Dangers of victory
Pfaff, William
OF SEVERAL HINDS WILLIAM PFAFF DANGERS OF VICTORY Resisting the demand to widen the war I1t is possible to be optimistic, if cautiously so, about the damaging consequences the Taliban's...
...They regard a radical program for overthrowing named regimes in the Islamic world, and installing American client governments, as an invitation to very large troubles...
...There is a crucial difference between the American socalled neoconservatives, ascendant in this administration, and dictionary conservatives, disposed "to preserve what is established...
...Rather, de-escalation is what is needed...
...It seems about to give it military courts of exception, by which the United States unilaterally assumes a right to seize any non-U.S...
...The problems of succession for such regimes are insoluble by foreigners, as Afghanistan at the present moment vividly demonstrates (and as George Bush's father grasped at the time of the Gulf War...
...Osama bin Laden's followers succeeded in bringing down the World Trade Center in New York and attacking the Pentagon, but in Afghanistan, where it counts, the rout of the Taliban, their allies and protectors, was greeted with popular rejoicing...
...Some neoconservatives even imply that the U.S...
...The neoconservatives have a program for what they describe as "Phase Two" of the war against terrorism...
...It is an important question because even before September 11, a serious American debate Commonweal 7 December 7,2001 was under way between those who believe that the United States, at the peak of its power, should impose what they expect to become a Pax Americana, and other Americans who believe that such an undertaking would prove a rash and dangerous overreaching...
...The latter by definition are skeptical about foreign policies intended to engineer vast changes in international society...
...military judges, and, if so judged, execute the prisoner...
...Their national candidates for overthrow are the current governments of Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Libya, and Sudan...
...Not even the Taliban's Pashtun constituency would fight for them, or for him...
...In part this follows from the lack of realism in such recommendations...
...If they don't themselves realize that now, or their representatives in Washington fail to do so, they will all, as in Vietnam, discover the truth the hard way...
...person anywhere, try him or her before U.S...
...The latter are often attacked as liberals, afraid to use power, but actually are deeply conservative...
...Secondary administration figures, such as Douglas J. Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, recommend that the United States fight terrorism "at the wholesale level," "compelling" those who don't voluntarily comply with American demands concerning terrorist complicities...
...The last condition of that country could yet prove worse than its first...
...Notwithstanding this, there is not going to be a Pax Americana...
...If the warlords have their way, it is quite possible that the Taliban will soon be back...
...It is needed for another realistic reason: to preserve the domestic health of American society...
...OF SEVERAL HINDS WILLIAM PFAFF DANGERS OF VICTORY Resisting the demand to widen the war I1t is possible to be optimistic, if cautiously so, about the damaging consequences the Taliban's humiliating defeat will have for the reputation and influence of the Islamic fundamentalist movement elsewhere in the Muslim world...
...The warlords who before the Taliban took power had given Afghanistan twenty years of death and chaos are now telling the UN, foreign troops, foreign journalists, and the international aid agencies to get out of their country: They are unwanted...
...America's success in Afghanistan feeds the ambition to escalate, nourishing the illusion that there is a final defeat to be inflicted on evil, with a happy ever-after...
...They say this steers U.S...
...opposed to change...adhering to sound principles...
...The war against evil has, since September 11, given the United States an effective elimination of habeas corpus for foreigners illegally in the country...
...public opinion away from new attacks on guilty Muslim states...
...More sensible figures ask what actually would come from politico-military interventions in still other Muslim countries...
...The reason is that the American people are not imperialists, do not imagine themselves imperialists, and lack the ruthlessness to impose and maintain an empire...
...Looking to the future, the important question is what this victory will do to the United States, which, unlike Islamic fundamentalists of any stripe, has global power and conceives itself as possessing a global destiny...
...And all we need is Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Somalia, Libya, and Sudan in similar condition...
...The Bush administration actually has been remarkably restrained, given the pressure it is under from such individuals within its own ranks, as well as from what must be called the War Party in the press and Congress...
...government is disseminating "disinformation" when the FBI profiles the sender of the anthrax letters as more likely an American crank murderer rather than an Al Qaeda terrorist working under Iraq's influence...
...2001, Los Angeles Times Syndicate International Commonweal 8 December 7,2001...
Vol. 128 • December 2001 • No. 21
