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he attack on September 11 was a 21st century Pearl Harbor committed
by a 21st century enemy, and launched a 21st century war.
The president
was exactly correct when he said — We are not about punishing
those who did this one thing. We are about defeating terrorism.
He said in his Texas way, We will "whip" them. "Whipping"
isn't the same as punishing. "Whipping," in Texan means
defeat.
Secretary of
State Colin Powell at a State Department press conference also had
it exactly right when he talked about the coalition forming of nations
willing to work with us, but that we will act unilaterally whenever
necessary. Our opponents are terrorism and the states that support
them. Paul Wolfowitz at the Pentagon also got it exactly right when
he explained that it is not just the terrorists, nor the structures,
but the states that harbor and protect the terrorists.
In August of
1990, we orchestrated 28 countries for eight months, put 500,000
American troops in the field and bombed Iraq for 42 days over the
invasion of Kuwait. If that was the appropriate-scale campaign over
the invasion of a distant country, then for the most powerful nation
in the history of the world, the question is, what is the appropriate-scale
campaign after thousands of American civilians have been killed
in our own cities? It is important to understand this. This is not
about a tiny thing. This is not about a few Tomahawk cruise missile
strikes. This is not about three special-forces teams performing
magical missions.
Defeating terrorism
is an enormous task. In may be closer to the Second World War in
terms of scale and complexity to any conflict since then.
In that context,
there are ten principles that will create the potential for victory.
Principle
One: We are at war.
We have been
at war at least since 1990, when Saddam invaded Kuwait. Terrorists
have been continually killing Americans since then. This time terrorists
crossed the threshold of killing enough Americans in our own country
that it cannot be avoided by our political system.
As of September
11, terrorists have come into American territory to use American
aircraft to kill thousands of innocent Americans. That was an act
of war more despicable and more costly in American lives than Pearl
Harbor.
We are at war.
We have to defeat terrorism or they will end safety, freedom, and
civilization, as we know it. We have no alternative. We must win.
Principle
Two: In wars your enemies are allowed to be clever, courageous,
and determined.
On the Washington
Post website there was a headline that read, "Taliban warns
of revenge. Afghanistan's ruling Taliban warned of revenge if the
United States attacked their country in retaliation for this week's
devastating terrorist assaults."
Well, why shouldn't
they? If the Taliban, given the choice of being on the side of civilization
and the side of terrorism chooses terrorism, and we are so foolish
as to only bomb their country, why shouldn't they seek revenge?
When you go to war, you seek victory, so that they are no longer
in power, so they do not have the power to take revenge, so they
cannot threaten you. Time is always on the side of the evil. It
is an important premise of history. Time is always on the side of
evil because they can wait, they can plan, and they can look for
vulnerabilities while the good go about their daily business. But
in order to defeat terrorism, the good have to mobilize for decisive
victory.
Principle
Three: In war, your vision of success is decisive for the rest of
your achievement.
It is important
for this administration to codify what the president has said.
In World War
II we picked a very specific goal — unconditional surrender.
It was quite clear. We occupied Germany, Japan, and Italy. We created
democracies. The world has been better ever since. That was a direct
goal.
In the Civil
War, Lincoln chose a specific very, very hard goal — unconditional
victory, and he paid with more lives to achieve that goal than in
any other American war.
In Korea, we
tolerated the goal of stalemate because we thought the geopolitical
consequences were too great. We have had troops in the Korean Peninsula
since 1950. Korea has been a long campaign, this is the 51st year.
In Vietnam,
we decided that defeat was preferable to the risk of victory, not
that we could not win, but the nation, the body politic, after a
decade of agonizing internal struggle, decided that defeat was preferable
to the cost of victory.
In Desert Storm,
we arranged a coalition for or a limited goal — kick Saddam
out of Kuwait and weaken him. That was a very specific goal. It
turned out, in my judgment, in retrospect, to have been wrong, and
I think all of the architects of it would now agree. They thought
he would fall as a consequence, an underestimation of the survival
mechanisms of dictators.
It is vital
that we have the right vision. It is not going after bin Laden,
who is trivial in this larger context. It is not going after the
specific terrorist organization that launched the attack in New
York. Yes, it would be useful to know who they are, yes, we should
get them, but they are a symptom of the disease. If we eliminate
them, we will simply create martyrs. They will be the bin Laden
brigade. There will be a new generation of their children who decide
to fight us.
The only legitimate
vision is the defeat and the destruction of the system of terrorism,
and that requires that we declare terrorism to be a crime against
humanity, just as we did with piracy, and that we refuse to accept
the existence of any regime which harbors, supports, or protects
terrorists. Anything short of that simply sows the seeds so that
in a few years organized terrorism will come back.
I was on the
National Security Commission, the Hart-Rudman Commission, and we
spent three years studying the world of 2025. Our number one unanimous
conclusion by a bipartisan panel of 14 people was that the most
significant threat to the United States is a weapon of mass destruction
going off in our cities, biological, chemical, or nuclear.
We know today,
that Saddam Hussein is willing to accept any level of sanctions
to keep his program for weapons of mass destruction, that Iran has
a massive program underway, that North Korea, while its population
is starving despite being the largest recipient of U.S. food aid
in Asia, has a massive program of weapons of mass destruction.
You read what
these countries are saying and you wonder why no one understood
Hitler in the 1930's, just as we don't understand our generation's
Hitlers. So we have to take their words and their programs seriously.
Principle
Four: The stakes are enormous.
The Second
World War we understood. Our way of life was threatened. A world
in which the German Nazis, the Imperial Japanese, and the Italian
Fascists had won would have been a stunningly different world. Today
we face a similar stark choice. There are principles at stake on
two grounds. The first is the very fabric of a free worldwide economic
political structure, the ability to travel, the ability to have
a decent job. Also consider the necessity in the global economy
to have just-in-time delivery where Taiwan or Thailand or China
or Mexico is making something that arrives at the auto factory exactly
on time for production. Terrorists are directly threatening the
entire fabric of the world we have built for the last 60 years.
Second, if
we do not defeat terrorism while it is still using conventional
weapons, we will inevitably in our lifetime be faced with terrorism
using weapons of mass destruction. This is a tragic, but providential
warning, of a much worse future.
Principle Five: Issue a series of ultimatums.
Sudan will
cease to house terrorists or we will replace the government of Sudan.
The Taliban will cease to house terrorists or we will we replace
the Taliban. This does not mean you have to be stupid. It does not
require us, for example, to decide that we will put seven American
infantry divisions in Afghanistan. It may mean we decide to allocate
$3 billion to hire every Afghan who does not like the Taliban and
arm them and then help then with American firepower. And in less
than a year, my guess is American air power, combined with armed
Afghans, would drive the Taliban from power.
Similarly,
in Iraq, we should not do something indirectly with volunteers as
guerrillas. We are the most powerful nation in the world. If we
want to eliminate the regime of Saddam Hussein, we have the capacity
to eliminate it. We did not say, let's set up a free Japanese guerrilla
movement in 1942. We did not say the OSS could liberate Europe.
We said the OSS is a helpful addition while we land at Normandy
and bomb German cities.
This is a serious
nation, and if this is a serious war, then the message is simple.
Saddam will either close down all of his efforts toward weapon systems
of mass destruction, and he will expel all of his terrorists or
we will create a government in Iraq that will agree not to do this.
We must insist on change, because we now have vivid proof in New
York and Washington of the future if we do not. The next time it
will not be an airplane. The next time it will be a chemical weapon
or it will be a germ agent or it will be a nuclear weapon. We must
take this seriously. No one should say they have not been warned
by the facts of their own life during the week of September 11.
Principle
Six: To achieve victory we must plan for a coercive, not a consensual
campaign.
In a consensual
campaign you say, I really wish the Sudanese would be nice, but
they won't do more than X. In a coercive campaign you say, anyone
not doing X, anyone not doing the minimum we have set, we will have
to replace. So we just need to know which team you are on, and there
are only two teams on the planet for this war. There's the team
that represents civilization, and there's the team that represents
terrorism. Just tell us which team you are on because there are
no neutrals.
The Swiss banks
have to now break their secrecy law to find out everything we need
to know about terrorism, period. If not, we should isolate the Swiss
banks, and they will not be part of the world banking system. Again
and again, across the planet, when the United States is serious,
it is amazing how many people decided that they are on the side
of civilization.
This is not
asking permission, this is stating a fact. There are two scorecards,
which scorecard do you want? We are going to replace the government
who choose the terrorist scorecard, so if you would like to be on
the replacement list, we need to know it because we have a planning
process underway, and we already have two lined up, and you know
if you want to be third, we need your information.
The key word
is replace, not punish. You do not punish governments that are dictatorships
because they do not care if you kill their civilians. They do not
care if you kill their infantry. If we have killed 100,000 Iraqis,
and it has not replace Saddam's dictator ship it should teach us
something. Saddam could not care if every Iraqi died, as long as
he was the hero of the myth. We have to talk about replacement,
not about punishment.
Principle
Seven: The campaign has to be comprehensive.
We should reach
out economically, diplomatically, and militarily to all Muslims
who oppose fanatical terrorists. We should offer the future of a
better way of life for every Palestinian who would like to live
in peace and prosperity. We should be clear to every Muslim country
that we are not anti-Muslim. We are anti-fanatic, and we would like
to have good relations with every non-fanatic. It is as important
to be prepared to be economically supportive as to be militarily
effective.
One of the
keys to winning the Cold War was the Marshall Plan, which was at
least as important as creating NATO or the CIA or the Strategic
Air Command. We should have a comprehensive understanding that in
this war, we will be the proactive ally of creating prosperity,
and safety and freedom for the entire Muslim world that wishes to
live in civilization. We will only be coercive and focused on those
fanatics who give us no choice, including governments that give
us no choice. It cannot be only a military or an intelligence campaign.
It has to be an economic, military, diplomatic, and political campaign.
Principle
Eight: The coalition must be the largest willing to support our
plan.
It is a very
important distinction. We cannot write a plan designed to have a
big coalition. We have to write a plan to win and then recruit to
the plan. Countries that are not willing to participate but also
not harbor any terrorists are fine. This is a passive support we
will tolerate. But, we should not tolerate opposition. For example,
Uruguay may decide they're not in this fight. That's fine, as long
as they do not harbor terrorists. No country can harbor terrorists
and claim to be out of the fight.
Principle
Nine: We have to sustain freedom every day.
A worldwide
economic system and a high-speed prosperous free society are inevitably
vulnerable to a deeply committed state-supported terrorism. It is
inevitable. Whatever we brilliantly figure out how to stop this
time, they will study, and they will look for the one thing we have
not figured out because they only have to hit once. They do not
have to hit every day. We have to sustain freedom every day.
It is unavoidable,
if you intend to remain a prosperous, free society, then our campaign
must be 90-percent offense and only 10-percent defense. Our job
is to root out the terrorists, root out the organizations, and root
out those governments which support them because only by pursuing
evil abroad can we stop evil from entering the United States. We
cannot ever passively build a system that will stop evil from entering
the United States. We can only slow it down.
Principle
Ten: We must continuously communicate to the American people and
most people around the world about what it means to be on our side.
This war will
be fought in the age of 24-hour news channels. The powerful wrenching
images of Americans dying on September 11 will gradually fade as
new images are projected on a daily and even hourly basis. Our opponents
will maneuver to maximize civilian casualties in any American action.
The timid and the undecided will seek every opportunity to explain
why we should accept minimal results, be patient, and avoid aggressive
action.
Mistakes will
happen. It is vital that the right explanations and the right language
are available within the news cycle. It is also vital that those
words and explanations fit both the American people and audiences
around the world.
Information
campaigns are the decisive campaigns of the 21st century. They have
to be organized, resourced, and led just like any other aspect of
warfare. This campaign to defeat terrorism will only last as long
as the popular support sustains it and that support will require
a substantial continuing information campaign both at home and abroad.
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