Terrorism

Now we're confronted with 9/11, this act by Osama bin Laden's group that shattered our perceptions of what was going on in the world. Let's talk about our political response to those events and then go into how those policies affect the region, and we'll talk about the Iraq war. Was the administration right about the way that it defined terrorism and the threat it posed to the United States?

The biggest problem with the U.S. and much of the world is the way the U.S. defined the terrorist problem and the responses to it. Let me start with an example. A year ago, I hosted Nelson Mandela at the University of Maryland to give a lecture. He went to the White House that morning, met with President Bush. That was just two months after 9/11. He came back and gave a lecture to 10,000 people and said he supported America's war on terrorism, including what America was doing against al Qaeda and Afghanistan. This is the Nelson Mandela, who is certainly reluctant to support powers and superpowers acting in the Third World. He's been in the forefront of that; he said that. Now contrast that with what he has been saying more recently. The harshest words you can imagine against the U.S. This is also represented in the surveys that had been done right after 9/11, the sympathy that the U.S. got globally, the support that the U.S. got from states, even states like Iran, early on in the war against al Qaeda, and even states like Syria, which provide a lot of intelligence in the war against al Qaeda. And now you have pervasive opposition to the way the U.S. is. So what's going on here? What happened?

Let me tell you what were the differences. There are, in my judgment, five fundamental differences. One, is people's response to 9/11 was that this was a horrific attack. The U.S. has the right to respond. It's got nothing to do with terrorism as such; that this is an attack against America by a horrific group, and the U.S. has every right to respond to that because of that. But they didn't want America to define every other group or every other terrorist, or a group that engages in terrorism, including those that have not attacked America, including those who are more consequential for other regions, more vital for other regions. In that sense, there was a discomfort when the U.S. was defining "Let's now do this against that group, including those that have not attacked America." And there were measured disagreements about that.

Second, most people around the world think that the issue of terrorism is not simply about supply, like the administration thinks. The administration thinks it's really about the organizers: smash the organizers; it's over. Most of the people around the world think that there is a demand side. The organizers succeed, in part, because there is an environment out there that is conducive to recruitment. Why do people join? Why do people pay funds? Why do people support in public opinion? Those conditions have to be addressed in a genuine and effective war on terrorism. Most people around the world want to do both at the same time. That's why they saw the solution to the Arab-Israeli issue as being critical in addressing the issue in the Middle East; that you can't avoid it.

Third, most people disagreed with the notion that terrorism is another "ism" of history, like totalitarianism and fascism, and as if it's an ideology or political coalition or movement. Most people see it for what it is. It is an immoral means used by different groups with different ends. It doesn't define the group. Terrorism is a description of the means that are used by a variety of groups, including states, unfortunately, as well. Therefore, in order to win that war, in order to reduce the occurrence of terrorism, you need to illegitimize it, particularly in the eyes of those groups and societies that condone and accept it. You can't establish legitimacy and illegitimacy by force, and certainly not unilaterally -- certainly not unilaterally. By definition, you cannot do that unilaterally.

A lot of people were upset, particularly when in the spring of last year, the U.S. did the right thing in saying to Palestinians, "Yes, you've been under occupation for thirty-five years. You deserve freedom. You deserve an end to occupation. But through any means -- suicide terrorism -- terrorism of any kind is unacceptable." That's a good, moral position to take; but then we don't turn around and say to Sharon, "We understand the pain your people are suffering with these attacks, but that doesn't give you the right to use any means, including using human shields or violating human rights on the West Bank and Gaza."

If you don't make that consistent position, then your moral authority is undermined, and you cannot illegitimize [terrorism]. People are not receptive on the other side. That's another reason why there is a conflict.

Finally, if you look at the way this issue has been defined in the public discourse, we focus on it as if it's a phenomenon that's peculiar and particular to the Middle East, and particularly to Islam as a religion, because of the horror that America suffered through in 9/11. But the reality is that most people don't accept that, because terrorism is common in every place. In fact, the Middle East has not been the place where more terrorism has occurred, historically. Not even suicide terrorism, because suicide terrorism has taken place more among the Tamil rebels than among groups in the Middle East over the past couple of decades.

And they're not Muslim.

They're not Muslim, and they're not Arab, and they're not from the Middle East. The point is that it's not a phenomenon that's related so much to theology, culture, and history; it's related to politics and needs to be addressed. All of that, obviously, comes together into a frustrating issue, because this is the priority issue for America, and America wants it to be the priority issue for all the other states.

And think about the final point of disagreement. There was a rapid movement from thinking about al Qaeda as a threat to considering the threat largely to be a state-sponsored threat. And the "axis of evil" thesis, the focus on Iraq, specifically, as the next threat, shifted the focus from the real threat of al Qaeda, which is the empowerment of non-state actors, especially in the era of globalization. These horrible people who attacked America, there were fewer than two dozen of them. They used nothing but box cutters and technology that was available to all. They didn't need states to do it. Even today, after a year and a half of the sole superpower putting all its resources on the table, where do most of these fighters hide today? In countries that are friendly to the U.S., like Pakistan and Afghanistan, whose governments are truly trying to control the fighters of al Qaeda. But they remain there because that's where instability is. The logic of that threat is very different from the logic of the threat that is posed by states like Iraq or North Korea.

The U.S. is powerful enough to deter any state in the world, and has, historically, including Stalin and the Soviet Union. It can defeat any state or combination of states today. But it's a very different threat that the world sees in al Qaeda, and a different response that is required. So the world is very frustrated, fundamentally frustrated, with the way we have proceeded to confront that threat.

You argue in your book that, on the one hand, we made the mistake of creating this diffused definition of the enemy, terrorism, and that we failed to focus on what the threat was, which was a means used by different groups. And we chose not to go down the multilateral route of coming up with a treaty that defines terrorism and working on international public opinion to reverse the legitimacy of that. Talk a little about and why you think we made that choice.

There were two reasons. One was that it is always convenient to use a label to define your enemies. The fear was that since terrorism now is the threat, if you didn't label an enemy a terrorist, then it's not an enemy anymore. We lost the term "enemy." I mean, the U.S. has a right to define any enemy. It has a right to define Kabul as an enemy, or Syria as an enemy. That's a question of interest and threats. But it is as if we forgot that you can do that without labeling a country "terrorist." So it was the employment of this new label as a way of defining enemies and mixing the two together.

The second reason is that the fear of multilateralism, of tying one's hands in going after the enemies that one wants to choose unilaterally. In this [Bush] administration, particularly, given the tendency to want to go unilateral, there is a fear to tie one's hands. Early on after 9/11, there was a fabulous opportunity for strengthening international treaties that prohibit violence against civilians. At least to start with that as the line for defining terrorism: deliberate attacks on civilian targets. Immediately, the U.S. got a unanimous resolution condemning terrorism, but without defining it. Had there been a true effort done then when the world was mobilized, when the U.S. had the moral authority, when there was a lot of sympathy, we could have succeeded. Now it is too late, as was witnessed by the attempt of the prime minister of Malaysia to even get something like that, himself, among Muslim countries, just in the past year. That has not worked.

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