Who is the Enemy and How They Must Be Fought

(Washington, D.C.): Press accounts detail how the Bush Administration and the Congress are reacting to the “acts of war” unleashed upon the United States two days ago. Much of what is being said is commendable. And it is commendable that expedited efforts are now underway to provide the emergency resources needed to address the immediate repercussions of the attacks in New York and Washington, and readying our national response.

Still, as two important essays — one an unsigned editorial in the Jerusalem Post (written by editorials editor and former Senate staffer Saul Singer) and the second by the superb (and recently rehabilitated/reinstated) Boston Globe columnist, Jeff Jacoby — make clear that the President and the American people need to be as clear about the nature of the enemies we face as they currently are about the need to wage war against them.

As the Post put it: “America’s first task is defining the enemy. In this war, the enemy’s attempt to distort and obscure its identity is its primary line of defense. The enemy is not merely Osama bin Laden or whatever terrorist organization carried out the monstrous attack….If the bin Ladens of the world are defined as the enemy, terrorism has won; if the governments that sponsor terrorism are the enemy, then terrorism can be defeated.” It may suit the Russians’ purpose to encourage American retribution against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that is hosting Osama bin Laden, but the United States must deal at least as forcefully and comprehensively against other terrorist-sponsoring governments that happen to be clients of Russia (notably, Iraq, Iran and North Korea).

In his complementary essay, Mr. Jacoby notes that, now that murderous terrorism has been visited upon us, no American officials are employing the kind of rhetoric so recently used to discourage Israel from dealing as effectively as possible against the same (albeit smaller scale) “acts of war” that the Jewish State has confronted in recent months. It can only be hoped that the United States government will not only adopt the techniques employed by its Israeli allies to detect and destroy its enemies, but display a long-overdue appreciation of the legitimacy of such acts of self-defense.

As Americans try to recover from and comprehend the most devastating terrorist attack ever, it is not surprising that US leaders are groping for a new language and way of thinking to confront the new reality.

There is general agreement that America is and must be “at war.” But the pledge of President George W. Bush and many others to “find those responsible and bring them to justice” sounds not like war, but a police action against criminals.

The distinction between fighting a war and bringing criminals to justice is not a merely semantic one. It is a distinction over the nature of the enemy.

America’s first task is defining the enemy. In this war, the enemy’s attempt to distort and obscure its identity is its primary line of defense.

The enemy is not merely Osama bin Laden or whatever terrorist organization carried out the monstrous attack. The enemy is the states that sponsor terrorists and the ideology that animates them.

Imagine for a moment that bin Laden is proven to be the immediate culprit and the US were to successfully bomb him and his organization out of existence. Would terrorism have been defeated? No – such a success would be the equivalent of destroying a kamikaze or Nazi unit while leaving the wartime governments of Japan or Germany in place.

If the bin Ladens of the world are defined as the enemy, terrorism has won; if the governments that sponsor terrorism are the enemy, then terrorism can be defeated. As Israel learned in Lebanon, it was impossible to defeat Hizbullah while holding that organization’s Syrian, Iranian, and Lebanese sponsors were effectively immune from attack.
The idea that regimes, not just organizations, must be held responsible may seem obvious. Indeed, Bush has stated that the US will “make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these act and those who harbor them.” But even before the rubble has ceased to smolder doubts are being expressed.

In its editorial on the attack, The New York Times mused that “this is an age when even revenge is complicated, when it is hard to match the desire for retribution with the need for certainty.” What retribution? What need for certainty? To talk about retribution and certainty is to act as if the task after Pearl Harbor was to prove which unit had attacked America and to punish that unit – rather than to defeat and replace the governments of Japan, Germany, and Italy.

In a second editorial, the Times argued that “part of the challenge for the United States is to recognize that the roots of terrorism lie in economic and political problems in large parts of the world.” This is errant nonsense.

As Michael Kelly points out in The Washington Post, “The whole world was stolen from somebody, most of it repeatedly; there are claims and counterclaims and counter-counterclaims for every inch of the planet that is desirable and for much that is not.” If poverty, corruption, tyranny, suffering, ethnic conflict, and territorial disputes were the sources of terrorism, sub-Saharan Africa would be terror center of the world.

To “recognize the roots” of terrorism is to harbor the notion that terrorism can be justified. Worse, it directly fulfills the goal of terrorism, which is to blackmail the world into addressing “grievances.” The obstacles to addressing real suffering are the regimes that are behind terrorism, which not coincidentally oppress and impoverish their own people.

For the free world, the war against terrorism cannot be limited to punishment, retribution, or sending signals. Those who sent the terrorists to attack America would be only too pleased to absorb a less than tit-for-tat cruise missile attack in response.

The free world must recognize that is in a war of self-defense whose goal is victory. The concept of a war against terrorism is meaningless without the goal of removing terrorist regimes. The exact combination of diplomatic, economic, and military tools to be deployed toward this goal is a legitimate matter of debate. But a war against terrorism that avoids the issue of regime change in countries such as Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan cannot be won, because it has not even really been joined.