What Would Victory Look Like?

Washington Weekly ^ | Monday, October 29, 2001 | By J. PETER MULHERN

[Jean S]

We have postponed indefinitely making any serious effort to deal with the threat of Arab terrorism. We are reluctant even to admit that Arabia is the source of our problem. As a result, our rhetoric is fuzzy and our strategy obscure.

Our attacks on Afghanistan are largely symbolic. They are more extensive than Bill Clinton's pathetic cruise missile strikes on a few empty tents and an aspirin factory but they belong to the same genre of military action. We are waging war as public relations while our leaders struggle to decide on a serious course of action.

Dismantling one terrorist base far from the terrorists' cultural and financial sources of support is almost, if not completely, beside the point. If we are going to be serious about responding to 9/11 and to the ongoing bioterror attacks we need to eliminate the threat at its source, which is nowhere near Afghanistan.

Before a nation can fight a war it must know what it is trying to achieve. A clearly defined goal is the first prerequisite of military success, or any success for that matter. Everyone should understand what our goal is in the abstract. It is to neutralize a threat to our survival. Very few people are prepared to consider what it will take to realize that goal.

The threat we must neutralize comes from a cadre of Arab fascists who, like Hitler before them, have a mad dream and the means to try and make reality coincide with that dream. We must squelch the dream.

Insane as it may seem, Osama Bin Laden and the millions he represents really do dream of supplanting the West as the world's dominant culture. This dream would be mere comic relief but for petrodollars. Without the vast wealth generated by selling oil to the developed world Osama bin Laden would be just another paranoid schizophrenic, talking to himself while herding goats.

Ever since 9/11 voices on the left have been nattering on about attacking the "root causes" of terrorism, by which they mean poverty. As usual the left is 180 degrees from the truth. The root causes of terrorism lie in wealth not in poverty. It is wealth that transforms harmless cranks into deadly enemies.

The wealth that has flooded into the Arab states of the Persian Gulf since World War II has vastly enriched the sons, grandsons, and great grandsons of the lucky nomads who became royal because the British Colonial Office favored them. The Saudi royal family has used its wealth to propagate the poisonous blend of fundamentalist religion and pan-Islamist politics that goes by the name Wahabbism. The Saudis finance Wahabbi mosques and schools around the Muslim world that promote the cult of the suicide bomber. Saudi money launched Osama bin Laden's career and it is likely if not certain that Saudi money sustains it.

The Saudis prepared the bed, and sowed the seed. Now that the terrorism they nurtured is coming to maturity they seek to avoid responsibility for it by posing as our ally. Our government seems entirely content with this arrangement.

Saudi money and Saudi fanaticism has forged a shadowy alliance with Syrian and Iraqi military and intelligence expertise to support a network of terror organizations that goes far beyond Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. We need to destroy the whole network root and branch. At best, our operations in Afghanistan will prune one small peripheral branch.

Destroying the web means denying the mad dreamers access to the resources of the states on the Arabian Peninsula. Victory in our war against terrorism would mean that those resources are placed securely in friendly hands. That must be our goal, and achieving it will entail a much more extensive war than almost anyone now envisions.

Our alliance with Saudi Arabia is a major obstacle to any genuine war on terrorism. The Saudis may be our allies but they are not our friends. They cannot be part of the solution because they are the heart of the problem. How to fight a war when your principal enemy is an ally? Perhaps we can do it one step at a time.

Much ink has been spilled in a largely inane argument about whether we should target Iraq if and when we decide to get fully serious about our war. Any American who does not now understand that we cannot tolerate any hostile Arab state with significant expertise in the production and deployment of biological and chemical weaponry is a suicidal idiot.

It matters less than not at all whether Saddam Hussein was directly involved in any of the recent attacks on the United States. We can no longer tolerate any government with both the motive and the opportunity to mount such attacks. Iraq plainly has just such a government and it has to go.

Many commentators have argued that we must not attack Iraq because doing so would destabilize "moderate" Arab governments and destroy our precious coalition. Unless our government is criminally irresponsible we will attack Iraq. We may actually benefit from the ensuing destabilization.

We cannot go to war with the current Saudi government. If, however, radical fundamentalists toppled that government in response to an American attack on Iraq we would be free to deal with the roots of Arab terrorism once and for all. An attack on Iraq could easily result in war throughout the Arabian Peninsula giving us an opportunity to restructure that part of the world in our own interests. The entire chattering class would recoil from this suggestion in horror. It is paralyzed with fear over how we would administer a vast conquered territory. We've solved bigger problems in Germany and Japan, but somehow history is no solace for the paltriest generation.

Fortunately we can solve our Arabian problem without governing Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, et al. ourselves. We can simply return to the status quo ante -- by which I mean ante World War I.

From the 16th Century to the 20th Century Turkey's Ottoman Empire governed the Arabian Peninsula. Judging by some of his rantings, even Osama bin Laden looks back on Ottoman rule with approval. The Turks are Muslim but westernized and secular. They are also members of NATO and reliable friends to the United States. Let them control the petrodollars and ride herd on the fractious Arabs. The money might make the headaches worthwhile.

The entire Arabian Peninsula once more under Turkish rule -- now that would be a victory worth having.

[ChemistCat]

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[ChemistCat]

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[Northpaw]

I know what victory doesn't look like:

1. Dropping 20-30 expensive hi-tech bombs a day on abandoned, non-functioning Soviet tanks
2. Daily public apologies for killing a handful of civilians stupid enough to not flee.
3. Daily reassurances from the Administration that we really, really love Muslims.
4. Constitutional rights being 'temporarily' suspended.

[ChemistCat]

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[darth]

Victory will come in a generation after the common people of the Muslim world have a truly free press and access to media. Iran is a great example. When the young people start laughing at the imams and sheikhs, then the islamonazis will be finished. This is a key reason for the fundamentalist hatred of the West. Our culture works like cipro on their cultural anthrax. A dose of truth has a dramatic effect.

[Samizdat]

3. Daily reassurances from the Administration that we really, really love Muslims.>

Yeah, that one really gets me. I don't love Muslims if they are in our country and planning another attack. I am suspicious of any Arab looking person too. I wonder if they are one of them. I wonder if they are not one of them, will they become one of them. I wonder if they can be persuaded to become one of them. Deport all middle easterns and that would help. Sorry, flame away if you must but that's how I feel.

[hsszionist]

The Messiah ruling from Jerusalem.

[Turbodog]

Great post! Finally, a clear voice emerges from the haze that makes sense.

[Samizdat]

I meant all middle eastern immigrants who haven't become citizens or otherwise proven their allegiance to this country.

[MistrX]

What would victory look like? A large, smooth, unbroken expanse of glass.

[VA Advogado]

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:)

[Thekatar]

You are exactly correct, here's another one:
Hesitating to commit our own ground forces for fear that some of them might get hurt. Someone needs to remind Washington D.C. that these men are volunteers trained and willing to do this mission.
Anybody who's been in a fight knows that you don't win by worrying about getting hurt.

[stylin19a]

Victory would look like a "parking lot" formerly known as [enter name of country here->_________]

[Old Student]

Many good points here, but you also forget something: one of the rules of problem-solving when you have a large, and apparently insoluble, problem, is to break the problem down into smaller parts. Afganistan and the terrorist camps are but a small part of the problem. Eventually we will get to the other parts. The IRA apparently recognizes that, as they have begun disarming. If they intend to survive, that is wise of them, as eventually, we'll be after them. The Tamil Tigers will recognize the problem it presents them, or they will cease to exist, too, someday.

GW was right when he said this will be a long-term solution. Take it one step at a time.

[gcruse]

Eventually we will get to the other parts.

I am afraid that eventually, we are all dead,
and the problem will still be here.  Terrorism
is like any other idea.  Its expression may be
suppressed, but eliminating it is a fool's
errand.  You have to have the immorality
to make the expression unthinkable.
We don't.

[Old Student]

Ben Franklin,Tom Jefferson, and their compatriots in crime were a lot more likely to end up dead than successful than we, but we would not be discussing this problem if they had failed to attempt what they were about. We can do no less.

[gcruse]

We won't end up dead. Neither will we end up successful. You can't kill ideas.

[vrwc54]

Great Post