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The grand strategy of the Bush Administration has come into focus. Simply said, it is to go after the international terrorist networks one at a time, peeling them off layer by layer.
The first target is Osama Bin Ladin. Not only is he ultimately responsible for Sept. 11th, but his genius for recruiting murdering fanatics internationally, combining traditional Asian techniques and modern technology, is the greater threat.
In order to meet that immediate goal, Washington has courted wellknown sponsors of terrorism like Syria and Iran. The purpose: to enlist the sympathies of tens of millions of Moslems in a fight against terrorism — emphasizing it is not against Islam — to reduce the pressure on staggering governments in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Algeria. [One can hardly believe we could exchange information, the sine qua non of cooperation.]
But we are only at the beginning of a long process.
Back in the 1960s infancy of this wave of nihilistic terrorism, there was a
sarcastic answer to the hawks: your terrorists are my national liberationists. Like so many other 60s slogans, it has come home to haunt us. Just as a recent wave of kiss-and-tell literature from American domestic terrorists seeks to explain away the taking of innocent life, so, too, it had become fashionable to enlist our sympathies for just causes of ethnic and nationalist groups — whatever their methods.
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar had it right when he said that there could be no justification for terrorism against innocent civilian populations whatever the justice of the cause it sought to enhance. That is true for the Basque ETA that comes out of the struggle for ethnic rights in Spain as it is for the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka or the Palestinians.
If the dramatic horror in New York would once and for all establish that guiding principle for the Western alliance and Japan, then the lives lost would not have been in vain. It is a principle that will not be easy to maintain in the months ahead. For leaving aside state terrorist operations of such pariahs as Syria, Libya, Iran and Iraq, there has been far too much winking at the problem. London has long complained that U.S. was less than forceful in their pursuit of so-called North American “charities “, logistics operations for the IRA. One finds it hard to believe Germany cannot halt the steady drip of hi-tech shipments to Baghdad — especially since they often are financed with government export subsidized loans — where they contribute to the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. has leverage to halt Russian nuclear weapons technology going to Iran after Moscow violated an agreement to halt it.. It is all very well for New Delhi to prove Pakistan’s complicity with “Afghan Arabs” in the terror campaign in Kashmir. But the Tamil Tigers could not survive were it not for the logistics and financial support they receive in south India. Manila’s use of Qadaffi as “mediator” with Abu Sayyaf may have helped hatch the airliner-bomb scenario, first surfacing there.
President Bush’s eloquent speech to the Congress identified U.S. targets as terrorist networks with “a global reach”. [He avoided “Communism” in the litany of 20th century afflictions, which originally initiated or abetted many of these terrorist networks. There was also the gaff of using “crusade”, anathema to Orthodox Christians as well as Jews for the excesses committed in its name.]
But-far flung international connections, not necessarily based on common political aims, are the nature of the terrorist beast today. Whether it is the Palestinian group headed by Abdul Nidal [infamous hijacker of the Achilles Lauro cruiseship] with the ETA in Spain or the most recent discovery of IRA contacts with the FARC narcoterrorists in Colombia, terrorists like all criminals seek help wherever they can find it.
Furthermore, the cadre of regimes like those in Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Libya have been so steeped in terrorism for so long, it is not clear that even were their leaders change sides for expediency, it would end. Terrorist operations like Hizbullah in south Lebanon have played Tehran against Damascus for aid. And their threat to Israel — which may have been one reason for Prime Minister Sharon’s outburst against any U.S. “appeasement“ of Arab regimes — is growing. Would whatever help we get from Tehran toward liquidating Osama depend on looking the other way in their support of Hizbullah?
Those will be the kinds of questions that will dog the present strategy. Is it Machiavellian, pragmatic, statecraft, or is — as some critics within the Administration say —wishful thinking of amateurs still carrying the baggage of recent U.S. failed anti-terrorist tactics?
Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@abac.com), is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International.
He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.