Special Report: Crime or War?
September 12, 2001
While we won't really know accurate casualty totals for several days, the September 11th
icon attacks on New York's World Trade Center (the epicenter of global commerce), the Pentagon (the epicenter of
military power) and the failed attempt at Camp David (where the first ever peace treaty between an Arab state and
Israel was negotiated and signed between September 5-17, 1978) are likely to produce a casualty count that will
come in at ten times Pearl Harbor, about equal to D-Day but not half as high as the Battle of Antietam. Is that
enough damage to call the attack an act of war or is it just a crime?
The answer to that question will determine the direction of the nation and the historical judgment on its president.
President Bush, in his evening address to the nation, hinted that he understood the gravity of the choice when
he said that those who harbor terrorists will be held accountable as well.
It has been policy for many years to treat acts of terrorism as crimes. That is to say, we need to punish a particular
perpetrator without harming anyone else. If we are serious about stopping terrorism, then we must fight it as we
would fight a war. In Bruce Herschensohn's famous analogy, President Roosevelt didn't announce "Yesterday
we were attacked at Pearl Harbor and we are going to do everything possible to find out who those individual pilots,
navigators and bombardiers were and bring them to justice." If the United States is serious, then George W.
Bush must become a wartime president.
We know who the enemy is - the terrorist factions of Radical Islam. The enemy is not a nation state. It is not
even a fixed location. It's soldier-believers who occupy bases, training camps and service facilities that weave
in and out of a number of sovereign states. Their shield has been that they were regarded as citizens of the sheltering
state that surrounds them.
"If we are at war," Herschensohn continues, " then the shield must be eliminated." Our military
must be instructed to strike at any unannounced terrorist target we think appropriate in any island terrorists
occupy within the existing borders of harboring nation-states. Swift and sure retaliation will come not only to
perpetrators of terrorist acts but those who shelter and help them as well.
Terrorism is the war of the 21st century. It takes no skilled scientists, long-time research or heavy doses of
cash to make a missile by aiming 400,000 pounds of jet fuel at a big building. It is no-tech with a high-tech communications
system. As the United States seeks to find out who is responsible, they will likely run into the autonomous cells
of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaida organization. An umbrella group with global reach, Al-Qaida supports small cells
capable of operating individually without any central command nor even knowledge of the activities of other cells.
They can coordinate operations and activities among themselves or with others and then disperse. Encrypted and
deadly, they are the living example of the power of the Internet.
When our intelligence agencies look through their miles of electronic trails to see who is responsible for the
attack, their short list will include Libya, Iran and Iraq plus Homas and Al-Qaida. Given the structure of Osama
bin Laden's organization, they may well find cell elements of all of them before they finish.
The first objective of a terrorist attack is to spread fear. The second is to spread a feeling of impotence against
violence. Perhaps the most frightening first impression is that our government was caught completely unaware. That
impression is true. The entire western intelligence community was surprised, including the Israelis. The intelligence
communities are geared to state actions and military threats. Not only did they have no intelligence, they had
no advanced plan for planes. New York City, The Economist reports, has one of the best anti-terrorist contingency
plans in the country. However, the plans are drawn up for biological or chemical attack. Their situation room,
where responses are coordinated, was located in the World Trade Centre.
There is no doubt that over time we will find out the guilty parties. We have the plane's black boxes, the passenger
manifests and a video record of all passengers as they entered the plane. All of the world's electronic databases
can easily be brought into play once researchers know what they want to find. The issue then is what to do about
it.
Can we retaliate while keeping our friends? The tricky part is not obtaining easy words that denounce evil from
our allies but getting and keeping agreement about hard deeds. Terrorism is not a problem contained within borders.
For too many years, the global consensus has been to treat terrorists as criminals. That policy allows our allies
to differentiate between perpetrators, sponsoring states, an innocent but hate-filled citizenry (who shouldn't
be harmed even though the supply the fodder for suicide missions) and the impact on the supply of oil. It allows
the tolerance of terrorism in general while condemning individual terrorists in particular.
The sense of universal common action must include real and steady support for hard choices: reversing the Executive
Order banning assassination, canceling the 1995 CIA policy against recruiting undercover agents with a history
of violence and support for the use of incursion teams in sovereign states. Our allies must agree that state sponsors
of terrorism should expect to have every effort made to eliminate their regimes. If that is sanctions, so be it.
If it is the physical destruction of their economic infrastructure, so be it. If it eliminates their personhood,
so be it. If they don't like their prospects, they can always stop harboring those people who attack us.
As the emotions of the moment subside, facts remain. We experienced both a security and intelligence failure that
needs to be immediately fixed. The attacks were very well done and no one knew about it. They took our planes and
blew up our icons. The organization that did it was probably not a sovereign state and likely cannot be found in
a fixed location, separate from innocent civilians. There will not be an obvious target for retribution.
The spirit of Oslo has collapsed. Pre-emptive capitulation doesn't work. The world has turned. There is a military
solution to terrorism. It is called war.
Bigger than Antietam
Until Tuesday, the most casualties America had ever suffered in one day was the Battle of Antietum - some 24,000.
Of course, the Civil War numbers are so high because both sides were counted in the totals. Preliminary estimates
by the New York Port Authority issued Wednesday indicate that the World Trade Centre casualties may reach 30,000.
They will all be civilian casualties inflicted by a foreign enemy on our shores - an historic episode.
Both political parties say the Tuesday attacks are acts of war. NATO meets to consider invoking Article Five, which
states that an attack on one is an attack on all. The Nation of Terrorists may finally be seen for what it is:
a single chain with links in five dozen countries.
The radical element does not, of course, speak for all Muslims but it does have groups of various strengths in
nearly 60 countries. The United States is as hated for its support of moderate Arab states (Saudi Arabia, for example)
as it is for its support of Israel. The objective is to drive the West from all the Arab states. Speaking in London,
Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammad, founder of the radical Al Muhajiroun group says "America had it coming. Yes, it
is Muslims who have done this. There is no one else who would feel that much anger against America."
Why? Writing way back in 1986, Conor Cruise O'Brien says:
- In the free or capitalist world we provide highly favorable conditions for the recruiting of terrorists. The
number of the frustrated is constantly on the increase and so is the awareness of the lifestyle of the better-off
as well as their vulnerability. There is no more surefire method of attracting television than to slaughter a considerable
number of human beings in a spectacular fashion.
President Bush has an immediate task. It is to educate America about what fighting a war against terrorism requires.
Writing in Claremont Institute's Precepts, their president Thomas Silver notes what will be required.
Congress must immediately declare war on the terrorist enemies of the United States.
It does not matter if we established guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Assigning blame is a matter for the courts.
Destroying an enemy is a matter for the military. When at war, great nations do not seek to arrest and try those
who make war against them. They seek to destroy the armed forces and the enemy's ability to continue to make war.
Our enemies, Silver continues, are all of the terror groups that have attacked us, the governments who harbor and
support them and their agents here within the United States. It does not matter if this or that terrorist, harbored
by this or that state, perpetrated Tuesday's atrocity. When in the field facing a determined enemy, great commanders
do not concern themselves only with the regiment that is currently attacking them. Their maps show all the regiments,
all the divisions, all the airbases, all the supply depots. And those are all slated for destruction.
As we face tomorrow, Winston Churchill words can still inspire us.
"Do not suppose that this is the end,' he said, "This is only the beginning of the reckoning."
|
