The Red Herring
Thinking ahead.

By Paul A. Rahe, professor of history, University of Tulsa.
October 2, 2001 10:00 a.m.

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.