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Experts say bombing is risky strategy
By MARGOT PATTERSON
By most measures, the U.S. bombing
campaign in Afghanistan has received widespread support from the American
public as justifiable retaliation for the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade
Center and Pentagon. Few voices of dissent are heard in news reports.
But interviews with a wide array of foreign policy experts and
leaders of nongovernmental organizations reveal more criticisms of the military
campaign than generally reported.
Experts spoke of a range of alternatives. These included
conducting a more limited police operation in Afghanistan instead of a military
assault, addressing the political and economic grievances that stoke terrorism,
and taking the moral high road rather than lashing out in retaliation -- an
admittedly unlikely approach.
There are always alternatives, said Gary Sick, who
served on the staff of the National Security Council under Presidents Ford,
Carter and Reagan and is now executive director of The Gulf/2000 Project.
One is to turn the other cheek and to say we will not lower ourselves to
conduct the same kind of operation with the same risk to innocent
civilians as in the Sept. 11 attacks. We will work to stop the flow
of money, to impose the most stringent economic sanctions possible on
Afghanistan and to bring terrorists to justice without military
operations.
Sick, senior research scholar and adjunct professor of
international relations at Columbia University, pointed to President Jimmy
Carters response to the seizure of American hostages during the Iranian
Revolution as a case where the United States foreswore military retaliation, in
large part because Carter believed that military retaliation would mean the
hostages death.
The United States obviously rejected that approach in this
particular crisis, said Sick, who remarked that it would be fairly unusual in
international relations for a government with any significant degree of power
not to respond with violence to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.
Im not sure in the end well look back and say it
was the right thing to do, Sick said of the bombing. It does send a
message to terrorists that has not always been sent before, that if you conduct
an atrocity of this magnitude you can expect massive retaliation. That is an
expensive message to send, and it carries with it some very high costs in the
sense of innocent people being killed along the way, but its also like to
get the attention of terrorists. It certainly gets the attention of governments
who harbor terrorists. There is a deterrent effect that may never be
measured.
Other analysts saw clear perils in the military campaign,
believing it undermines international support for the war on terrorism and
shifts world attention away from the crimes of Sept. 11 to the wisdom of the
U.S. military response. Questions also surfaced about the immediate usefulness
of the raids. A loose network of terrorist cells does not have the kind
of tangible assets that can be seriously crippled by military strikes,
said Steven Zunes, associate professor of politics and chair of the Peace and
Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco.
Exacerbating anti-American
feeling
Zunes believes the bombing campaign will exacerbate anti-American
feeling in the Mideast and make it harder to form a concert of nations focused
on eradicating terrorism. Even before the bombing began Oct. 7, Zunes warned of
the dangers of a large-scale military response. He urged a more targeted
operation in its place.
A limited attack against suspected terrorists -- involving
small commando units, Special Forces, SWAT team-style operations -- could bring
those responsible to justice and break up the terrorist cells
yet not
create the backlash a more blunt use of force would create, Zunes wrote
in an article posted on the Web site of the Institute for Policy Studies.
The United States justifies bombing Afghanistan on the grounds
that the Taliban regime there has not complied with U.S. demands to turn over
Osama bin Laden, accused of masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks.
But, according to Richard Falk, professor of international law at
Princeton University, the Bush administration created confusion in demanding
that the Taliban hand over Osama bin Laden while refusing to provide it
evidence of his culpability in the Sept. 11 attacks.
The request for evidence is not really a negotiation,
Falk said. Its a reasonable precondition for asking that
Osama bin Laden and his associates be turned over to the United States. I
think people have been persuaded by the media that there is no reasonable doubt
[of his guilt] and in that sense there is no reason for evidence. Either we
dont have the evidence or we feel reluctant for some understandable
reason to be given Osama bin Laden, and are therefore withholding it, he
said.
The author of On Humane Governance: Toward A New Global
Politics and Revolutionaries and Functionaries: The Dual Face of
International Terrorism, Falk did not rule out a role for military force in
combating terrorism. But he sees problems with the U.S. bombing campaign. On
one hand, it shifts all the burden of loss of life to those that are in
Afghanistan, including innocent civilians, and therefore does not meet the
criteria for a just war, he said. Those that conduct a just war need to expect
some risk of loss of life themselves.
Further, he said, the bombing campaign does not seem clearly
related to reducing the threat [of terrorism] because its also creating a
fair amount of antagonism to the United States, which intensifies the
threat.
What could we do? Some of the things we are doing, he
said -- trying to cut off the source of the [terrorists] funds,
trying to apprehend those connected with terrorism. The law-enforcement
approach. I also think we could possibly, taking some greater risks ourselves,
rely on smaller units on the ground with less of a massive preparatory
bombardment that is taking place in recent days and which has almost inevitably
produced these civilian casualties.
David Nalle, Washington editor of the Central Asia Monitor
and the veteran of a 28-year career with the U.S. Information Agency, with
stints in Iran, Jordan, Syria and Afghanistan, is concerned about public
opinion not only in the Mideast but also in Central Asia, a region dominated by
autocratic governments with poor human rights records.
A great hope for Central Asia would have been a peaceful,
well-organized Afghanistan which would be a major outlet for those landlocked
countries to the trade and commerce of the world, Nalle said. Instead,
the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan is allying us in the eyes of many people
with their homegrown dictators, just as we understand now that we are being
condemned by many people in the Muslim world for our attachment to people like
[Egyptian President] Mubarak or the Saudi royal family.
Al-Qaeda strategy
Bowdoin College government professor Daniel Lieberfeld said the
military campaign may in fact play into a longer-range strategy of Al Qaeda: to
destabilize friendly or pro-American governments such as Pakistan or Saudi
Arabia.
I think these groups are thinking strategically, and
theyre thinking a couple of steps ahead. My guess is theyre
expecting the U.S. military response, and its part of their strategy for
getting rid of the governments in the Islamic world that they think are too
corrupt, said Lieberfeld.
The author of the book Talking with the Enemy: Negotiation and
Threat Perception in South Africa and Israel/Palestine, Lieberfeld called
terrorism primarily a communications and psychological challenge. We need
to out-psych and out-think the terrorists who want the United States to act as
a destructive and aggressive power, he said.
A war against terrorism is not something that is possible to win
primarily through military means, Lieberfeld remarked. The way you combat
terrorism is through intelligence, by winning away terrorists membership,
by getting out a political message that counters the terrorist message, by
delegitimizing them in their own community.
Some Americans drew attention to the incongruity of the
worlds largest military power raining bombs on one the poorest nations on
the planet. Novelist Barbara Kingsolver called the military action in
Afghanistan childish. She said international courts, not a vengeful bombing
campaign, were the appropriate response to the Sept. 11 terror. If we
were to put a few billion dollars into food, health care and education instead
of bombs, you can bet wed win over enough friends to find out where he
[Osama bin Laden] is hiding, Kingsolver wrote in an essay circulated
after the bombing began.
Criminal acts, not war
Judith McDaniel, director of peace building at the American
Friends Service Committee, said that television footage coming out of Qatar
might change Americans opinion of the bombing raids if they were allowed
to view it. Now that the bombing is underway, McDaniel said its difficult
to talk about other approaches -- freezing assets, or, instead of bombing,
going in to help the Afghan people who have been starving because of three
years of drought.
Sept. 11 did not happen in a vacuum; it didnt happen
without a long history that led up to it. When people ask what could we have
done, we could have started years ago, not abandoning the Afghan people after
the Soviets withdrew, McDaniel said.
We need to talk about the events of Sept. 11 as crimes
against humanity and not as war. No nation declared war against us. This was a
criminal act. And if you think of this as a criminal act, youre looking
for justice in the context of the law, whether that would be international law,
or the World Court or the United Nations, McDaniel said.
The American Friends Service Committee is concerned that the
bombing campaign is likely to lead to wider bombing, to carte blanche for
the United States to reinforce its presence in the region no matter how,
McDaniel said.
Religions for Peace
Religions for Peace is an international organization of leaders of
the worlds great religions who are dedicated to achieving peace. On Oct.
23-24, Religions for Peace hosted a symposium in New York that brought together
international religious and political leaders to respond to the Sept. 11
attacks. From the event, which featured an address by United Nations Secretary
General Kofi Annan, a conversation for peace between Rabbi Menachem Fruman, a
rabbi in a town in the West Bank, along with addresses by many other speakers,
Religions for Peace is designing a long-term action plan to address the
challenge of terrorism and to expand cooperation among religions in working for
the common good. [Sheik Talal Sidra, a minister in the Palestinian
Authority, was unable to obtain a visa to enter the country for the
event.]
Like many, William Vendley, secretary general for Religions for
Peace, is concerned that the military campaign in Afghanistan may inadvertently
confirm the feelings of those who believe terrorism is an acceptable response
to injustice. Military instruments are not only not helpful, they can
corroborate perceptions of victimization, Vendley said. We are in a
situation where populations do experience perceptions of grievance. Those are
not unrelated to past histories and current situations where there are huge
inequities and where there are also oppressive political regimes that are in
place. Populations are simply not going to be stable unless those deep issues
of justice are addressed. Those are not quick fixes. They dont mean a
quick eradication of terrorism, but they do deal with the deeper roots of
it.
For Vendley, looking at the United States responses to World
War I and World War II provides a useful analogue to what could be done today
to lay the groundwork for a more peaceful and terror-free world. Terrorism
feeds on the frustrations of those who feel themselves exploited, Vendley said.
After World War I, the Versailles peace treaty left Germany economically
straitened and vulnerable to the seductions of a fanatical dictator. But in
responding to World War II, the United States saw the advantage to both itself
and to Europe of rebuilding shattered European economies. Further, in another
act of generosity, the United States established multilateral institutions like
the United Nations after World War II, places where nations that could not
demand inclusion on the basis of power were nonetheless given a seat at the
table.
The multilateral institutions like the United Nations were
tragically derailed during the Cold War, Vendley said. The events
that surface on Sept. 11 reemphasize the need to revivify a politics of
interdependence and an economics of interdependence.
There is a second issue Vendley brings up: The past decade of
ethnically driven conflicts in the world illustrates the dangers of unhealed
cultural memory. Religions and cultures must think of ways of addressing not
only the need for dialogue among different peoples but the need for healing and
resolving festering communal memories, he said. Vendley pointed to the Roman
Catholic sacrament of confession as a model of what societies could do
symbolically, with the sacrament involving both repentance for inappropriate
acts, symbolic restitution and, finally, reconciliation.
Atrophied intelligence
For many, the search for a solution to terrorism almost inevitably
involves altering U.S. foreign policies. Lieberfeld spoke of the need to
emphasize political as opposed to military strategies as well as to improve
U.S. intelligence capabilities that have atrophied since the end of the Cold
War. Many Saudis and Egyptians were involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks,
and Lieberfeld said the United States should press for reforms within Saudi
Arabia and Egypt.
These are governments that dont offer their people
much in terms of a political future or, in Egypt, an economic future. The
United States should be leaning on those leaderships to open up. We need some
strategy that is going to make these countries less fertile recruiting grounds
for terrorists.
Americans have been through a learning experience as a result of
the events of Sept. 11, said Nalle. We have been given answers to the
question, Why do they hate us? Its not a healthy situation to
be hated, but there are things we can do about it, for example, getting Israel
to recognize the gravity of the situation and persuading them to take a more
positive attitude to reaching a constructive settlement with the
Palestinians. Thats a major undertaking in terms of the
politics of Israel and the United States, he acknowledged.
David Long is skeptical about talk of changing U.S. policy. A
retired Foreign Service officer who served as deputy director of the State
Departments office of counter terrorism for regional policy and chief of
the Near East research division in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research,
Long said some of the policies that most inflame the Muslim world, such as U.S.
support for Israel, have widespread domestic support.
He brings the same skepticism to discussions of the new war on
terrorism. International relations is the art of the possible, Long said, and
usually involves a choice of several flawed courses of action. We
havent exactly been standing by since the bombing of the embassies and
the bombing of the Cole, said Long, referring to actions that have also
been linked to bin Laden. If you consider just doing the same things we
were doing before, that wasnt working. Then you have to decide whether to
ratchet up your efforts to get him, and how high.
As for thinking you can end terrorism, forget it. Terrorism
is too cheap, too tempting, too easy to ever eradicate, Long said.
What you have to do is bring it to manageable proportions.
Margot Patterson is NCRs senior writer. Her e-mail
address is mpatterson@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, November 2, 2001
[corrected 11/23/2001]
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