The Perfect Soldier: Special Operations, Commandos, and the Future of Us Warfare by James F. Dunnigan
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Dirty Little Secrets
The Plan for Winning the War on Terror
by James Dunnigan
September 2, 2005
Discussion Board on this DLS topic
The savage criticism of the way America is fighting the war on terror is
nothing new in American politics. In every major war, the party (or parties) out
of power were sharp and brutal in their criticism of how the government was
fighting the war of the moment. You can look it up. That’s a lot easier with
Google, but if you have access to a major university or research library, you
can find microfilm copies of newspapers from World War II, World War I, or even
earlier. Makes interesting reading, and induces a measure of déjà
vu.
The current situation is somewhat different, in that the war on
terror is not being fought against a nation. That makes agreement on strategy
and tactics even more difficult, and disagreement much easier. Everyone is
inventing it as we go along, and no one will know who is right until it’s all
over. Actually, the disagreements will probably continue, with one faction
insisting that if things had been done their way, the terrorists would have been
defeated much sooner.
But what is, “the plan” currently in use for
defeating Islamic terrorism? There is a plan, although for political reasons,
all details cannot be admitted. Some knowledge of military (and terrorism)
history, plus a close look at what has been done so far, makes it pretty clear
what the plan is.
The first move was to round up as many members of the
organization that planned and supported the 911 attacks. That included taking
down the Taliban government in Afghanistan, and closing all the terrorist
training facilities there. The world-wide roundup resulted in the arrests of
thousands of suspects, and the jailing of most of the known al Qaeda leaders. We
tend to forget that, while focusing on the few who are still at
large.
Then came the invasion of Iraq. This was apparently done for two
reasons. The main one, based on everyone’s agreement (including Bill Clinton,
France and Russia), was that Iraq had chemical, biological, and possibly
nuclear, weapons, and would be likely to supply terrorists with such weapons.
Many terrorists had taken refuge in Iraq, and Saddam was known to use terrorists
to do his dirty work (like the Iranian rebel groups he hosted, and helped to
carry out terrorist operations inside Iran.) Such use of terrorists was common
throughout the Middle East, but Saddam was seen as very unpredictable and
unreliable, even by Middle Eastern standards. There was general agreement that
the removal of Saddam would be a good thing.
The second reason for going
into Iraq was given less play, but was more important. The Arab world needed a
wake-up call on the subject of Islamic terrorism, and the reason for most of it
(corrupt government). Overthrowing Saddam, and giving the Iraqi people an
opportunity to create a democracy, confronted the Islamic terrorists in the
sharpest possible way. Al Qaeda, and many Islamic conservatives, have pronounced
democracy as “unIslamic.” One reason Islamic radicals hate the West is because
of their decadent attitudes towards elections, women and freedom of speech. By
invading Iraq, and preventing any more attacks inside the United States, the
Islamic terrorists are revealed as impotent loudmouths. This, naturally, enrages
many Moslems who back Islamic terror, but it also forces the vast majority of
Moslems to reconsider their tolerance for Islamic terror, and the corruption in
their societies that they all complain about, but won’t deal with. The Iraqis
are now forced to deal with it. The Sunni Arab minority, that had long dominated
Iraq, refused to surrender, and, along with Islamic radicals, sought to show
that the old tricks (terrorism) still worked. Who will win? That's what some of
the arguments are about.
That’s The Plan. What are the complications? The
first one is that the Arabs may not be able, or willing, to deal with their own,
largely self-inflicted, problems. So far, Iraqis have turned out, despite death
threats, to elect a government. There’s no shortage of volunteers for the police
and security forces. But the terrorists have plenty of volunteers as well, and
corruption is still a problem.
To further complicate things, Europe, and
much of the rest of the world, loudly opposes The Plan. This is partly a
knee-jerk reaction to the defeat of the leftist Democrat government in the
United States in 2000. Europeans felt more comfortable with the Democrats, even
to the enthusiastic call for American participation in the invasion of Kosovo in
1999 (which, like the invasion of Iraq in 2003, was carried out to overthrow a
“terrorist state” in an operation the UN would not approve.) The Europeans also
felt that they could live with thugs like Saddam, and convince him to stop
supporting terrorists. Iraq, like several other Middle Eastern nations (Syria,
Iran, Lebanon, Yemen), had been willing to host, or at least tolerate, al Qaeda
operations. Europeans are not big on bold moves and risk taking. They would
rather try a bribe or a well timed assassination. But now they are stuck with
the after-effects of the antics of those American “cowboys,” and they don’t like
it, especially if the American tactics work.
Arabs, and Moslems in
general, opposed the invasion of Iraq because the leaders of most Moslem states
operated the same way Saddam did, just more discretely. The people got their
information from sensationalistic, and rabidly anti-Semitic mass media, that
portrayed all the ills of the world as a Jewish conspiracy. Despite this revival
of Nazi doctrine (and, with some Islamic radical groups, the Nazi salute),
Europeans looked the other way. That has also started to change, as the European
attitude towards Moslem migrants produced a far more fertile breeding ground for
Islamic radicals that in the United States. Europeans largely dismissed this at
first, until the bombs went off in Spain (2004) and Britain (2005). No one likes
to admit they are on the wrong side of history, so most Europeans continue to
contort themselves into positions that dismiss The Plan, yet still allow them to
do what needs to be done to deal with their more immediate (than those
“wrongheaded Americans”) exposure to more terrorist attacks.
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