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Open Letter To CongressDec 16, 2007
Dave E.
I am writing this letter with the hope that Aristotle’s adage, “It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought without accepting it,” will prove true, though I would prefer that what I say be accepted and acted upon. But entertainment of the concepts put forth will suffice.
I am writing because of my deep concern over the course of American policy over the last six years especially and the last twenty in general that I feel have not been beneficial to the United States at large. I am neither a politician nor a soldier but a concerned citizen. Therefore, as this letter is informal, not academic work with citations. I would not take this as a statement of academic dishonesty so much as that I really am just a regular person with an agenda and a viewpoint - the long term benefit of our nation.
1) You Cannot Fight Terrorism with Firepower and Collateral Damage.
This is proven over and over again in various conflicts where the use of firepower on the supporters of terrorist groups or even those who shared a common identity with the terrorist group’s recruitment pool.
In Northern Ireland, the Irish Catholics of Belfast were quickly alienated into a higher degree of support for the PIRA and other groups as a result of excesses by the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the Royal Army, notably with the “Bloody Sunday” incident where paratroopers fired upon protestors. The subsequent and recent degree in success in Northern Ireland is primarily due to the perseverance of the United Kingdom and the inability to pull out of Northern Ireland due to the UK subject hood of the majority of Northern Irish.
A similar situation arose in Vietnam, where the inattentiveness of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam to a civilian presence in the areas of operation resulted in an excess of civilian casualties, in addition to the US firepower-based approach in subsequent chapters of that war. It is also notable that we supported a very corrupt Vietnamese government composed of a minority of Catholic and Francophile generals, and that the high degree of infiltration by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese into even the most privileged of Vietnamese circles is a testament to the allure of national liberation ideology, which can enable a more insidious ideology (communism) to ride into power on the coattails.
Algeria comes to mind also, particularly because it is a situation that dealt with both the presence of Muslims and because the French advocated a similar military approach to counter terrorism. The use of torture against the FLN (Front Liberation Nationale) operatives in a systematic fashion, as opposed to isolated incidences, opened France to a wide array of criticism internationally, and polarized French society itself while empowering the Algerian nationalist movements with a fresh sense of outrage. While the war dragged on for another five years, this was a very important turning point for the war, very similar to the Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq and the United States.
This is only a small sampling of historical examples, though Rhodesia does also come to mind if only because the Rhodesians were as willing as we were to ignore the nature of their enemies and the primary motivation. Such massive self deception is a vice, even if it is a comfortable vice. To convince ourselves that the enemy is “just a bunch of dang ole evil folks that hate ever’thing we stand here all for” is a faulty premise to make faulty decisions upon. The Rhodesians went out of there way to do that, and insisted that the best way to fight terrorists was to remain inflexible, use the military and punish the populations that were said to support the terrorists. One of the results of this mental rigidity in dealing with opposition is that Robert Mugabe is president of Zimbabwe today, the most extreme figure of the entire Second Chirumenga that lasted from Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965 to the death of Rhodesia in 1979.
Successful counterinsurgency campaigns are few and far in between, as Martin Van Creveld, the Israeli military theorist, tends to point out. So far, we have not waged an effective one. Sanctioning torture is especially counterproductive.
While we are busy listening to Karen Hughes yammer on interviews about “Islamic Death Cults,” (BBC America, a couple weeks ago) we miss the true character of the people we face, that they are good propagandists that understand the use of outrage as a primary tool of recruitment and widening their support base. And by support base, I do not mean merely those who funnel funding into militant organizations, but those who enable such things by silence. The current strategy is like fighting organized crime in the US with the same tactics we use to fight terrorist groups by going to war in Iraq; the people in those neighborhoods would quickly become alienated and the people in surrounding neighborhoods would become sympathetic. And the police would become a hated symbol. What would follow happened in Northern Ireland in the 1970’s and 1980’s; well-funded, well-armed gunmen.
We forget that the successful guerrilla lures the enemy into harming noncombatants, as a method of increasing the people’s hatred of the counterinsurgent and support of the guerrilla.
By our own excess in Iraq, most especially Abu Ghraib, we squandered what slim opportunity for success in Iraq existed, and if the goal overall is to reduce terrorist support worldwide, Iraq was always a counterproductive means to the goal.
2) The Best Counter terrorism Solution is not a Military One.
Terrorist attacks will always be a situation that governments will have to face. However, the tip of the spear is not the bulk fighting forces of the military. Rather, it is the information gathering and analysis capability of the intelligence services, the ability of law enforcement to communicate and operate effectively, without allowing short term political considerations of appearing to be doing something on TV, and the willpower to avoid the temptation to strike out at the enemy with the full force of our might—as indicated under the previous heading, most enemies wish for this as an expedient means to create popular support for themselves.
While the military does have a role in counter terrorism, it is not a role that does not involve the conventional forces of the United States except in very limited circumstances, nor should it. As indicated previously, the mistake in Northern Ireland was to use too much force. For the American military, this is an especially large problem as we have a very firepower-fixated military that considers solutions from that light. A sledgehammer used to pound a nail into plywood, swung at full force, will bend the nail and smash through the plywood. While Martin Van Creveld points out that firepower is one potential solution to insurgency, it is the tool of a tyrant and therefore politically infeasible for us to use.
Northern Ireland has quieted down considerably as a result of a highly disciplined, reformatory approach on the part of the UK government in dealing with their Irish problem. In essence, they began following the rule of law and the procedures of law in dealing with terrorist groups, and extra-legal killings, such as Operation Janus in Gibraltar, the SAS assassination of IRA operatives, tended to reverse that trend. By remaining disciplined, rational and consistent in policy, the UK reduced the IRA to a shell of what it was, and what remnants continue to soldier on are essentially drug dealers, with minimal popular support. When the UK diverged from that policy, they experienced setbacks.
There is much to be said for the European handling of terrorist situations through the latter part of the twentieth century, not limited to the French response to the OAS, an organization of aggrieved pro-colonial French who attempted assassination of Charles De Gaulle after he pulled out of Algeria, or the German response to the Baader-Meinhoff gang, who terrorized Germany in the 1970’s.
Our problem, owing to the nature of the terrorist groups arrayed against us, is much greater than the UK’s problem, but requires a similar sort of approach. We must remain the patient hunter in this, and not succumb to the satisfying, but empty and counterproductive, appeal of a firepower solution.
The Department of Homeland Security is not particularly prepared for this. Establishing it was a popular measure with popular opinion, but not seemingly effective from the standpoint that it is reinventing the wheel, and adding unnecessary red tape barriers in the bargain. The smarter solution would have been to break off the FBI’s counterintelligence and counter terrorism bureaus to form the leadership and institutional framework of a new agency in close cooperation with the CIA and NSA, if it were necessary to truly do so.
The answer is rationality. We should not to fall prey to the appeal of certain actions for their symbolism above that of their practical value.
The other answer is that the diplomats have to be engaged in whole-hearted efforts and that our guiding foreign policy must evolve from certain Cold War standards.
3) Foreign Policy Must Become More Practical and Less Ideological.
There is too much John Foster Dulles in our foreign policy and scant Otto von Bismarck in an era when that situation should be reversed.
Ideology-driven foreign policy was a double edged sword when it was heavily employed in the Cold War, as support of tyrants and dictators often backfired upon us. This was the case in the 1955 refusal of John Foster Dulles to negotiate with the North Vietnamese and of the Eisenhower administration to deal with them at all. The result, unfortunately, of our antipathy for communist, was that we were denied a useful opportunity with people who were inclined to consider us as a potential ally, regardless of ideology.
In supporting the Shah of Iran, we provided an abundance of weaponry in support of the regime, but failed to consider that the harder the Shah cracked down, the more unified his enemies became against him. A national liberation movement that included the Islamist Ayatollah Khomeini was able to overcome the Shah, and then the Ayatollah’s own group had the opportunity to overcome those moderates within the national liberation coalition. It is merely one of many examples of an extremist ideology riding into power piggyback on a national liberation movement with legitimate grievances. A potentially similar situation could arise in Pakistan if we are not careful.
The absence of ideological concerns in 1972 when dealing with China was one of the most influential precursors to detente with the Soviet Union, and had President Nixon dealt with the Chinese in an ideological manner; there would have never been an understanding between the PRC and the United States. The Soviet Union, by default, would have retained a powerful ally. The current situation between Russia and the People’s Republic of China seems to be a reversal of the 1972 trend, where China went over to support the United States because it perceived the Soviet Union as a hegemonic threat to their sovereignty.
The same situation applies to the Chinese perception of the US, and why, despite a long history of animosities and border disputes between the two, Russia and China are quietly unified against the United States and supporting Iran and Venezuela. All four aforementioned countries have profited from the seeming hypocrisy of the American foreign policy stance, with an abundance of moralizing about national self determination and a recent history of not respecting it and keeping regimes propped up in power.
The foreign policy must shift to a genuine respect of the leaders of other nations. Even though we do not see eye to eye with them ideologically, we must deal with them. That is why we have a foreign service, to bridge the gap, though under Condoleeza Rice, they have become little more useful than the Department of Homeland Security.
In dealing with these leaders, despite ideological differences, we take a realistic stance on foreign policy, and invite far less animosity from other nations that have cause to fear that one day, we may well intervene in their affairs as we have in Iraq and Afghanistan, and as we seem to be headed for in Pakistan and Iran. For a nation in such a superior strategic position as the United States, it becomes our lifeblood not to give other nations the incentive to do what they are doing now—unite against a threat.
4) Conclusion
Theodore Roosevelt said it best when he said “Walk softly and carry a big stick.” Mao Zedong said, “Despise the enemy strategically, but take him serious tactically.”
Both men’s advice, though one was our enemy for many years, is pertinent to the situation at hand. So long as the United States of America prefers style over substance and ideology over reality, we will continue to flounder and dig our hole deeper in the current foreign policy mess.
There are no quick fixes. There are no simple answers. But the direction this country is headed in is not one I wish it to head in, because I feel that it is detrimental in the long run.
“Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril. When you are ignorant of the enemy, but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal. If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril.” -Sun Tzu
I do not know what the Democratic Party intends to do with the next presidency and a majority in both houses of congress. I hope that this tenure does not validate my fears that the mentalities of each party are very similar, and that the solution to the problem will be a style over substance fix to appease the uniformed, rather than a true statesmanlike solution to the problem that benefits the United States over the long term.
Voters often only get a real say in affairs that is heeded for true, once every election cycle, unlike the various moneyed interests that donate to the campaigns. It is a large auditorium, where business interests have the bullhorns and the front row seats, the not-for-profit advocates get the middle row and can shout, and the voter is stuck in the back whispering.
However, my view is unfettered by the demands of a business or the religious or ideological values that may color a problem. I feel that politicians have become too dependent upon groups whose interest is not the best interest of the United States in the long term. As a voter, it is my job to inform my elected representatives of my wishes. Here they are.
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