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we can assume from our first American battle casualty in Afghanistan,
the Central Intelligence Agency is working alongside special-ops
forces on the ground.
Can we also
assume the CIA is employing assassins? According to press reports,
President Bush recently ordered the CIA "to undertake its most
sweeping and lethal covert action since the founding of the agency
in 1947." The order set aside prohibitions against assassination
going back to the Ford administration, and now allows the CIA to
conduct a "targeted killing campaign" against Osama bin
Laden and selected members of his al Qaeda network.
Presuming this
is true, what does that mean for the war on terrorism? Good news
or bad?
It's not as
good as one might think. At best, an assassination program will
be of marginal tactical value. At worst, it will encourage Americans
to indulge in dangerously beguiling fantasies about the nature of
the war and how it must be prosecuted.
The arguments
against assassination fall into three broad categories: legal, moral,
and practical.
The legal argument
is the easiest to deal with. The assassination ban affecting U.S.
government agencies, including the CIA, came as an executive order,
not legislation, and what the president giveth the president can
taketh away. If Bush modifies or rescinds the executive order, there
goes the legal argument.
The moral argument
is far more formidable, at least in ordinary times. But these times
are not ordinary. We are at war. Once one accepts that, it is difficult
to make a cogent moral argument that concedes the deliberate killing
of a hapless conscript on the battlefield, but forbids targeting
that same conscript's evil commander in his comfortable bunker.
(Or, in the case of bin Laden, his damp cave.) In light of today's
realities, only pacifists can make a respectable moral argument
against the premeditated dispatching of members of the al Qaeda
leadership.
But now we
come to the practical side of the question, and here are the rocks
upon which strategic assassination founders.
In the Middle
East, power is respected and weakness is despised. Peace, when it
exists, flows from the fear and awe inspired by irresistible might
and crushing victory. If the United States wants peace, then spectacular,
overwhelming triumph is our only option. Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda,
and the states that harbor them must be dealt a defeat the likes
of which the region has not seen since the Third Punic War. Violent
Islamists and their sympathizers throughout the Middle East must
be shown clearly, publicly, and palpably the utter futility and
hopelessness of their cause. If not, we will have no peace. And
given al Qaeda's well-documented interest in obtaining and using
nuclear weapons, the alternative to peace may well be a catastrophe
on U.S. soil the likes of which the world has never seen.
Once one fully
appreciates the extent and nature of the victory America must secure,
it becomes clear that quiet, hidden assassinations — the so-called
"silent option" — will get us nowhere. What we need
are thousands of angry, screaming U.S. Marines bringing our enemies
to their knees. That is how you win in the Middle East, and that
is the only way you win.
Take a lesson
from the Israelis.
Over this past
summer, as violence between Israel and the Palestinian Authority
continued to spiral, Tel Aviv publicly admitted to a program of
assassination against selected terrorist leaders on the West Bank
— "targeted killings," the Israelis called them.
The assassinations were intended to incapacitate West Bank terrorist
organizations or, failing that, to deter the terrorist leadership
from further attacks against Israelis and Israeli settlers. Sometimes
the hits were relatively subtle, e.g., a sniper's bullet from out
of the darkness. Other times they were not so subtle — missiles
fired from an attack helicopter, for instance. And the assassinations
continue to the present day, according to press reports.
How much success
have these assassinations had in achieving Tel Aviv's strategic
goals? Close to none, as far as anyone can tell. The terrorist organizations
are just as defiant, their attacks just as deadly and numerous as
they were before. Meanwhile, peace and safety for Israeli citizens
seems ever more distant.
The terrible
irony is that Israel, of all nations, should know what it takes
to survive in the Middle East. It takes strong, decisive, and ruthless
military action — displays of force that leave the enemy in
wonder. The 1967 war put fear and trembling in the hearts of Israel's
enemies. So, to a lesser extent, did the October War of 1973. That
fear and trembling gave Israel peace — it was a cold and tense
peace, undoubtedly, but it was peace. Israeli children were not
dying.
In the Middle
East, anyone can assassinate an enemy in some dark alley, and so
nobody is impressed when it happens. But when Israel annihilated
the Egyptian air force before it got off the ground, then spun around
and destroyed the Syrian emplacements on the Golan Heights, all
in a matter of six days — now that impressed the neighbors.
And among Middle Eastern nations, impressing your neighbors (and
your enemies, too — usually the same people) is what survival
is all about.
The late Syrian
President Hafez al-Assad understood this. In February 1982, the
Muslim Brotherhood (a fundamentalist/Islamist organization, the
Syrian wing of which was founded in the late 1930s) staged an insurrection
in the town of Hama, in northern Syria. Assad had been troubled
by the Muslim Brotherhood in the past, and decided the time had
come to put an end to their mischief. He probably did a bit of targeted
assassination, but that is not what ended the insurrection and pacified
the Muslim Brotherhood. What ended it was a full-scale invasion
of Hama by the Syrian army. Upwards of 30,000 people were killed,
which amounted to pretty much the whole town. That was the end of
Assad's Muslim Brotherhood woes. He had inspired fear and trembling
in the hearts of his enemies — or what was left of them. He
knew what it took to win in the Middle East, as did the Israelis
of 1967 and 1973.
It is easy
to see the appeal of an assassination program in our war on terrorism.
It's the same appeal as that offered by the air campaign we have
been waging, or the use of the Northern Alliance as a proxy force,
or the idea of putting U.N. peacekeepers in Kabul instead of an
American army of occupation.
Assassinations,
B-52 raids, a surrogate "army," and friendly Australians
in blue U.N. berets all hold out the promise of victory without
extensive American ground troops, without American causalities,
without an American conquest. But this is a false and dangerous
hope.
If we are to
have peace when the war on terrorism is over then we need to leave
al Qaeda, along with those states and organizations that support
it, prostrate, broken, and humiliated — unable even to contemplate
fighting again.
As a collector,
interpreter, and disseminator of strategic intelligence, the CIA
has a vital role to play in the war on terrorism. But the 7th Infantry
Division also has a vital role. We confuse the two at our peril.
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