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fear we are about to embark on a wild goose chase that will divert
our attention from our real adversaries and, over time, sap our
morale.
The terrorist
assault on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center was nothing if
not a professional operation. It required boldness and daring. It
required imagination and a deep understanding of our institutions,
our practices, and even our architecture. Its perpetrators managed
to turn many of our strengths — our wealth, our technological
accomplishments, our openness — against us. This was not the
work of a rag-tag band of religious fanatics; it was the accomplishment
of an individual or group of individuals who had studied our ways
and who knew and understood us very, very well.
In order to
forecast what comes next, we must at least entertain the possibility
that those who planned this operation planned its consequences —
that they thought also, with equal intelligence and understanding,
about our likely reaction to the havoc they intended to wreak. We
must ask whether they might not have understood just how much damage
we would do to ourselves economically in the aftermath, just how
cautious and fearful we would become, just how inclined many Americans
would be to wring their hands and blame their country for what the
terrorists had done. Above all else, we must consider whether they
expected us to do precisely what we're now about to do — that
they wanted us to launch a crusade to ferret out and bring to justice
Osama bin Laden, that they wanted to involve us in the mire that
is Afghanistan.
Why would anyone
want this? Because, in modern times, the attempt to lay hold of
Afghanistan has been disastrous for all outsiders who undertook
the task; because a war in a vast and almost trackless country characterized
by rugged, mountainous terrain — and against a government virtually
bereft of infrastructure — is bound to take more time and cost
more blood than we seem in the recent past to have been willing
to tolerate; and because such a war, involving profound suffering
over a considerable period of time on the part of the civilian population
of an already devastated country, is likely to inflame not only
the radical Muslims, who hate us already, but other Muslims who
generally admire us or who ordinarily pay us no heed.
I do not doubt
our military competence. Nor do I think our current leaders so foolish
as to want to conquer and occupy Afghanistan. I do not object to
attempts to apprehend bin Laden. Nor do I think it either unjust
or unwise for us to plot the downfall of the Taliban. They are our
enemies. Of this, there can be no doubt. The real question is whether
they are our most dangerous and insidious enemies — the enemies
on whom we should focus our primary attention at this time. Should
we not be wondering whether a major assault on Afghanistan on our
part is not precisely what our enemies want?
It's easy to
see why we have chosen this option. Afghanistan is the one country
in the world with a government with no real patrons. Pakistani intelligence
may have formed and trained the Taliban, but by now those involved
in that endeavor no doubt regret having attempted to cope with Afghani
anarchy in this particular fashion. Even Colin Powell — a soldier
who seems to have forgotten why the United States has an army —
is willing to go along with such a strategy. No one among our putative
allies, and almost no one among those who would welcome our destruction,
has any serious objection to our becoming mired in Afghanistan.
Who, we must
ask, is now laughing up his sleeve? If I am right that this operation
could not have been mounted or carried out by a shadowy band of
Muslim fanatics, one would have to consider who had the means and
motive to make the proper arrangements. Only one name comes to mind.
Qaddafi has been a spent force since the mid-1980s; the younger
Assad has been currying our favor; even the radical Shiite regime
in Iran has pulled in its horns. Only Saddam Hussein remains. We
are told that he is too intelligent and cautious to involve himself
in such a venture. That is, of course, precisely what everyone assumed
prior to his invasion of Kuwait. We have no proof of his involvement,
of course, but the whole point of a clandestine operation is plausible
deniability. The trick is to get others to do your dirty work —
to keep as a great a distance as you can from the boldest of your
operations.
There is, of
course, evidence pointing to Iraqi intelligence. In the wake of
the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, Laura
Mylroie collected evidence pointing to such a conclusion and
made it available to all those willing to listen. In the last few
days, we have learned that Mohammed Atta met with an Iraqi operative
a few weeks before the events of September 11, and senior Iraqi
intelligence officials are said to have paid Osama bin Laden a visit
in Afghanistan within the last couple of months. The ruler of Iraq
may be a secularist, and the leader of al Qaeda a religious fanatic
— but this does not mean they are unable to cooperate against
a common foe. After all, the United States fought alongside the
Soviet Union in World War II. Saddam would not be reluctant to employ
Osama bin Laden, and the latter is certainly willing to make himself
a target. Viewed from a certain perspective, it's a marriage made
in heaven.
We will, of
course, never be sure. Proof will remain elusive, and Saddam Hussein
has no doubt already buried his tracks. But there is suggestive
evidence, and I suspect that soon there will be more. Does it not
make sense to suppose this is the Iraqi strongman's second bold
attempt to secure for himself leadership of the Arab and of the
larger Muslim world? Does it not make sense to finish now what we
left undone, on Colin Powell's advice, at the time of the Gulf War?
Does it not make sense to eliminate the one regime in the Middle
East capable of mounting such an attack? And should we not do so
before the internal divisions over policy — which have so crippled
us in the recent past — reemerge?
It's good to
keep in mind that at universities across the country, the academic
Left is once again trying to persuade American college students
that everything is our fault, and that the same refrain is to be
found in the pages of The New Yorker, The Nation,
and Tikkun. It will soon find its way to the op-ed page of
the New York Times. Throughout America, wherever the bumper
stickers read, "Think globally, Act locally," our fellow
citizens have long been inclined to wring their hands more over
our imperfections than over others' crimes against humanity. If
we do not stop terrorism now, at the root, the next attack could
be far, far worse.
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