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DiscussIt’s one of my favorite New Yorker cartoons. The picture is of two goldfish swimming around aimlessly in a fishbowl, with one asking the other, “Are we there yet?”
I’m reminded of that cartoon every time I hear President Bush assure the American people that we’re making “progress” in the War on Terror.
“Okay,” I think. “We’re making progress. But progress toward what? Tell me more. What are our objectives? Are we there yet?”
It’s troubling that five years after 9/11, it seems the more appropriate question might be, “Do we even know what our objectives are?”
Of course, in any war, your aim is victory (or surrender, if you’re French). But how exactly should we define “victory” in the War on Terror?
Clearly, this is a new kind of war. But it carries echoes of past battles, battles this country won by having a clear sense of direction.
In April 1950, on the eve of the Cold War, the United States National Security Council issued its famous NSC-68 document, which laid out the parameters of our emerging struggle with the Soviet Union. It explained why we had found ourselves in a new global conflict (because the world had become polarized between two superpowers with competing ideologies), what our objectives were (to contain the spread of global communism and, eventually, to bring about its demise), and how we planned to achieve them (by demonstrating the superiority of the American system to the world and by preserving an effective military deterrent to Soviet aggression against this and other free nations).
I’ve yet to hear President Bush articulate answers to any of the questions addressed in NSC-68 — I’ve never heard him articulate much of anything, but that’s a topic for another column — and I doubt I’ll hear them over these next two years.
So, here’s something along the lines of what I wish President Bush would say:
“Since 9/11, we have succeeded in preventing the enemy from staging further attacks on our soil. Our enduring success demands that we continue and redouble our efforts to protect ourselves: we must use our intelligence services to disrupt terror plots before they can be carried out; we must use our National Guard to secure our borders so that terrorists cannot infiltrate our country; and, when necessary as a last resort, we must be prepared to use our armed forces to prevent terrorist organizations and rogue states from acquiring the biological, chemical and nuclear weapons that they would use on us and our allies without hesitation.
“But that can’t be all we do. If it is, then our children and grandchildren are doomed to an endless war with fresh generations of terrorists. Ultimately, the only way to defeat Islamic terrorists is to destroy the ideological vine from which they grow. That vine is a radical interpretation of Islam that, among other things, allows its adherents to take legitimate grievances — dead Iraqis, dead Palestinians, blasphemous cartoons — and use them to justify mass murder. Whatever we choose to call it — Islamic Fascism, bin-Ladenism, Jihadism — it is a menacing ideology with the destructive potential to match Nazism and Stalinism. Dangerous ideas must be defeated, but they can only be defeated by other, better ideas — not by bullets and bombs.
“Let it be clear: America is not waging war on Islam; what America is doing is taking sides in a war within Islam, a war of ideas between fundamentalists and moderates. We must devote resources toward defeating the forces of Islamic fundamentalism, but ultimately the only way to do that is by strengthening the Muslim world’s moderate and reformist elements.”
I sense that the Bush Administration understands the importance of strengthening Muslim forces of moderation, but only on one level — the level of nation-states and their governments.
Mired in a Cold-War paradigm of “allied states” vs. “rogue states,” Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et. al. have chosen to wage the War on Terror like a game of Risk: Topple the regimes you don’t like (Afghanistan, Iraq), put pressure on the ones you don’t like but can’t replace (Syria, Iran), and prop up the ones you do like (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan). The essence of this state-centered approach is the belief that if you have the government with the right ideas, those ideas will somehow filter down to the people.
In today’s rapidly globalizing world, however — where ideas travel at the speed of light through the magic of the Internet and the cell phone — the primary engine of social change, good or bad, is no longer the nation-state or the government, but the individual. This sort of bottom-up change requires leaders with an ideological vision and the courage to express it.
The Martin Luthers of Islam are out there. It’s up to us to find them and lend them moral support, protection and the means to broadcast their message to the global Muslim community. We also owe it to ourselves to kick the oil addiction that’s not only draining our economy and poisoning our environment, but also funneling money to the other side and thereby prolonging this war.
It would be naïve to assume that we could ever eliminate every last Jihadist out there, but that’s not necessary for us to achieve victory in the War on Terror. All we need to do is make sure that the good guys in the Muslim world gain the upper hand, and allow the forces of history do the rest.
Yes, in a hundred years there will still be some Imam preaching Jihad in some mosque in Saudi Arabia, just as there are still neo-Nazis in Germany and communists at Cornell. But he will have long ceased to be a threat and will have become, as John Kerry was criticized for saying in 2004, a “nuisance.”
I have faith that 9/11 and other such atrocities will one day provoke the shame in tomorrow’s Muslims that the Crusades do in today’s Christians.
I hope I live to see that day. But if this country doesn’t start taking proactive steps now to win the ideological war against bin-Ladenism, then I fear that in fifty years we will still be killing more terrorists, bombing more of their countries and, like the aimless goldfish in the cartoon, asking ourselves, “Are we there yet?”
Ben Birnbaum is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at bhb9@cornell.edu. Infomaniacs Anonymous appears Tuesdays.
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