This month's Atlantic has a longish section of articles on Terrorism. Here is James Fallows writing on the
nature of the public discourse on the subject of Terrorism.
In short, Jenkins is no softie. But when I spoke with him a few days after the presidential election, he lamented the meaningless tough talk about terrorism that he had heard from both candidates. Among his colleagues in the anti-terror and counterinsurgency business, he said, "there is a recognition that we have to get beyond just shooting terrorists." They understand that this struggle will be with us for a very long time, that success will mean reducing rather than absolutely eliminating the threat of attacks, and that because there is no enemy government or army to surrender, there can be no clear-cut moment of victory.
Ironically, when President Bush said this in the campaign, he was immediately jumped upon," Jenkins said. "It was a moment of truth for which he was promptly punished. Senator Kerry had a similar moment, when he said that the objective was to reduce terrorism to no more than a nuisance. Conceptually that was quite accurate, even if it was not the most felicitous choice of words. And he was punished too. In a campaign with a great deal of nonsense about the threat of terrorism, these two moments of truth were mightily punished, and the candidates had to back away and revert to the more superficial and less supportable assertions."
Superficial or make-believe political discourse is not the fundamental problem in some areas of public life. Take Iraq: America's main challenge is not that people are reluctant to discuss their good ideas for speedy progress toward a stable society and a quick removal of U.S. troops. It is that good ideas don't exist. But after spending a long time listening to, talking with, and reading about people in the United States and elsewhere who are involved in the struggle to control terrorism, I think that in this area our constrained public discourse is much of the problem.
It's clear from the statements the candidates made--and we all remember them--that these are not stupid people. They understand the nature of our situation with terrorism; unfortunately, the political acrimony that exists between the two parties makes it very difficult to back down from the kind of simplistic rhetoric that has been used over the past few years.
I've argued in the past that the WoT is not an adequate description of the situation we are in and that the Democrats should try to find a different framework. But the question remains then, what should that framework be?
That is a real puzzle. It's clear that the situation with Terrorism is something more than just a police action as others have argued, and something less than an actual war. Past administrations have used the word "war" in unconventional but still more or less constructive ways, as in the War on Poverty or Crime or Drugs. Why than not use it for Terrorism?
Well, one major problem lies in the irresponsibility of the people who created the framework. The Bush administration has not acknowledged the metaphorical nature of the word "war" in these sorts of contexts, and has, because of the violence terrorism presupposes, used it to rationalize actual conventional wars which had little direct connection to the actual WoT, but that were rather ideologically driven foreign policy goals sought after long before the 9/11 attacks.
It remains that more people died for violent crime that from terrorism in 2001, but the War on Crime was not used to rationalize any inappropriate goals, and therefore can still be seen as a healthy metaphor.
When the Bush Administration chose to use the WoT to invoke the kind Orwellian mentality our government used in the Cold War, the healthy metaphorical framework which existed even through Afghanistan broke down.
So here is the question: can we still use the WoT framework, shifting it back toward some sort of healthy metaphor, or is it lost forever as a worthwhile descriptor. And if it is, what should we use instead?
Consider this an open thread for brainstorming. Any ideas you have are greatly appreciated.
Jonathan
MoralQuestionsBlog.com