In the accompanying article, Michael Ledeen takes issue with President Bush's characterization of terrorism as arising from hopelessness. Without necessarily agreeing with Mr. Bush's opinion that hopelessness is the only basis of terrorism, I think Mr. Ledeen misses the point by finding that some famous terrorists have, like Osama bin Laden, been well off.
Terrorism is famously a method of the weak. If the Palestinians had a real army and air force that could compete with the Israeli Defense Forces on an equal footing, you wouldn't see suicide bombings in Netanya. If the insurgent forces in Iraq had fully equipped and trained military forces, with secure bases, and all the trappings of a real army, they wouldn't be using improvised explosive devices. Anyone who has read Mao Tse-tung on guerrilla warfare, or, for that matter, any good history of the Civil War, knows that the weaker side, if it acknowledges that it is unlikely to lose by conventional means, but is unwilling to concede defeat, may resort to the guerrilla or terrorist tactics.
On the other hand, terrorism is also the weapon of the politically weak. If the Iraqi Sunnis believe that they are going to lose benefits, status, and power under any conceivable political settlement, and are unwilling to accept that loss, they may return to terrorist and guerrilla methods.
So, we can say that terrorists have no hope of victory through conventional military means, or through democratic political means. To that degree, Mr. Bush is right to associate terrorism with hopelessness. The terrorists, however, wouldn't be acting at all if they were entirely without hope of affecting the outcome. Terrorism is the only method that holds out hope, however remote, of winning without the means to obtain a conventional victory. In fact, hope may be all that terrorists have, because the odds of duplicating the successes of Mao Tse-tung and Fidel Castro are very remote indeed.
One of the problems this analysis raised for policy-makers is that, to remove terrorism from the table, one much offer either some realistic hope of achieving political goals through other means, or some absolutely incontrovertible demonstration that they have no hope of achieving those goals at all. Perhaps, then, it is unfortunate that the old saying "Where there's life, there's hope" has such a large share of truth.
Glenn A Knight
In my study
Sunday, December 28, 2008
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2 comments:
Glenn wrote:
> Terrorism is famously a method
> of the weak... If the insurgent
> forces in Iraq had fully
> equipped and trained military
> forces, with secure bases, and
> all the trappings of a real
> army, they wouldn't be using
> improvised explosive devices.
> ...the weaker side, if it
> acknowledges that it is unlikely
> [I think you mean "likely"]
> to lose by conventional means,
> but is unwilling to concede
> defeat, may resort to the
> guerrilla or terrorist tactics.
> So, we can say that terrorists
> have no hope of victory through
> conventional military means, or
> through democratic political
> means.
> Terrorism is the only method
> that holds out hope, however
> remote, of winning without the
> means to obtain a conventional
> victory.
Indeed it does give them hope. The more astute terrorists-- not the fist-shaking, religious nuts willing to strap on suicide bomb belts-- realize that they don't have to win conventionally. Indeed they shouldn't try to do so, simply because they will most certainly lose if they try.
Rather, they can wage terrorist warfare on the cheap. That's because it's what the military calls asymmetric warfare. If the "weak" side in such a war is willing to persevere, it actually has great hope of winning in the long run, regardless of any short-term setbacks.
My "weak" side liberates an artillery shell and some automatic garage door parts and makes an improvised explosive device. The "strong" side spends millions of dollars to build a truck it has to ship half way around the world; to recruit, train, and supply ten soldiers to man the truck; and to plan and execute a mission for it. The asymmetry is clear, and even if I only blow up one truck in fifty, I'm far ahead. If I'm patient enough, sooner or later, the "strong" side will declare victory and leave.
The US is on the wrong end of the asymmetrical teeter-totter in Iraq. Part of our failure to see this and to react to it appropriately is that the President early on declared "war on terror." Terror is, of course, a tactic or, at best, a strategy. It isn't an enemy per se, and an attempt to fight it as such is doomed.
So, if I were one of the "terrorists" the US is fighting in Iraq, I'd feel very hopeful right now.
First, my apologies for the error you noticed. I meant to say "... likely to lose," or, perhaps, "... unlikely to win," as Lloyd surmised.
The assymmetry of this sort of warfare has some implications. For those of us who have read up on the American Revolutionary War, it is pretty obvious that the rebels - our ancestors - took advantage of the long supply line from England, the tendency of occupying troops to alienate the locals, and so on, to compensate for our lack of trained troops, munitions, and the other "necessities" of war.
I believe I have said before that if the war in Iraq were viewed as a replay of the American Revolution, the United States had taken the part of the British. We would have done better to play the role of the despised French.
Conservatives like to mock efforts to get at the "root causes" of terrorism, and I must say that some of the supposed root causes are not very persuasive in that role. But terrorism is not a disease which can successfully be attacked through its symptoms. At some point one must find a means to siphon off public support for the terrorists.
One might conclude from this analysis that the Israeli bombing of Gaza is likely to have an effect the opposite of that intended. Having demonstrated the overwhelming power of Israeli conventional power and the irremediable hatred of Israel for the Palestinians, the Israelis have left Palestine no option but the course of assymmetric resistance.
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