Page 2 of 4 The core misconceptions in
the 'war on
terror' By John Feffer
administration has acquired carte
blanche to transform not only certain US policies
but the entire policy-making structure.
Congressional critics of the
administration have challenged the worse excesses
of this fearful crusade. There have been campaigns
against torture, the abrogation of habeas
corpus, and unlawful surveillance. But the
opposition has been unwilling or
unable to challenge the heart
of the administration's terrorism policy. It, too,
has been fearful - of being labeled "weak on
terrorism". The administration and its mainstream
critics still buy into several core misconceptions
about terrorism: that we need a war in the first
place, that terrorists represent a major threat to
US national interests, that terrorists are
attacking "our way of life".
Until we
address these core misconceptions, workable
alternatives cannot replace the current failed
policies.
Misconception:Terrorism is the major threat to US and global
interests The September 11 attacks were
horrifying. So were the 1998 bombings of US
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Terrorist acts in
Bali (2002), Istanbul (2003), Madrid (2004),
London (2005), Delhi (2005), Amman (2005), Algiers
(2007), and elsewhere have been equally without
justification.
The world's major leaders
have argued, as former British prime minister Tony
Blair has said, that terrorism is the greatest
global threat of the 21st century. "No challenge
is greater than the threat of terrorism,"
Australian Prime Minister John Howard proclaimed
in 2006. "Terrorism is the greatest threat to
world peace," said Russia's Vladimir Putin in
2000. [5] In the United States, there is a
bipartisan consensus around terrorism as a major
threat. In its 2004 party platform, the Democratic
Party, too, put winning "the global war on terror"
as the top challenge facing the United States.
Terrorist acts, by claiming innocent
lives, are indeed reprehensible. But does
terrorism pose a major threat? We can measure the
size of a challenge in several ways: the acuity of
the threat, its scope, and its likely duration.
Measured in terms of acuity, terrorism
pales in comparison to nuclear weapons and climate
change. A nuclear exchange and several degrees of
global warming threaten the existence of the
entire planet rather than select targets on the
surface. Terrorists have no interest in destroying
the world, nor do they possess the means to end
the human race. Their goals and capacities are
considerably more circumscribed, and that applies
even to al-Qaeda.
In terms of scope, the
number of victims of terrorism remains relatively
low compared to the casualty rates connected to
disease, malnutrition, or conventional military
conflict. The number of terrorist attacks has
certainly increased since the invasion of Iraq. In
2001, the peak in terrorist fatalities to that
time, international terrorist attacks killed 3,572
persons and injured 1,083.
By 2006, those
numbers had risen to 11,170 deaths and 38,191
injuries, approximately half occurring in Iraq
alone. [6] In contrast even to these higher
numbers, however, more than 2,000 children die
each day in sub-Saharan Africa as a result of
malaria, a preventable disease. [7] Several
hundred thousand people died as a result of the
2004 earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean.
Nearly four million people have died as a result
of the Congo conflict.
Finally, there is
the question of duration. Al-Qaeda is a relatively
recent phenomenon. Its concerns were originally
quite specific - to compel the United States to
withdraw its troops from Saudi Arabia. It was on
the verge of extinction after the collapse of its
patron, the Taliban, in Afghanistan in 2001. If
approached with the appropriate legal mechanisms -
and with the discriminate force associated with
law enforcement undertaken with due respect for
human rights [8] - al-Qaeda will once again
retreat into obscurity.
Regional wars, by
contrast, have been with us for millennia. Global
inequalities have persisted since the age of
colonialism. Though of more recent vintage,
nuclear weapons will be very difficult to get rid
of, and the half-life of uranium 235 is 700
million years. These are indeed durable
challenges. In another decade, after appropriate
counter-terrorism measures, the current "greatest
threat to world peace" will likely be demoted in
importance. Terrorism, after all, was at the top
of Ronald Reagan's agenda when he took office in
1981. But as the number of attacks began to
decline, particularly in the 1990s, so did the US
evaluation of the threat. [9]
It can be
plausibly argued that the symbolic nature of
terrorist attacks far exceeds the number of
casualties. The argument here is not to ignore
terrorism but simply put it into perspective. To
elevate terrorism to the status of a "major
threat" is to give more power to the terrorists
than they deserve.
Misconception: A "war" on
terrorism is the only solution. It is
meaningless to say we are fighting a "war on
terror". Terrorism is a particular tactic of
political violence. Wars are conducted between
states. Declaring a war on terror is like
declaring war on serial murderers. War is what
al-Qaeda wants. Such language elevates the
terrorists to the level of warriors in a battle.
The terrorists are criminals, not warriors, and
should be treated accordingly.
Many of the
real successes in combating al-Qaeda in the years
since September 11 have come from treating the
terrorists as criminals. International cooperation
on intelligence as well as police work and
domestic investigations have been particularly
helpful. War - the use of military force - has
been counterproductive. The invasion and
occupation of Iraq, which was falsely presented as
part of the "global war on terrorism," in fact
served as al-Qaeda's most effective recruitment
campaign.
By enshrining preventive war as
a policy doctrine in the national security
strategy in general and for combating terrorism in
particular, the Bush administration has actually
reduced rather than increased US security in
several ways. It has reinforced the image of the
United States as eager to use military force and
willing to do so without regard for international
law and legitimacy. This has led other countries
to resist US foreign policy goals more broadly,
including efforts to fight terrorism.
Advocating preemption also warns potential
enemies to hide the very assets that Washington
might wish to take action against. Finally, if the
United States enshrines preemption as a core
policy doctrine, it legitimates its adoption by
other countries, which increases overall global
instability and reduces security, as other
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