The problem of radical Islamic extremism, the issue of Afghanistan as its home base and the very real threat posed to America and others by such declared enemies of the United States is a matter of serious and immediate concern. This problem has festered too long. It needs a meaningful and effective solution, one demonstrably lacking over the past 8 years. If I told you 8 years ago that we'd still be chasing Osama in 2009...that Afghanistan teetered on the verge of failure...you'd never have believed me.
Barrack Obama is exactly right. Before we accede to any demands to commit additional resources and troops to a strategy that has thus far yielded questionable results, we should first question our basic assumptions about the nature of our enemy and the strategy so far employed. Follow me over the jump and let me explain how we can seize this moment to turn the tide in this war, start our own national healing and simultaneously achieve true national security.
What happened in Afghanistan? One minute everything is going along fine...Taliban toppled....greeted as liberators....Osama on the run, like a cockroach. That was the situation in late Spring 2002. How could we achieve those goals so quickly and effectively, only to see success slip away? What strategy is responsible for snatching near defeat from the jaws of imminent victory?
Iraq.
This is why many Democrats opposed Iraq. On so many levels, Iraq was wrong...the wrong idea...the wrong strategy...employed at the wrong time....a strategic and tactical blunder in the war against Islamic radicalism that is difficult to underestimate.
First, there was the rationale for the war, which morphed and changed from start to finish: In the summer of 2002, the administration and their medial allies began actively alleging that Iraq was responsible for 9/11...in cahoots with the Al-Qaida terrorists and in possession of verified caches of WMD that posed an "imminent threat" of attack. As each justification was debunked, the rationale simply shifted. Eventually Bush's stated goal became "building a democracy in the Middle East" and finally devolved to merely "creating sufficient security so we can leave."
If I told you in the summer of 2002, that we were going to divert our attention and resources from the perpetrators of 9/11 to instead "build a democracy" in Iraq, which would cost thousands of lives and quite possibly bankrupt us, what would you have said?
From the suspect links to 9/11 to the pollyanna predictions of success to the projected costs in terms of lives and treasure, Bush was wrong at every step.
Our first blunder was propagating the notion that Saddam Huessein was somehow responsible for 9/11 or in league with Al-Qaida. In America, that kind of thing sells because most Americans at that time couldn't tell one Muslim from another. But not so in the rest of the world. Everyone else knew there were no links, there was no connection...the notion that America faced an "imminent threat" of attack by Saddam powered Al-Qaida operatives was patently false. That reality is what directly led to losing our international coalition and allies.
Whereas the entire world stood with us the day after 9/11 and pledged all necessary support to our work in Afghanistan, the coalition to invade Iraq was comprised mostly of token contributions by countries who were pressured or bribed to do so.
Believing that the United States was drumming up domestic political support for invading Iraq under suspect pretenses raised the question of our true motive. With a suddenly questionable motive, the righteousness of our post 9/11 cause became much less compelling.
In addition to undermining our unprecedented international support, that blunder played directly into Al-Qaida's hands in two primary ways. First, it played directly into Al-Qaida's propaganda. Osama Bin Laden always accused the U.S. of making an oil play, alleged it was only concerned with oil and that its goal was to secure oil and persecute Muslims. He pointed to our long standing military presence in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and simply alleged we were after the oil in Iraq and that our lie was the evidence. To many young Muslims, the call to jihad resonated just a little more. This was a turning point for Al-Qaida and that momentum shift only accelerated as events in Iraq unfolded.
The second way Bush's mistake played into Osama's hands, was exposing our Army in a land and among a culture and people that our enemy understood far better than we. Again overestimating the requirements for success, Bush committed our military in force, exposing it to an urban warzone...the worst kind of warzone...where it was susceptible to attack and ambush with a frequency and regularity that would otherwise have been impossible. Al-Qaida was able to move in and out of Iraq to sow sectarian violence and inflict casualties indiscriminately on our troops and all Iraqis. Ultimately, it was their barbarism that, again, was their real undoing. Combined with our "surge" Iraqis of all stripes helped drive Al-Qaida from the country...at least for a short while.
As we try to withdraw and turn that Country over, we realize just how fragile it is. Control and security may be as fleeting as the next "surge" by Al-Qaida to inflame long standing prejudices between Shi'a and Sunni and create enough chaos that our withdrawal is delayed, our forces remain committed and our resources continue to be drained.
So, eight years after 9/11 we find ourselves with bigger problems and a longer road to success than any of us would have thought possible. So how do we turn it around? What is going to be necessary?
First, question the basic assumptions and admit the error. Iraq was a mistake. Saddam WAS a bad guy and the world would be better with a functioning democracy in his place, but the way we (almost) got to that result is the problem.
Those who oppose this mea culpa will obviously be the same folks who perpetrated the mistake in the first place. But revisiting these issues from a more objective and now demonstrably provable perspective should be educational, to say the least, to many.
Second: Define the nature of our true enemy. Al-Qaida is just the name for one subset of Islamic radical extremists...which, in turn, is a subset of religious radical extremists. Extremist and Fundamentalist are essentially interchangeable terms in this context and can be defined as ideologues so convinced in the righteousness of their point of view that they are willing to force it onto others, requiring abject obedience to their dictates, as the Taliban demanded (and is again demanding)obedience to theirs. To them, dissent marks you as a non-believer, an enemy of the State and, ultimately, an enemy of God.
This virulent mindset transforms mere intolerance (deplorable in its own right) to outright persecution and human rights violations. This is where Obama can really shine.
As a Constitutional law professor, he understands and can explain the importance of institutional mechanisms and legally enforceable guarantees that limit persecution and secure individual liberty as the principal consideration in the bargain between people and government. Barrack Obama, perhaps best of all, can explain liberty and freedom in terms other than "freedom to make money", which is the only thing the GOP focuses on. Obama can emphasize the more important freedoms, like freedom of thought and freedom of speech.
Only if one is free to listen and look, hear and read, think and speak and to do so free from unlawful persecution and victimization, is one truly free.
This is the wedge.
Al-Qaida and their ilk can never live up to this standard. Set the bar there and watch them falter...slow at first, then faster. The Taliban will never relinquish their position of religious authority in favor of an open democratic process that sets codes of civil conduct within which people can live, even if such varies with the Taliban's twisted, uptight view of the Koran. We will sooner defeat the Taliban by setting and living our own example, than we will by deploying more military resources.
We can also repair our international, primarily European, relationships by acknowledging their own achievements in this regard. The plurality of our societies, the tolerance of divergent points of views, the freedoms of thought and speech, are the wellspring of our creativity and productivity. We should slap some backs and acknowledge that although we were the first to break loose from an old paradigm that nobody wants to return to, our European friends have picked up that ball and, in some cases advanced it. It's okay to say French Fries again.
Obama, maybe more than any other, is uniquely positioned to emphasize the point that not all Muslims are the same. Within the borders of free countries dwell many millions of Muslims, the great majority of whom participate and function as any other citizen. Yes, there are radicalized elements living there too, but so too are there radicalized elements of other religous and political groups. In a free society, the good comes with the bad. That is why we enact laws, so that even while some exercise their free speech in a way that offends the rest of us, they are prohibited from acting on those convictions under threat of criminal prosecution.
We should encourage and embrace moderate Muslims to speak up and challenge the religious establishment and declare Islam's compatibility with free society. There are plenty of reasons to believe reform in this regard is achievable and we should focus resources and energy to achieve this strategic end.
Here, too, is an opportunity to address some of our own domestic religious fundamentalism and debunk, once and for all, the notion of whether one's fundamentalist view of the bible should supplant the Constitutional freedoms that are our birth right. Certainly, even fundamentalist Christians would agree Afghanistan and its people should not be subjected to the strict religious Islamic laws as interpreted and enforced by the Taliban. With that admission, it would be pretty difficult to defend the notion that the bible should supplant the constitution because the natural follow up to such a ludicrous suggestion would be "as interpreted by whom?"
So consider the merits of this policy shift:
With less emphasis on our military, more troops can come home. By emphasizing the true nature of our enemy and a strategy for dealing with it, we can begin turning a tide that is coming in against us. We can begin a healing, both domestically and internationally, that is long overdue. We can make progress, when progress is exactly what we need.