In case you missed it, yesterday's NY Times printed a great op-ed by Gen. Wesley Clark and Kal Raustiala(?). It sure would've been nice if this argument had gotten more traction in 2001. Lamentably, I think I will file it under "too little, too late". Or perhaps "bad president, bad naked power grab by neo-feudal corporatist hegemons".
Follow me below the fold for some tidbits and stumbling analysis...
Clark's main point is that terrorists should be treated as criminals rather than soldiers.
Treating terrorists as combatants is a mistake for two reasons. First, it dignifies criminality by according terrorist killers the status of soldiers
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Well, duh. I was saying that in 2001, but nobody listened to me but the modest readership of my community college newspaper. Clark goes on:
If we are to defeat terrorists across the globe, we must do everything possible to deny legitimacy to their aims and means, and gain legitimacy for ourselves. As a result, terrorism should be fought first with information exchanges and law enforcement, then with more effective domestic security measures. Only as a last resort should we call on the military and label such activities "war.
This is a different framing of the conflict we find ourselves in, stemming from a completely different set of goals from our current tyrants. Calling things 'wars' may help to stifle dissent at home, but this simple linguistic technique has fucked our nation for decades to come. I suspected from the start that the 'war on terror' was a ploy to muddy the waters for extralegal imperialism, mostly because we never actually got a definition of what the Administration considered 'terrorists'. My colleagues called me cynical. Guilty as charged. Now I get to say "I told you so." What a fucking prize.
Imagine a world in which George Bush, or perhaps some democratically elected president, stood at Ground Zero on September 12th and denounced these international criminals, and called on the world community to help bring those responsible to trial. The world would have been galvanized into action. Most likely this would mean a strengthening of cooperation between nations, and a strengthening of the U.N. as an international medium.
Imagine bringing terrorist suspects not to secret gulags, but to the Hague. Imagine the pressure that a united U.S. and E.U. (no doubt with at least lip service from Russia) could put on nations like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, to clamp down on violent religious zealots.
Clark also brings up another problem with the 'war' meme: If they are indeed soldiers, some terrorist acts would be technically legitimate.
Labeling terrorists as combatants also leads to this paradox: while the deliberate killing of civilians is never permitted in war, it is legal to target a military installation or asset. Thus the attack by Al Qaeda on the destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000 would be allowed, as well as attacks on command and control centers like the Pentagon. For all these reasons, the more appropriate designation for terrorists is not "unlawful combatant" but the one long used by the United States: criminal.
I once read an interview with Osama bin Laden in which he was asked how he could target innocent civilians. His argument was that citizens of ostensibly democratic states are ultimately responsible for the actions of their government. If the United States is doing Terrible Thing X to country A, it is because it is the will of the American people. Or at least it is because the people do not oppose their government's actions. So in a democracy, the responsibility for self-rule also carries with it the culpability for acts carried out in our name.
Personally, I think our whole democracy song-and-dance is wearing a little thin. We make a big deal out of how free we are, and how much we are the government, but it's sort of like Santa Claus. We all sort of wink at each other when we say things like "land of the free, home of the brave". Because we know we don't really get to tell our leaders what to do. Those days, it seems, are as far off as Washington and his cherry tree.
So I think Osama is wrong. We don't have a whole lot of say in our nation's endeavors, and as such we are not legitimate targets in his war. Democracy is our brand name, but we have sacrificed actual self-rule for flashing lights, air conditioning, comfort foods, and endless amusements. We could reclaim this nation, were we willing to sacrifice our comforts. But we are not.