The superfluity of events in contemporary life has eclipsed the concept of a war against terrorism announced after 9/11 by President Bush — but endorsed then by a wide spectrum of America’s political elite.
With 24-hour media coverage, events — from the trivial to the dramatic — have nudged out even the search for Osama Ben Ladin. Iraq’s complexity and the insistence of Bush’s opponents of a distinction between Sadam Hussein’s regional tyranny and the larger international struggle have further diminished attention. And, perhaps paramount, failure of the terrorists for whatever reason to strike again domestically at the U.S. has reduced threat perception. Nowhere is that more apparent than in debate — whatever its merits — over the Patriot Act extension and the controversy over electronic surveillance.
Yet any serious consideration produces evidence the threat by dedicated enemies of American power — and values — is still as dangerous as it was in the shock of the aftermath of 9/11.
The Europeans, perhaps because of their long acquaintance with their own regional terrorism, reinforce the view of those on this side of the Atlantic who would minimize the threat. Ironically, almost daily European events reveal otherwise. Shocking opinion polls among British Moslems or rioting by French North African youth tells us of continued alienation of even second and third generation ethnics. It was, after all, largely European-resident young men who implemented 9/11. And although largely ignored by media, recent Italian arrests have again pinpointed continuing efforts for strikes on American targets.
But it is in Asia where abundant evidence of the depth of an international conspiracy abounds. A carefully targeted attack on an Indian information technology conference indicates sophistication of terrorist strategies. Bangla Desh, a bankrupt country nearing 150 million, is increasingly rent by polarization between secularists and Moslem extremists. In Southern Thailand, secessionist Malay-speaking insurgents are growing despite Bangkok’s efforts at suppression. Indonesia’s Islamic radicals, momentarily quiescent, have sufficient organization and strength to continue violence in the face of politicians courting religious voters. The Philippines has made little progress in subduing regional insurgents allied with the international Islamicists. A resurgence of Taliban elements in Afghanistan has reduced security. In Pakistan, President Gen. Musharraf’s opposition has not diminished with growing ethnic tensions in Baluchistan and in the tribal areas of the Northwest Frontier and in both Indian and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
All of these conflicts with slender but important connections to the larger theater have the potential for producing more cadre dedicated to acts against the U.S. and its friends.
What is most disquieting, beyond a certain naïve American sinking back into pre-Pearl Harbor somnolence, is the absence of effective opposition to terrorism inside the Moslem world. Whether it is the Arab Sunni Establishment meeting under as the Arab League, Moslem intellectuals gathering in the Persian Gulf, or the Organization of Islamic States, there is no effective counter to the terrorists’ call for the allegiance of a growing number of mostly young Moslems.
There are occasional laudatory statements by individual Moslem leaders and organizations calling for tolerance. But they are drowned in the vicious propaganda of Al Jazaeera’s TV, purporting to objectivity but presenting in the best possible light acts of pure barbarity. In the so-called moderate states of Egypt and the fountainhead of Moslem intolerance, Saudi Arabia, official and semiofficial media and preachers spew hatred and violence.
The U.S. and the West is losing the war of ideas against this psychodrama, the wellknown and widespread intimidation in these feudal cultures, and the ignorance which pervades most of the two billion in Moslem world. Most of the debate about terrorism and its relation to Islam is carried on among intellectuals or in a media insulated from the local Islamic leadership much less the ordinary believer. The reasons are many and complicated: the language barrier, alone, is enormous. Efforts, too often simply manifestation of “the politically correct”, to insure Moslem minorities in the West are not the subject of violence and discrimination, blocks a frank discussion of Koranic sources of hate and violence. The Koran’s vengeful passages calling for the murder and worse of non-believers are used by the terrorists to give themselves religious authenticity. Without universal leadership and no accommodation with modern thought and science, “Islam” becomes the most effective weapon of the terrorists.
Just as in the long and often dispiriting Cold War against Communism and its threat to American and Western values, the war of ideas played an important role. President Reagan’s controversial denunciation of “the evil empire” and confrontation played a crucial role in bringing down the Soviet empire.
While Washington has spent billions on the tools of the military struggle and reconstruction in Iraq, it has squandered a few million with amateurs in the propaganda conflict. Reinforcing whatever brave and exemplary Islamic voices can be found to oppose this outbreak of barbarism has to be an important part of a war against terrorism which is still, unfortunately, very much with us.
Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@comcast.net),
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 and East-Asia-Intel.com.
