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A war without an enemy

A war against terrorism is a recipe for confusion and lack of purpose. Wars are fought against enemies, and terrorism is not an enemy, but a tactic used by an enemy.

Jonathan Ariel

The most salient point to come out of the 9/11 Commission’s hearings was its criticism of the name “War Against Terrorism” given by the Bush administration to the ongoing military campaign.

The commission stated clearly that this implied an overly vague and unfocused concept at the most basic and fundamental levels of strategic decision making, to a point making the entire campaign devoid of meaning.

This is hitting the nail on the head. Terrorism is not an enemy, but a strategy. There is no such thing as a war against a strategy, and any attempt to conceive one is an exercise in futility.

Terror is not a new tactic in the annals of war. Its aim has always been the same, to discourage or inhibit an opponent’s ability or willingness to fight, or getting them to change their policies by paralyzing them with fear and dread.

In the past this strategy has been employed by both states and non-state entities. The blitz was a classic terror tactic, an attempt to scare the British public into pressuring its government to come to terms with Nazi Germany.

Since the sixties terror has, for the most part become regarded as the strategy of the powerless, adopted mainly by marginal ideologues or stateless national entities, in other words the losers and the failures, the “wanna bees” and the “never weres”. Seen in this light terror is reduced to a bloody theater of the absurd.

This is a dangerous misconception. If terror is conceived to be the weapon of the powerless, it need not be taken seriously. The end result is underestimating the enemy, always a bad mistake, and one the US has been guilty of regarding al Qaeda ever since its inception.

Terror, like any strategy can be either a miserable failure or a brilliant success, depending on how it’s used. There is a term for successful terrorists, they become known as guerrillas or freedom fighters. As a matter of fact, terrorists and guerrillas are often interchangeable. A belligerent who plants a bomb in a cafe or railroad station is acting as a terrorist, committing an act of terror. The next day that same person carries out an attack against a legitimate military target, becoming, in effect a guerrilla.

In Ireland, South Africa, Kenya and Algeria the terrorists/guerrillas succeeded. The key to this success was knowing and understanding their enemy, and realizing that terror was only one of a variety of operational strategies they had to employ in order to succeed. They could not have won by terrorism alone, it is equally unlikely they would have won without resorting to it at all. In general, in order to succeed terrorism should be employed sparingly. An overdose is inevitably fatal to the perpetrator, all but guaranteeing failure in achieving the desired strategic outcome. This may come across as unpalatable and extremely cynical, but history bears it out.

Since the late sixties terrorism has become almost synonymous with Arab, Palestinian, Middle East, and more recently Islam. This is because the Palestinians were the first none-state entity to internationalize terror, employing it not only against their enemy, Israel, but also against the civilian populations of Israel’s allies, primarily the US. The strategic goal was that this would cause public opinion to turn against Israel, forcing governments to change their policies accordingly.

This did not happen. Despite this failure, the Palestinians never reassessed their strategy, continuing to use terror as their sole weapon, rather than as one of them. Moreover they became addicted to it, primarily because it was an easy route to prime time TV and celebrity status. Terror got them international recognition, but it has also prevented them from harnessing that recognition into tangible results.

Al Qaeda, like the Palestinians uses terrorism as a means to generate political evolutions that benefit its goals. Unlike the Palestinians, it does not target neutral populations, only those of countries it believes stand between it and its strategic goal, the US and its allies. Like the Palestinians it has gained instant international fame via terror, and also like them, it has so far not succeeded in achieving its goal.

This goal is clear and unequivocal, the recreation of an Islamic Caliphate stretching from sub-Saharan Africa to Pakistan. This necessitates the elimination of what it regards as artificial nation states foisted on the Arab world by the West in order to keep it weak.

By misnaming the war against al Qaeda a war on terrorism, the Bush administration blundered seriously. It categorized al Qaeda as a failure and loser, not something to be taken seriously. In addition it generated confusion, to the point of opaque strategic vision, unable to pinpoint and define the enemy. If the war is against terrorism, then everyone who uses terrorism is the enemy. That's a lot of enemies, even for a superpower. The concept of terrorism as the enemy is a wonderful way to get lost in a hall of mirrors, in which everything looks the same. In such a hall, al Qaeda becomes another group resorting to terror.

This is a fatal mistake, because unlike many of those groups, al Qaeda has a clear strategic goal. It wants to foment a rising in the Islamic world that will topple governments, enabling a reborn Caliphate to come about. The Sept. 11 attacks were designed to trigger that rising. The tactic failed, but al Qaeda is still there and its strategy is unchanged. .

By ignoring the strategic perspective of 9/11, the Bush administration forfeited its ability to measure its results in the war, making it unable to discern whether it is winning or losing. In a hall of mirrors illusion blends with reality, if you are not able to quantify and qualify your position, you are in serious danger of truly losing your way. Even a superpower cannot prevail in a war if it cannot tell whether it’s coming or going.

Part of the administration’s problem is that it inherited the mindset that has come to haunt it from the previous one. The term "terrorism" brings to mind images of nutty kooks and Arabs hijacking aircraft. The result is that al Qaeda appears dumb and incompetent, which it is not.

The raison d’etre for the name “War against terror” was to downplay the inherent link between al Qaeda and Islam. It was easier to declare war against terror, which could be viewed as a malignant aberration of Islam, than against an organization that is an inherent part of the Islamic world, and has a specifically Islamic agenda. The administration did not want to be seen as initiating the much-vaunted “clash of cultures” against the Islamic world. It therefore conveniently ignored the fact that it was fighting an inherently Islamic entity. The selection of the term "war on terror" was chosen as part of this exercise in self -deception.

Like any self-deception, it has created much confusion, which in return has generated lack of clarity and purpose. The 9/11 Commission homed in on this confusion with the accuracy of a cruise missile. As it so correctly and succinctly pointed out, one goes to war against an entity, be it state or non-state, not with an operational strategy. Wars are fought against an enemy; they are won by successfully countering and neutralizing its operational strategies.

In this case the enemy is a non-state radical Islamic entity pursuing an Islamic strategic vision. This means one cannot separate between the enemy and Islam, since it is intrinsically part of the Islamic world, in fact a major part, as its success or failure will determine the future of that world for several generations.

This means that the war against al Qaeda must be seen as that, a much more important, dangerous, complex and fateful war than a mere war on terrorism.

The writer is Editor-in-Chief of Maariv International