in Iraq policy, had remained remarkably
solid over most of the past four years, has fallen
sharply in recent months to a razor-thin majority.
Recent polls have also shown that US citizens see
themselves as increasingly vulnerable to terrorist
attack as a result of the administration's
actions.
It now appears that much of the
national security elite has made a similar
assessment and, in an indication of the shifting
political winds, is now more willing to speak out
about it.
A growing number of policy
experts argue that Bush's strategy for conducting
the "war on terrorism" - particularly his
preference for military action over "soft power"
and for working with compliant "coalitions of the
willing" over independent allies and multilateral
mechanisms - is in urgent need of redirection.
This was made abundantly clear by the
appearance of a who's who of national security and
foreign policy experts at a well-attended
conference in Washington this week that appeared
designed chiefly to assert the existence of
alternative frameworks for conducting the "war on
terrorism" on the eve of its fourth anniversary.
"There is an emerging consensus that while
a military response to 9/11 was necessary, it was
certainly not sufficient for dealing with
terrorism over the long term," said Steven
Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program
at the New America Foundation (NAF) and the main
convener of the national policy forum,"Terrorism,
Security and America's Purpose: Towards a More
Comprehensive Strategy."
"Enlightened
diplomacy must be combined with a robust
commitment to compete vigorously for hearts and
minds," he said.
Capping the September 6-7
conference, which was addressed by former
secretary of state Madeleine Albright, former
North Atlantic Treaty Organization commander
Wesley Clark and Nebraska Republican Senator Chuck
Hagel, among others political heavyweights, was
the publication of a statement by the new
Partnership for a Secure America, a bipartisan
group of former veteran lawmakers and top
national-security officials, including half a
dozen secretaries of state and national security
advisers, that implicitly criticized Bush's
conduct on the war.
Noting that "terrorism
is a tactic, not an enemy", the statement stressed
that success in the war will require "strong
partnerships with allies based on mutual respect";
living up to traditional US principles, such as
the rule of law, in conducting the war at home as
well as overseas; and "breaking our
over-dependence on oil".
In contrast to
Bush's rhetoric about "evil" and "evil-doers" as
the source of Islamist terrorism, the statement
also stressed that "terrorism is a political act
requiring a political response", which, in
addition to promoting democratic institutions in
the Muslim world, should also include "addressing
legitimate grievances", the existence of which the
administration has been loathe to concede over the
past four years.
While the statement did
not define what those "legitimate grievances"
were, a number of speakers - some rarely heard in
Washington's more exalted and politically
sensitive policy circles - made clear that US
policies in the Greater Middle East should be
included.
"They do not hate us for what we
are, but for what we do," declared NAF fellow Nir
Rosen, whose writings in Asia Times Online and The
New Yorker magazine about his experience in
insurgent-controlled Fallujah, Iraq last year won
wide notice. (See Inside the Iraq
resistance)
"The American
empire will cease to be a target when it ceases
directly or indirectly to oppress weaker people or
to support those who oppress them. The motives for
Muslim terrorists directed against America are no
secret. They are clearly stated over and over
again by the most reliable sources, the
perpetrators themselves ... Israel, Iraq,
Afghanistan, Chechnya, Guantanamo, America's
presence on holy Muslim land in the Arabian
peninsula and American support for dictatorial or
corrupt regimes. An American withdrawal from Iraq
and an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied
territories to the 1967 lines would do more to
fight terrorism than any military action ever
could. So would American empathy."
Similarly, Robert Pape, a political
scientist at the University of Chicago whose
recent book Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic
of Suicide Terrorism is the most comprehensive
profile of successful suicide bombers, asserted
that "the war on terrorism is heading south" and
will likely continue doing so until Washington
recognizes that its military presence in the Gulf
region is al-Qaeda's "best recruitment tool".
Both Pape and Harvard University expert
Stephen Walt called for Washington to return to an
older regional strategy of "off-shore balancing"
in the Gulf region, in which the US would
intervene directly only when the local balance of
power breaks down, and even then as a last resort.
The Bush administration's policy of "going
on the offensive" against perceived foes since
September 11, according to Walt, whose own new
book, Taming American Power: The Global
Response to US Primacy has won strong reviews
in mainstream publications, has "made us look
trigger-happy [and] ... made [Osama] bin Laden's
accusations that we wanted to dominate the world
look correct".
These views were backed up
by the findings of task forces, each made up of a
dozen or more experts with a wide range of
political views, that have worked on
recommendations on the "war of terror" since last
spring.
One group, chaired by Louise
Richardson, dean of the Radcliffe Institute for
Advanced Studies at Harvard, reached unanimity on
the necessity for Washington to be more sensitive
to the causes of terrorism. "[Members] also reject
the view that to address grievances exploited by
terrorist leaders is to reward terrorism, quite
the contrary, we agree that addressing these
grievances is essential to diminishing support for
terrorism."
Task force members, according
to Richardson, also called "for undermining
radicals and strengthening moderates [in the
Islamic world] by reevaluating our policies [and]
addressing their grievances ... that serve to
mobilize resentment", including resolving the
Israeli/Palestinian issue that "would not satisfy
the absolutists but ... would undermine their
support by reducing the reservoir of bitterness
among their potential recruits".
A second
task force on grand strategy, headed by Charles
Kupchan of the Council on Foreign Relations,
agreed that the Bush administration "had
overreacted" to the September 11 attacks by
"turning its back" on many of Washington's
traditional foreign policy objectives, including
the strengthening of international institutions
and alliances built up during the Cold War and
making the struggle against terrorism the defining
mission of US grand strategy.
