Cause and effect in the "Terror War"
What do we think is going to happen if we continuously invade, occupy and
bomb Muslim countries and arm and enable others to do so?
By Glenn Greenwald
Salon.com: Dec 29, 2009
"In all their alleged allegedness, this Administration has an allergy to
the concept of war, and thus to the tools of war, including strategy and war
aims" -- Supreme Tough Guy Warrior Mark Steyn, National Review, yesterday.
"The White House has authorized an expansion of the C.I.A.'s drone
program in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas, officials said this week, to
parallel the president's decision, announced Tuesday, to send 30,000 more
troops to Afghanistan" -- New York Times, December 4, 2009.
"In the midst of two unfinished major wars, the United States has
quietly opened a third, largely covert front against Al Qaeda in Yemen" --
New York Times, yesterday.
Actually, if you count our occupation of Iraq, our twice-escalated war in
Afghanistan, our rapidly escalating bombing campaigns in Pakistan and Yemen,
and various forms of covert war involvement in Somalia, one could reasonably
say that we're fighting five different wars in Muslim countries -- or, to
use the NYT's jargon, "five fronts" in the "Terror War" (Obama yesterday
specifically mentioned Somalia and Yemen as places where, euphemistically,
"we will continue to use every element of our national power"). Add to
those five fronts the "crippling" sanctions on Iran many Democratic Party
luminaries are now advocating, combined with the chest-besting threats from
our Middle East client state that the next wars they fight against Muslims
will be even "harsher" than the prior ones, and it's almost easier to count
the Muslim countries we're not attacking or threatening than to count the
ones we are. Yet this still isn't enough for America's right-wing
super-warriors, who accuse the five-front-war-President of "an allergy to
the concept of war."
In the wake of the latest failed terrorist attack on Northwest Airlines, one
can smell the excitement in the air -- that all-too-familiar, giddy,
bipartisan climate that emerges in American media discourse whenever there's
a new country we get to learn about so that we can explain why we're morally
and strategically justified in bombing it some more. "Yemen" is suddenly on
every Serious Person's lips. We spent the last month centrally involved to
some secret degree in waging air attacks on that country -- including some
that resulted in numerous civilian deaths -- but everyone now knows that
this isn't enough and it's time to Get Really Serious and Do More.
For all the endless, exciting talk about the latest Terrorist attack, one
issue is, as usual, conspicuously absent: motive. Why would a young
Nigerian from a wealthy, well-connected family want to blow himself up on
one of our airplanes along with 300 innocent people, and why would Saudi and
Yemeni extremists want to enable him to do so? When it comes to Terrorism,
discussions of motive have been declared more or less taboo from the start
because of the dishonest equation of motive discussions with
justification -- as though understanding the reasons why X happens is to
posit that X is legitimate and justifiable. Causation simply is; it has
nothing to do with issues of morality, blame, or justification. Yet all
that is generally permitted to be said in such situations is that Terrorists
try to harm us because they're Evil, and we (of course) are not, and that's
generally the end of the discussion.
Despite that taboo, evidence always ends up emerging on this question. As
numerous reports have indicated, the Al Qaeda group in the Arabian Peninsula
has said that this attempted attack is in "retaliation" for the multiple,
recent missile attacks on Yemen in which numerous innocent Muslim civilians
were killed, as well as for the U.S.'s multi-faceted support for the
not-exactly-democratic Yemeni government. That is similar to reports that
Nidal Hasan was motivated to attack Fort Hood because "he was upset at the
killing of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan." And one finds this quote from
an anonymous Yemeni official tacked on to the end of this week's NYT article
announcing the "widening terror war" in Yemen -- as though it's just an
afterthought:
"The problem is that the involvement of the United States creates
sympathy for Al Qaeda. The cooperation is necessary -- but there is no doubt
that it has an effect for the common man. He sympathizes with Al Qaeda."
As always, the most confounding aspect of the reaction to the latest
attempted terrorist episode is the professed confusion and self-righteous
innocence that is universally expressed. Whether justified or not, we are
constantly delivering death to the Muslim world. We do not see it very
much, but they certainly do. Again, independent of justification, what do
we think is going to happen if we continuously invade, occupy and bomb
Muslim countries and arm and enable others to do so? Isn't it obvious that
our five-front actions are going to cause at least some Muslims -- subjected
to constant images of American troops in their world and dead Muslim
civilians at our hands, even if unintended -- to want to return the
violence? Just look at the bloodthirsty sentiments unleashed among
Americans even from a failed Terrorist attempt. What sentiments do we think
we're unleashing from a decade-long (and continuing and increasing)
multi-front "war" in the Muslim war?
There very well may be some small number of individuals who are so blinded
by religious extremism that they will be devoted to random violence against
civilians no matter what we do, but we are constantly maximizing the pool of
recruits and sympathy among the population on which they depend. In other
words, what we do constantly bolsters their efforts, and when we do, we
always seem to move more in the direction of helping them even further.
Ultimately, we should ask ourselves: if we drop more bombs on more Muslim
countries, will there be fewer or more Muslims who want to blow up our
airplanes and are willing to end their lives to do so? That question really
answers itself.
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