BEIRUT — It is unfortunate that the more military and other heavy-handed efforts the United States and friends have exerted to fight terrorism in the last four years, the greater and more diffused has become the terror threat around the world. A core weakness in the American government’s approach to terrorism since September 11, 2001, has been a wild disproportion between its faulty analysis of the terror threat and its ferocious actions to confront it.
Washington’s use of unilateral military and diplomatic power to change the world in order to protect Americans has been based on a series of analyses and reactions only occasionally built on dispassionate assessments and accurate facts. Rather, the United States has unleashed the military Marines and the Diplomatic Marines (Condoleezza Rice and Karen Hughes) on the strength of a peculiarly neoconservative American blend of deep ideology, bold initiatives, skewed scholarship, sweeping emotionalism, significant knowledge gaps, and a raging bull sense that America is powerful and can do whatever it desires to change the world in order to assuage American hurt and vulnerability.
The consequent errors in the American-led “global war on terrorism” are clear for all to see, along with only a few successes, leaving the world on balance a much more messy and dangerous place than when the troops were unleashed. This is not a problem that is inherent in American culture, but rather one that reflects the distorted and flawed approaches of the neoconservative-led Bush administration.
Americans generally are much more systematic, logical and effective at addressing problems or threats. They usually correctly outline the nature of the problem, separate symptoms from causes, identify the different underlying causes and their linkages, and finally devise an appropriate response, including short-term tactical moves as well as longer term strategic plans.
Americans tend to be more like engineers than ideologues, fixing problems and facing challenges more methodically than emotionally. Perhaps a good example before our eyes has been the U.S. multi-sector response after the initial sloppy government-reaction to Hurricane Katrina. The subsequent improvement in emergency assistance by agencies and individuals, after the initial week’s mediocrity, comprises a classic American example of can-do engineering and clarity of action.
Why hasn’t this same approach been applied to the problem of terrorism, where instead of sensible strategy based on clarity of analysis and purpose, the U.S. has responded mostly with cowboys and cowgirls?
As I had assumed would ultimately happen, Americans themselves have now come forward to correct this problem, drawing on their best minds and most honest intellectual and political traditions to tackle the terrorism threat more seriously. That means assessing it in a more complete manner than the sophomoric Bush administration’s preference to reduce complex and criminal acts to simplistic slogans geared more to children than mature adults, e.g., “they hate our freedoms” or “you’re with us or with the terrorists”. In word and action, the Bush crowd misdiagnoses the nature of the terror threat and responds with counterproductive military policies that only increase the terror problem and make Americans even less safe.
They also insult the intelligence and decency of ordinary American citizens, who have a right not to be treated like children by their own government.
The more sensible antidote to the Bush and Lady Warriors approach to making the world safe was manifested last week with the publication of the results of an important conference that was held in Washington, D.C. The noteworthy gathering generated the most comprehensive, integrated and useful analysis of the terror threat and America’s appropriate response that I have seen since September 11, 2001. I urge interested readers to review the summaries of the final working group papers, which are available, with video of the conference, at http://www.americaspurpose.org.
The National Policy Forum on Terrorism, Security and America’s Purpose was organized by the New America Foundation in collaboration with the Democracy Coalition Project, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Hauser Foundation, New York Community Trust, the Open Society Institute, and Partnership for a Secure America. It built upon a global summit on Democracy and Terrorism organized by the Club of Madrid on the first anniversary of the Madrid train attacks.
Five working groups of 150 renowned scholars, expert practitioners, former government officials, and private sector representatives examined terrorism’s underlying causes, homeland security and freedom, confronting terrorism overseas, spreading democracy, and America’s grand strategy. They concluded, among other things, that the current approach of a global war on terrorism has failed to make the U.S. more secure, suggesting instead that Washington “must repair key alliances and reconstruct the multilateral partnerships that have benefited American interests since World War II.”
They said the U.S. occupation of Iraq has “catalyzed a global jihad, providing the training ground for the next generation of terrorists and alienating any potential partners,” and suggested instead that the United States should use its soft power assets — the power of its ideas, culture and values — as “essential elements in a more comprehensive strategy against terrorism.”
Very significantly, they urged the U.S. to fight terrorism by considering the underlying grievances that terrorists exploit in furthering their aims and ideologies. “Uniting the victims of political violence around the world will enable people to move beyond national and political divisions and forge a common agenda,” they concluded.
An important working group on promoting democracy globally concluded that “the consolidation of democratic regimes in the greater Middle East will make the American people more secure. The United States, however, must stand behind grassroots campaigns, support moderate Islamist groups and lead by example.”
This is an important and timely piece of work because it tries to analyze the terrorism threat with the complexity that it requires. It correctly notes, for example, the subtle and varying distinctions and relations of religion, politics and terrorism, and the linkages between democracy and security. It is also important for looking globally at the terror problem and its resolution, exploring policies and underlying issues in the terror cycle in the Arab-Islamic world, Europe, the U.S. and other places with equal diligence. This sort of work represents America at its best in terms of intellectual honesty. This is why so many of us around the world admire and love America, especially when it respects its own founding values.
Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.
Copyright ©2005 Rami G. Khouri
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Released: 10 September 2005
Word Count: 1,038
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