Monday, May 03, 2004
The "War on Terror" Revisited
Michael Ignatieff warns us in Sunday's NY Times magazine that we may have to renounce some civil liberties and restraints on our intelligence services if we are to win "the war on terror". His argument is enlightening, but suffers from two grave and interconnected errors. He tacitly assumes (1) that we are waging a war against an ill-defined enemy named "terrorism" and (2) confuses the issue even further by considering the war in Iraq as though it were simply another encounter with our terrorist enemy.
Admittedly, it is not always easy to keep straight where "we" and "they" are. But we must begin by identifying an enemy against which it is possible to fight a "war". Let me call this enemy "al-Qaeda". Although not a highly organized group consisting of "card-carrying" members, "al-Qaeda" can be used to refer to an organization with numerous branches and supporters throughout the world that has as its mission doing harm to the United States and its allies, and to their citizens wherever they are. Few if any of the members of the Basque ETA, the Chechnya rebels, or Sri Lanka's Tamils insurgent movement are members of al-Qaeda. Neither are the vast majority of the guerrilla warriors in Iraq who would not be killing Americans if we had stayed at home. (This last comment does not in itself mean we should not be in Iraq, but it does mean that we must not confuse the vast majority of the opponents we face there with either "international terrorism" or the al-Qaeda organization.)
Drawing these distinctions is critical to our country's future. Ignatieff and others are suggesting that we must set aside some civil liberties and some constraints on torture and assassination for the duration of "our war against terrorism". To me, this means we are being asked to consider surrendering these rights and standards for all time, since "terrorism" is a concept, a class of action, that cannot be defeated no matter what we do. The enemy that I lump together loosely under the term "al-Qaeda", however, has a real if often indeterminate existence. As such, it can be attacked, its leaders tracked down, and its operatives dispersed or even induced to "retire" as the members of other terrorist organizations have in the past. For the period of the campaign against this "enemy", I could justify relaxing some liberal prohibitions within stated limits. Beyond this, in a "war" against a category, Ignatieff's approach would simply mean the permanent loss of freedoms and of the standards of behavior against opponents that we have tried (with notable failures) to uphold in the past.
Michael Ignatieff warns us in Sunday's NY Times magazine that we may have to renounce some civil liberties and restraints on our intelligence services if we are to win "the war on terror". His argument is enlightening, but suffers from two grave and interconnected errors. He tacitly assumes (1) that we are waging a war against an ill-defined enemy named "terrorism" and (2) confuses the issue even further by considering the war in Iraq as though it were simply another encounter with our terrorist enemy.
Admittedly, it is not always easy to keep straight where "we" and "they" are. But we must begin by identifying an enemy against which it is possible to fight a "war". Let me call this enemy "al-Qaeda". Although not a highly organized group consisting of "card-carrying" members, "al-Qaeda" can be used to refer to an organization with numerous branches and supporters throughout the world that has as its mission doing harm to the United States and its allies, and to their citizens wherever they are. Few if any of the members of the Basque ETA, the Chechnya rebels, or Sri Lanka's Tamils insurgent movement are members of al-Qaeda. Neither are the vast majority of the guerrilla warriors in Iraq who would not be killing Americans if we had stayed at home. (This last comment does not in itself mean we should not be in Iraq, but it does mean that we must not confuse the vast majority of the opponents we face there with either "international terrorism" or the al-Qaeda organization.)
Drawing these distinctions is critical to our country's future. Ignatieff and others are suggesting that we must set aside some civil liberties and some constraints on torture and assassination for the duration of "our war against terrorism". To me, this means we are being asked to consider surrendering these rights and standards for all time, since "terrorism" is a concept, a class of action, that cannot be defeated no matter what we do. The enemy that I lump together loosely under the term "al-Qaeda", however, has a real if often indeterminate existence. As such, it can be attacked, its leaders tracked down, and its operatives dispersed or even induced to "retire" as the members of other terrorist organizations have in the past. For the period of the campaign against this "enemy", I could justify relaxing some liberal prohibitions within stated limits. Beyond this, in a "war" against a category, Ignatieff's approach would simply mean the permanent loss of freedoms and of the standards of behavior against opponents that we have tried (with notable failures) to uphold in the past.
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