Posted: 14 Aug 2013 07:16 AM PDT
One of the biggest
questions about fighting terrorism is whether we intend to fight it on the
military level or on the ideological level.
Wars
have ideological components. Propaganda likely predated the written word.
Undermining an enemy's morale can be a very effective means of turning the
tide of battle. But in warfare, the ideology is there to further military
aims, while in an ideological war the military is a tool for achieving
ideological victories over the enemy.
It's a fundamental distinction that cuts deep into the question of what we
are doing in places like Afghanistan and what we hope to accomplish there.
The dichotomy between words and bullets could occasionally be somewhat
ambiguous during the Bush Administration, but there was a general
understanding that we were on a mission to kill terrorists and their allies.
If by killing them, we could discredit their ideology and dissuade fellow
terrorists from following in their footsteps, so much the better.
The Obama Administration has shifted the primacy of the conflict to the
ideological sphere. Like the rest of the left, it would rather fight
ideological wars, which are its strength, than military conflicts, which
aren't.
The left believes it understands ideas, but is much weaker when it comes to
military affairs. Even Stalin did his best to avoid an open conflict with
Hitler. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union remained afraid of superior
Western firepower and technology and pulled back from any test of American
determination that risked breaking out into open warfare.
The left doesn't really understand ideas, but it does understand word games.
To alter language is to alter the consensual reality of a subject population.
The Oceanian reality of the media may not do anything to the reality in
Afghanistan, but it certainly shifts the reality in America. And while that
may not matter in the long run, in the same way that Baghdad Bob's pathetic
bleatings did nothing to slow down the American advance, it does delay the
recognition of the inevitable.
Americans are mostly in the dark on the War on Terror. They know that
something has gone wrong with it, but they have trouble putting their fingers
on it. They have a sinking sense that it, like the rest of the country, is
headed in the wrong direction (the Iraqis no doubt had that sinking feeling
too) but they don't know which direction is the right one or what's wrong
with the direction they're headed in.
Word games confuse that sense of direction and orientation. Like a magician's
trick, they leave you with the sense that you are being deceived, but not the
knowledge of how.
One of the first word games that Obama's crack national security team pulled
was to try and retire "terrorism" from the vocabulary to avoid any
questions about why they were failing to deal with a problem… that suddenly
no longer existed.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that, motivated by a touch
of nuance, she was moving away from the word "terrorism" to
'"man-caused" disasters'.
Napolitano's explanation for this clumsy word game was that she wanted
"to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being
prepared for all risks that can occur"; as long as the risk was kept as
undefined as possible.
Islamic terrorism receded into the distance. The great challenge was CVE or
Countering Violent Extremism.
Violent extremism was a little more specific than man-caused disasters, but
not by that much. The shift however was a more significant one. We were no
longer fighting a war, but working to counter attitudes and ideas. And that
would be achieved in ways that included everything from sponsoring Muslim
rappers to dispatching the NASA chief on a new mission to seek out Muslim
self-esteem.
The Department of Homeland Security's three broad CVE objectives were
understanding violent extremism, partnering with local Muslim communities and
with local law enforcement. The first objective, understanding violent
extremism, did not mention Islam, demonstrating that this understanding was
actually going to be a very deliberate misunderstanding.
Avoiding any mention of Islam had always been the first objective of the
ideological component of the war and it was the area where the ideological
component of fighting terrorism most blatantly clashed with the practical
component.
Since September 11, the evolving tactic of the ideological war was to
minimize the effectiveness of terrorism by mentioning it as little as
possible and denying its Islamic cred by refusing to associate it with Islam.
Meanwhile the practical side of the war required informing as many people as
possible of the threat and taking swift and decisive action against a defined
enemy.
During the Bush Administration, the ideological component
blunted the military component, but did not overshadow it. Under Obama, the
military component receded into the ideological war with new barometers of
success that did not depend on winning battles, but winning hearts and minds.
There was no reason to believe that the ideological program of denial was in
any way effective. The vast majority of Muslims did not get their news from
America. Nor were they likely to be fooled by politically correct distortions
of news events
Whether a State Department spokesman chose to call Bin Laden an Islamic
terrorist, a violent extremist or an extremely naughty boy would have no
impact on the Muslim world. It would only have an impact on Americans. .
And that was not accidental.
Where the military campaign was aimed at Muslim terrorists, the ideological
campaign was aimed at altering the American understanding of Islam to be more
harmonious with liberal foreign policy. And once the ideological campaign
succeeded in changing American attitudes, it was assumed that the Muslim
world would react differently to this new America.
An ideological war that depended on winning over Muslims by modifying the
behavior and thinking of Americans was based on the belief that Muslim
terrorism originated from Americans, rather than Muslims. Muslim terrorism
was only a reaction to American attitudes and policies. The only way to stop
Muslim terrorism was to eliminate the ways in which Americans brought the
terrorism on themselves
The ideological program was damaging enough before it dominated the field,
but it became truly lethal afterward. In keeping with this American behavior
modification doctrine, soldiers in Afghanistan were pressed into more
confining Rules of Engagement that endangered their lives. And once American
soldiers changed their behavior, the doctrine went, the Afghan hearts and
minds would be won.
The Bush Administration believed that the Muslim world had to change to
accommodate America. Its nation building program was excessively ambitious
and idealistic, but its logic was American, rather than Post-American.
The Obama Administration however believed that America had to change to
accommodate the numerous grievances of the Muslim world. Bush’s military
campaign had been meant to transform the Muslim world into a place more
amenable to American ideas, while Obama’s campaign was meant to transform
America into a place whose ideas would be less likely to provoke the Muslim
world.
Asking the Muslim world to change, let alone forcing it to change, risked
provoking it even more. Instead those elements of American policy that were
the most offensive would be jettisoned. Americans would be taught to be more
accepting of Islam. And in time that might lead Muslims to be more accepting
of America.
The United States was no longer fighting a war against terrorists; instead it
was fighting an ideological war against Americans. Muslim behavior was no
longer being modified; American behavior was.
CVE tried to show Muslims that they had options besides terrorism by
empowering political Islam while Americans were told that they had fewer
options than ever. While the Muslim Brotherhood was gifted the keys to Cairo,
Damascus and other Arab Spring countries, Americans were being told that
Muslim terrorism was a figment of their Islamophobic imaginations.
Meanwhile Al Qaeda had successfully transformed itself into a network of
global franchises, some of which were far stronger than the old core had ever
been. Never one to miss a word game trick, Obama used this transformation to
declare that Al Qaeda, by which he meant an organization that had become
supplemental to requirements, was on the path to defeat.
Al Qaeda in Iraq was stronger than ever and its Syrian affiliate was on the
road to taking over the country. In Mali, Al Qaeda armed with Libyan weapons
had nearly taken another country.
Faced with these facts, Obama hid behind his failed capture attempt of Bin
Laden, transforming the bid to give the terrorist leader a civilian trial
into an act of personal heroism. But these were just more words with no
policy behind them.
Obama
had conceded Afghanistan. The Middle East was up for grabs and lone wolf attacks
had become an effective Al Qaeda strategy. America had changed, as much as it
could without completely giving up, but it was actually doing worse than it
had before. The ideological war was broken and the military war lay squashed
under its rubble.
Obama had repeatedly renamed terrorism. He had called his Libyan War a
no-fly-zone and ended the Iraq War twice by renaming the mission. But these
sorts of dime store Orwellianisms, like the proverbial "Man-Caused
Disaster", were a dead end.
The ideological program that Obama came into office with had little content
beyond blaming America. Empowering Islamists and isolating Al Qaeda was
supposed to work by neutering American foreign policy and letting the will of
the people carry the day. Now Egypt's Brotherhood regime has fallen, there
are setbacks in Syria and Tunisia may go back to being a free nation.
Obama changed America, but he couldn't change Al Qaeda. A military war had
been transformed into an ideological war, and its only casualties were American
ideas. No new moderate political Islam had pushed Al Qaeda out of the
spotlight because it didn't exist.
The only element of the program that still worked were the drone strikes and
the strikes were also the most contentious element because they killed
terrorists. The triumph of word games over war games had been so complete
that the only objectionable element of military policy under Obama was the
one that worked.
Daniel Greenfield is a New York City based writer and blogger
and a Shillman Journalism Fellow of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment