Sunday, July 25, 2004
An Ideological War with al-Qaida?
In the last two days, Richard Clarke, the government's former terrorism expert, and David Brooks, the somewhat conservative Times Op-Ed columnist, have taken off from the 9/11's report's criticism of the way in which the "war on terrorism" is understood and fought. All three point out, as we have several times here and on our terrorism site, that there cannot be a "war against terrorism", for terrorism is after all a concept or a tactic. Neither should we answer the call to wage war on all "terrorists". Rather, the government's urgent task is to oppose that group of Islamic jihadists who are loosely associated with the term al-Qaida. These writers conclude that what we are fighting is primarily an intellectual or ideological movement rather than a military one. Brooks believes we need to mount an intellectual counteroffensive, much as we did against communism in the Cold War. Clarke would emphasize the promotion of economic development and openness in the Islamic world, as well as the encouragement of Islamic scholars and others to compete more effectively with the message of the extremists.
All of this should be done. But yet we should remember that the democracies did not defeat communism by besting their ideologues. Communism collapsed because it was not able to provide for the spiritual and material needs of the people of communist countries as well as the democracies provide for these needs in the West. Communist countries failed to achieve the goals in power or territory or progress that their leaders had set for them. This suggests that the ideologies of al-Qaida, the Salafists, the Wahabis and other extremists will be defeated (1) to the extent that they fail to disestablish existing Islamic regimes, and (2) if they do disestablish such regimes, they will fail to the extent that they fail to satisfy the spiritual and material needs of their new subjects.
Afghanistan might be considered a test case. The Taliban won initially because they were able to provide the security that competing groups could not. They were in turn rather easily defeated by the United States and its Northern Alliance allies because the Taliban had failed once in power to improve the lives of average Afghans. If the Taliban comes back to power, it will be because of the continuing low level of security in the country and the relative failure (partly as a result) of economic development outside Kabul. In this real and hypothetical struggle, the ideology of the Taliban will have neither been defeated nor will it have "won". Of course, the weak moral standards of the anti-Taliban (in areas such as corruption and cooperation) has helped the Taliban's position while the moral repression that attends Taliban rule has caused many to abandon their cause.
This suggests that the first task of an anti-al Qaida struggle will be to make sure that it does not achieve another beachhead like it did in Afghanistan, and to help in the recovery of any beachheads that it does achieve. This is primarily a military and police task. The second task is to make regimes threatened by al-Qaida meet the spiritual and economic needs of their peoples. By "spiritual" we do not mean only or primarily "religious". We include needs such as those for self-expression, freedom from fear, access to education, and hope for the future. We include freedom from humiliation, a feeling of pride that is composed of a combination of feelings of national, sectarian, tribal, familial, and personal pride. These are the fronts on which we must work, fronts more educational and developmental than ideological. To achieve these we must also help in the creation and maintenance of an international order that balances the needs and aspirations of peoples in a manner that appears fairer to those affected than is often the case today. This is partly a sales job, but it is sales job whose clients are all peoples, not just those of the Islamic world.
In the last two days, Richard Clarke, the government's former terrorism expert, and David Brooks, the somewhat conservative Times Op-Ed columnist, have taken off from the 9/11's report's criticism of the way in which the "war on terrorism" is understood and fought. All three point out, as we have several times here and on our terrorism site, that there cannot be a "war against terrorism", for terrorism is after all a concept or a tactic. Neither should we answer the call to wage war on all "terrorists". Rather, the government's urgent task is to oppose that group of Islamic jihadists who are loosely associated with the term al-Qaida. These writers conclude that what we are fighting is primarily an intellectual or ideological movement rather than a military one. Brooks believes we need to mount an intellectual counteroffensive, much as we did against communism in the Cold War. Clarke would emphasize the promotion of economic development and openness in the Islamic world, as well as the encouragement of Islamic scholars and others to compete more effectively with the message of the extremists.
All of this should be done. But yet we should remember that the democracies did not defeat communism by besting their ideologues. Communism collapsed because it was not able to provide for the spiritual and material needs of the people of communist countries as well as the democracies provide for these needs in the West. Communist countries failed to achieve the goals in power or territory or progress that their leaders had set for them. This suggests that the ideologies of al-Qaida, the Salafists, the Wahabis and other extremists will be defeated (1) to the extent that they fail to disestablish existing Islamic regimes, and (2) if they do disestablish such regimes, they will fail to the extent that they fail to satisfy the spiritual and material needs of their new subjects.
Afghanistan might be considered a test case. The Taliban won initially because they were able to provide the security that competing groups could not. They were in turn rather easily defeated by the United States and its Northern Alliance allies because the Taliban had failed once in power to improve the lives of average Afghans. If the Taliban comes back to power, it will be because of the continuing low level of security in the country and the relative failure (partly as a result) of economic development outside Kabul. In this real and hypothetical struggle, the ideology of the Taliban will have neither been defeated nor will it have "won". Of course, the weak moral standards of the anti-Taliban (in areas such as corruption and cooperation) has helped the Taliban's position while the moral repression that attends Taliban rule has caused many to abandon their cause.
This suggests that the first task of an anti-al Qaida struggle will be to make sure that it does not achieve another beachhead like it did in Afghanistan, and to help in the recovery of any beachheads that it does achieve. This is primarily a military and police task. The second task is to make regimes threatened by al-Qaida meet the spiritual and economic needs of their peoples. By "spiritual" we do not mean only or primarily "religious". We include needs such as those for self-expression, freedom from fear, access to education, and hope for the future. We include freedom from humiliation, a feeling of pride that is composed of a combination of feelings of national, sectarian, tribal, familial, and personal pride. These are the fronts on which we must work, fronts more educational and developmental than ideological. To achieve these we must also help in the creation and maintenance of an international order that balances the needs and aspirations of peoples in a manner that appears fairer to those affected than is often the case today. This is partly a sales job, but it is sales job whose clients are all peoples, not just those of the Islamic world.
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