Dealing with the specific problems of the war on terror (Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.) as defined and pursued by the Bush administration will not make the essential problems go away. The new US administration (and other countries around the world) needs to come up with a new notion of what it means to fight terrorism in all its forms and manifestations.Some are becoming, perhaps too hastily, concerned about President-elect Obama’s appointments. They’re suspicious that filling the key positions of the Obama administration with old Clintonians will not bring the change Obama promised. It is too early to pass such judgments before the new team gets on with the work and takes up the issues. What is clear, however, is that it will take more than closing Guantanamo Bay to chart a new course in the war on terror.
Over the last seven years, the war on terror has been fought more on ideological and political than military grounds. Despite the assurances of the early Bush administration that the war on terror is not a war on Islam and the Muslim world, it has been perceived as just that. This cannot be brushed aside as an issue of misperception or bad public diplomacy. The policies implemented under the name of the war, including the disastrous management of Afghanistan and Iraq after their invasions, have turned the war on terror into a new adventure of nation-building. The political discourse of the so-called war on terror has created its own theology of empty words and misguided diagnoses. Islamophobia and anti-Muslim attitudes and publications originating from right-wing and Muslim-bashing groups have fueled a deep sense of mistrust, suspicion and resentment. The policies and discourse put in place in the name of winning the minds and hearts of Muslims have created more enemies than ever before.
The second big mistake of the current war on terror was to assume that pursuing good public diplomacy and changing the views of Muslims on such issues as violence, women and democracy would contain religious extremism and political radicalism in the Muslim world. This, it was falsely assumed, would in turn help the war on terror. This is how many in the Bush administration defined “going to the root causes of the problem.” The problem with this approach is not just that it’s based on a shallow and even a naïve understanding of the history and culture of Islam. More importantly, it is so one sided that it assumes the failures of US policies and the injustices of the present world order have nothing to do with various (both violent and peaceful) reactions of the Muslim masses. The false assumption is that by reforming Islam and Muslims, the US and its allied regimes in the Muslim world can gloss over the injustices of foreign policy. After seven years of useless policies and costly operations, it must be clear that this is not the way to change people’s perceptions and reactions. Until and unless there are some substantial changes in the way the only superpower in the world conducts its business around the world, nothing will change.
As a result of all this, the third fatal mistake of the war on terror was to turn the war into an exclusively American and, more correctly, Bush war. As both governments and societies realized quickly after the responses of the Bush administration to Sept. 11, the war on terror was designed to be more than (and in fact essentially different from) capturing al-Qaeda terrorists. It turned out to be a framing narrative and a basis for a new imperial design outlined by the neocon ideology of absolute power. The result has been total isolation for the US, irreplaceable damage, abuse of power, loss of credibility and a greater outcry for justice.
What is ironic is that both Bush and his British counterpart, Tony Blair, wasted their political careers to rid the world of the menace of terrorism but ended up making everybody more unsafe and more insecure. As a September 2008 RAND report titled “Defeating Terrorist Groups” argues, the simple presence of US troops in Muslim countries has created a better recruiting ground for al-Qaeda and the like.
President-elect Obama has a historic chance to bury this legacy. He should come up with a new vision for global security extending from the US to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the rest of the region. Shifting the focus from Iraq to Afghanistan might be a short-term solution to the impasse in Iraq. But a long-term military engagement in Afghanistan without completely revising the war on terror will only open up a new can of worms. Avoiding the three mistakes above alone would be a good start.
