GWOT, Five Years In: A Novice Assessment (Part I)
First I want to make on thing clear, I’m no expert in security affairs. I read widely on the subject but if your looking for expert analysis this post is not for you. I need to write this mainly for myself because I don't even know where I stand on some of these issues anymore and I’m hoping I’ll know after I finish this draft. I write this as a hopefully nonpartisan assessment of the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). Disillusioned with all the ideological bitterness of an election year, I’m trying to avoid the rhetoric because whether we like it or not, we’re all in this together. So without further ado here’s my GWOT assessment, five years in.
The Run-up to September
There’s been a lot in the news lately thanks to partisan hype over The Path to 9/11 on pre-war fault so it seems logical to start here. First of all I should make it clear that I hold no single administration responsible for the September events. To assign blame here is simply ridiculous, 9/11 was a paradigmatic shift in the security environment after which we were all forced to reassess our priorities. It was no ones fault, we just didn’t foresee the shift. If you blame Bush II you've got to blame Clinton and if you blame Clinton you've got to blame Bush I, Reagan, Carter... ect. Individual blame is an argument for partisan politics that gets us no where strategically and only serves to further divide the electorate in our struggle. However it is helpful to identify several factors, which ran rampant through the Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton Administrations, that I believe contributed to al-Qaeda’s decision to attack the United States.
Throughout the 1980's and early 90's the United States, chiefly concerned with combating the Soviets, created a security paradigm of indifference toward terrorism. Faced with a very real nation-state threat in the Soviet Union, US strategic thinking was almost exclusively concerned with combating Soviet power and communist “aggression” in the Cold War world. The Middle East, like other third world theaters, was treated as a backwater. Large casualties in this area couldn’t be tolerated. It simply wasn’t worth getting tied down in the Arab world, the theory went, because it weakened your strategic position overall, just as the Soviets realized in Afghanistan during the 80's. After the fall of the Soviet Union, however, the threat disappeared and the previous security system paradigm changed. The problem was that the paradigm didn’t shift immediately, we entered a vacuum of strategic uncertainty. Who was the new threat? China? A reemerging Soviet Union? Third world autocrats? Or more intangible threats like genocide or social injustice? No one really knew so we made a half-ass attempt to play globo-cop and confront them all. We were successful, for the most part, in many of these areas like the Balkans and failed in others such as Somalia. Unfortunately, however, the Cold War security paradigm of indifference toward terrorism continued as asymmetric terrorist threats were ignored in favor of nation-state problems. Empty threats were made about “bringing these killers to justice” but no real action ever materialized, we were busy with other things. Events such as the Battle of Mogadishu (of Blackhawk Down fame) and Reagan’s withdrawal from Lebanon after the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, however, convinced al-Qaeda leaders that Americans were simply averse to mass casualties. A weakness they sought to exploit in September.
If enough death and destruction could be caused, the theory went, American power would withdraw from the Middle East enabling a fundamentalist revolution of sorts that could return the Islamist world to the dark ages. Bin Laden’s strategic thinking and his final decision to move forward with the September attacks, however, represented an extreme miscalculation of American resolve and overplayed his hand dramatically. With a massive “sneak attack” inflicted upon the American homeland, the paradigm shift was now complete. “The sleeping giant” was once again awoken from its slumber of indifference with a new-found determination to reassert its power on the world stage and take the fight to the new enemy. Simply because, as I remember an interviewed woman state on 9/11, “No one does that to us!”
The Run-up to September
There’s been a lot in the news lately thanks to partisan hype over The Path to 9/11 on pre-war fault so it seems logical to start here. First of all I should make it clear that I hold no single administration responsible for the September events. To assign blame here is simply ridiculous, 9/11 was a paradigmatic shift in the security environment after which we were all forced to reassess our priorities. It was no ones fault, we just didn’t foresee the shift. If you blame Bush II you've got to blame Clinton and if you blame Clinton you've got to blame Bush I, Reagan, Carter... ect. Individual blame is an argument for partisan politics that gets us no where strategically and only serves to further divide the electorate in our struggle. However it is helpful to identify several factors, which ran rampant through the Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton Administrations, that I believe contributed to al-Qaeda’s decision to attack the United States.
Throughout the 1980's and early 90's the United States, chiefly concerned with combating the Soviets, created a security paradigm of indifference toward terrorism. Faced with a very real nation-state threat in the Soviet Union, US strategic thinking was almost exclusively concerned with combating Soviet power and communist “aggression” in the Cold War world. The Middle East, like other third world theaters, was treated as a backwater. Large casualties in this area couldn’t be tolerated. It simply wasn’t worth getting tied down in the Arab world, the theory went, because it weakened your strategic position overall, just as the Soviets realized in Afghanistan during the 80's. After the fall of the Soviet Union, however, the threat disappeared and the previous security system paradigm changed. The problem was that the paradigm didn’t shift immediately, we entered a vacuum of strategic uncertainty. Who was the new threat? China? A reemerging Soviet Union? Third world autocrats? Or more intangible threats like genocide or social injustice? No one really knew so we made a half-ass attempt to play globo-cop and confront them all. We were successful, for the most part, in many of these areas like the Balkans and failed in others such as Somalia. Unfortunately, however, the Cold War security paradigm of indifference toward terrorism continued as asymmetric terrorist threats were ignored in favor of nation-state problems. Empty threats were made about “bringing these killers to justice” but no real action ever materialized, we were busy with other things. Events such as the Battle of Mogadishu (of Blackhawk Down fame) and Reagan’s withdrawal from Lebanon after the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, however, convinced al-Qaeda leaders that Americans were simply averse to mass casualties. A weakness they sought to exploit in September.
If enough death and destruction could be caused, the theory went, American power would withdraw from the Middle East enabling a fundamentalist revolution of sorts that could return the Islamist world to the dark ages. Bin Laden’s strategic thinking and his final decision to move forward with the September attacks, however, represented an extreme miscalculation of American resolve and overplayed his hand dramatically. With a massive “sneak attack” inflicted upon the American homeland, the paradigm shift was now complete. “The sleeping giant” was once again awoken from its slumber of indifference with a new-found determination to reassert its power on the world stage and take the fight to the new enemy. Simply because, as I remember an interviewed woman state on 9/11, “No one does that to us!”
posted by Will at 9:18 AM
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