Yes, Virginia, There Is a War On
CLAUSEN, CHRISTOPHER
Second Thoughts Yes, Virginia, There Is a War On By Christopher Clausen On October 26, 2001, United States forces accidentally bombed a Red Cross warehouse in Kabul, Afghanistan, for the...
...We still appear to be looking for "moderate" Talibans to serve in a new government...
...After a drastic increase in the intensity of the bombing, Kabul and most of the country fell to the Northern Alliance or other opposition groups...
...But the problem is not that the war is taking a long time...
...Above all we are not talking about Vietnam...
...Of all the criticisms ever made of the coalition-obsessed Bush Administration, that of "unilateralism" has always been the most far-fetched...
...After the enemy has been defeated, with his surviving forces completely under our control, there will be plenty of work for organizations like the Red Cross, and we will be glad to help them deliver aid...
...that's the risk of magazine journalism in a time of crisis...
...With the exception of poor, isolated Afghanistan, neither the governments nor the citizens of those countries that sponsor and encourage terrorism have yet been given much reason to think that doing so is going to be seriously bad for their health...
...To anyone who has been paying attention, it came as no surprise that the Bush Administration chose the first option...
...To put it mildly, many of our allies there and elsewhere won't like it...
...One is to see that relevant official heads roll and to cut back on any targeting that might possibly bring about such a result in the future...
...Second Thoughts Yes, Virginia, There Is a War On By Christopher Clausen On October 26, 2001, United States forces accidentally bombed a Red Cross warehouse in Kabul, Afghanistan, for the second time...
...I hope so...
...Despite the approach of winter, military action in Afghanistan goes in fits and starts as we try to set up a successor to a regime we have yet to finish off—a regime that has, like Nazi Germany half a century ago, been efficiently killing its political opponents even as its doom rapidly approaches...
...They have a point...
...As I write, teams of Special Forces and other U. S. military units are hunting for bin Laden, his lieutenants, and the surviving Taliban leaders...
...The second possibility is that something new will happen—perhaps another attack, something much bigger than the anthrax sideshow—to make us get serious...
...The UnitedStates, they were apparently concluding, was not serious after all...
...We are talking about a war to the death with maniacs...
...The Pentagon tells us that enemy forces use mosques and other civilian structures to shelter troops from air raids and as command-and-control centers...
...Simultaneously with press revelations of contacts between Iraq's secret service and the September 11 hijackers, the State Department tacitly assures our Arab "'allies" that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein can live out his days in peace, along with every other sponsor of terrorism except maybe the Taliban...
...and that as in downtown Berlin and Tokyo during late 1944 and early 1945, those who are not part of the war effort remain in a war zone at their own considerable risk...
...Wouldn't it have made more sense, when the destruction of the World Trade Center was fresh in everybody's mind, to inform that deeply pathological region of the globe that henceforth any country supporting or harboring terrorists would suffer a prohibitive punishment starting immediately...
...so did many domestic commentators...
...To a peaceful intellectual who has no foreign policy expertise and no experience of military matters, it seems likely that one of two things is going to occur...
...The United States has many friends in the world, but also some bitter enemies, not all of them in the Arab countries...
...After three weeks of bombing, the Taliban seemed undaunted, while its numerous supporters in Pakistan and throughout the Arab world gainedheart...
...Reaction was swift and scathing...
...We can't win this game and shouldn't try...
...If we turn out to be serious, the Arab world (at least) is going to end up looking a lot different...
...It is a brutal business, not to be undertaken lightly or out of vanity...
...By the time you read this tirade, things may have changed out of recognition...
...that it intends to win...
...When Russian President Vladimir V Putin, the butcher of Chechnya, cynically hopes we won't kill any more Afghan civilians, we pretend to accept his good faith...
...When he made those words his own, President Bush made a promise that will take a lot ofkeeping...
...Imagine how different history wouldhave been if public opinion in the German-speaking world had been a matter of vital concern to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill...
...The trouble is that since September, there have been such mixed signs as to whether he really meant them...
...I know, President Bush uttered words to this effect in his widely praised address to Congress...
...Why would a country that is truly serious about fighting terrorism wherever it exists, and repeatedly promises that governments harboring terrorists will share their fate, ally itself so closely with Saudi Arabia, Syria, Pakistan, or Yasir Arafat's miserable little fiefdom...
...Otherwise it will lose...
...Administration spokesmen repeatedly urge the public to be patient in what they say will be a long and difficult struggle...
...How could a country that meant what it said demand that Israel, the primary victim of terrorism and the one Middle Eastern country where Arabs can vote for their government, stop retaliating against the relentless, well-financed suicide bombers who want to destroy it...
...At the moment, though, it is hard to know exactly what to wish for or what to fear...
...Secretary of State Colin L. Powell informs a Congressional hearing that the definition of terrorism is flexible...
...No sane person doubts that these enemies will carry out similar massacres again and again on a much larger scale if they can, as part of their quest to drive "Jews and Crusaders" out of the Islamic world and turn the entire region into an enlarged version of Afghanistan under the Taliban...
...Liberated Afghans shaved their beards, burned their burkas, and gave thanks for American intervention—scenes that one hopes made an impression in other Muslim countries...
...Beyond that, it basically has two options...
...The only self-respecting answer is: So much the worse for them...
...To any people who hate us enough to attack us as some did on September 11, the safe, sensible, moral response is the one Republican Senator John S. McCain of Arizona gave: "God may have mercy on you, but we won't...
...In short, we are not talking here about a Clintonian level of humanitarian intervention in Haiti or Bosnia or Kosovo...
...Until then, they might be wise to get the hell out of town...
...If you intend to carry on a real war against terrorists or anybody else, youhave to showyou mean business...
...Maybe the Bush Administration has a comprehensive plan according to which everything really is going swimmingly...
...The other option is to point out gently but firmly that this country is engaged in a war it did not seek...
...As Todd Beamer, one of the many heroes of September 11, immortally said in his last moments of life over Pennsylvania, "Let's roll...
...One possibility is that the United States will drastically scale back its definition of success and, as we are increasingly being warned, the "war" will last formany inconclusive years...
...embassies in Africa...
...When the butchers of Beijing announce in the most general terms that fighting terrorism is a worthy ideal, though they can't go so far as to support bombing Afghanistan, we thank them profusely and drop hints that perhaps we wouldn't defend Taiwan after all, let alone shed any further tears over Tibet...
...When there is a serious chance of hitting civilian or humanitarian targets, according to this line of thinking, the Armed Forces should stay their hand even at the risk of letting Taliban or Al Qaeda forces (who intentionally slaughter civilians at will) get away...
...The second month was certainly an improvement on the first...
...Whenever we stand back, many Europeans and Arabs complain that we are isolationists...
...It is that by some crucial measures we still seem to be heading in the wrong direction...
...We are being told at the same time, as if it should give us pause, that many people in Arab countries, and even outside them hate the United States, a country that receives more than half the world's immigration...
...IN THIS CASE the enemy is someone who hijacked American airliners full of ordinary people and crashed them into American buildings full of other ordinary people...
...It is entirely possible that Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar, and the rest of the psychopathic brethren will be taking delivery on their 70 virgins any day now...
...Cole and two U.S...
...We are told this not as an explanation for obliterating those mosques, but rather as an excuse for letting Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders get away...
...But now we learn that can be negotiated for the purpose of letting some of those same allies off the hook...
...whenever we intervene abroad, they complain that we are imperialists...
...This wavering, apologetic way of fighting a war is no way to retain the respect of either group...
...But it is also true that large elements in the Islamic world repudiate, in word or deed, every part of this statement...
...How could the Pentagon, which prides itself on the precision of its munitions, have made such a blunder not once but twice...
...That is, you identify your enemy and kill him relentlessly wherever he is until those of him who are still alive surrender...
...Simply on the basis of public relations, how did the attacked United States get itself into the position of begging so many Islamic police states to pay lip service, at such exorbitant cost, to a war against the terrorism that the very same Islamic world has been fomenting and supporting for 30 years...
...The result would be a gradual but crippling loss of national confidence...
...Since that discouraging start, the conduct of the Afghan campaign has grown much more serious...
...Nation-building" has returned, partly for humanitarian reasons but more importantly in an impossible attempt to appease unappeasable critics of America...
...To show how sensitive we are, we make a big deal about the goodness of Islam and the spiritual significance of Ramadan...
...The decision encapsulated how it initially ran what it described, with increasing implausibility, as a war...
...who blew up the Khobar Towers and the U.S.S...
...Hitherto even the Clinton Administration understood terrorism to mean the deliberate, indiscriminate killing of civilians for a political purpose...
...who kills Israelis, Americans and fellow Muslims with the same blithe eagerness...
...Christian leaders in America and Europe assure us that Islam rejects hatred and murder, while rightly emphasizing that we are not at war with a religion or a civilization...
...While a free society should never become as ruthless as this particular enemy, it needs to be every bit as determined to win...
...In such a situation the Defense Department can, should, and did express regret, as it should and does whenever it accidentally causes civilian deaths...
...Not only those elements of the foreign media (Al Jazeera, the BBC, Reuters) that wish the United States no good made a big deal of it...
...So far, in spite of recent successes, this remains in some respects a phony war, much like the war that Britain and France waged against Nazi Germany in late 1939 and early 1940...
Vol. 84 • November 2001 • No. 6
