On the campaign trail, we heard over and over again from President Bush that Senator Kerry exhibited a "pre-September 11th mindset" that the "war on terror" required a new mindset, and that we couldn't be trapped in the old way of thinking.
I agree. Well, sort of. More under the flap.
The Bush administration's fatal flaw in fighting this "war on terror" is that they are viewing terrorism through the old Cold War mentality. Not only is it the same-old-same-old rhetoric of the necessity to compromise on civil rights because of the evil enemy among us. The Bushies are seeing the world through the Cold War prism of regional conflict, where there are different States who may be sponsors of terrorism, and therefore in order to fight terrorism we need to use force against these possible State sponsors, eventually whittling them down until there ain't no more terrorism left.
The obvious problem with this strategy is that it requires almost limitless military and economic resources to go into country after country, unseat their governments, replace them with American-style democracies, and maintain enough of a standing army to make sure the democracy actually takes hold before moving onto the next country. Moral considerations aside, this is a very expensive and impractical way of actually "defeating" an international terrorist organization made up of small cells of dedicated fanatics ready to blow themselves up at a moment's notice. Unlike the Cold War regional conflict model, with an international terrorist organization there is no centralized government to negotiate with, no way of implementing policies of mutually assured deterrence to avoid widespread nuclear conflict, and no large groups of citizens you can make direct appeals to through targeted propaganda. That's probably why Bush said the "war on terror" is un-winnable. With the way he's going about it, he's right.
So I agree with Bush: this is a new type of "war" that requires a new mindset. The old way of looking at the world as one big Risk game board won't cut it. So what do we do? What alternatives does this leave us with?
I'm sure with the title of my diary some of you were thinking: that's all we need, another ultra-liberal who's going to try to say we can actually negotiate with terrorists. But that's not exactly what I'm proposing. I'm also not saying that we could never use force in fighting Al Qaeda; a country must have the ability to pick up arms to defend itself, something even the Dalai Lama authorized in the final days before the Chinese takeover of Tibet.
Former Congressman Lee Hamilton, in an article written for the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, had this to say about our "war on terror":
"We are fighting two enemies: al Qaeda, the network of terrorists responsible for 9/11; and a global movement of radical Islam, which has spawned groups that have killed from Madrid to Jakarta. The first enemy must be destroyed. The second enemy must be combated by many means over many years. Our aim should be to prevail over the ideology that gives rise to Islamist terrorism, while protecting ourselves against attacks."
I believe the only way we can successfully accomplish the latter goal - prevailing over the ideology that gives rise to Islamist terrorism - is to incorporate some of the principles of nonviolence in our fight against al Qaeda.
Just so we're all on the same page, when I refer to the "principles of nonviolence" I specifically mean the Six Principles of Nonviolence as outlined by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his book, Stride Toward Freedom. Dr. Kind defined these six principles as:
- Nonviolence is not passive, but requires courage
- Nonviolence seeks reconciliation, not defeat of an adversary
- Nonviolent action is directed at eliminating evil, not destroying an evil-doer
- A willingness to accept suffering for the cause, if necessary, but never to inflict it
- A rejection of hatred, animosity or violence of the spirit, as well as refusal to commit physical violence
- Faith that justice will prevail.
I believe we must make it clear to Muslims worldwide that we are committed to defeating the terrorists who seek to destroy our country, but we must also make it clear that we are not waging war against Islam or seeking to supplant Islamic culture with our own. Installing American-style democracy at gunpoint will not achieve this goal, and simply ignoring things like Sunni nonparticipation in Iraqi elections, or hoping the interim government will just solve that problem and make it go away does not give any credibility to our claim that we want the Iraqis to truly be free. It just makes us look like we are
upholding the spirit of the previous incarnation of a Western-style government the British established there in the 1920's, which was also met with armed resistance. It makes us look like crusaders, not liberators.
We must also make it clear to the Muslim world that we are a nation of laws, and we abide by these laws when defending ourselves. The photos of Abu Ghirab are bad enough, but they are even more incendiary when coupled with Bush's cowboy bravado of "wanted, dead or alive", and General Boykin's remarks about "God being bigger than Allah, who is a false god" and the war on terrorism being a fight with Satan. A good part of nonviolence is about attitude, how you allow your opponent to view you. It'd be nice if Bush took to heart a rendition on the age-old phrase mothers have been telling their children since the beginning of time: "If you don't have anything intelligent to say, don't say anything at all."
Finally, we should make it clear to Muslims everywhere that frankly we learned our lesson in Iraq, and pledge to not use force against another Islamic nation again except when there is a very real and verifiable threat to our country. We should pledge to not again invade another sovereign nation because we're more interested in playing Democracy Dominoes than in defending our country and its people against truly imminent threats.
One of my favorite quotes from Dr. King is, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." It'd be nice if as a country we could make sure we're on the right side of that equation.