Posted on 09/28/2001 8:43:50 PM PDT by Clive
ONE of the 20th century's least celebrated discoveries was that terrorism works. The Irish led the way: Britain retired from the field in 1922 not because it had been militarily defeated but because it could not stomach endless atrocities.
Eighty years on, the British Government has been bullied into submission again by the IRA, but, in the meantime, lots of other terrorists - freedom fighters, if you like - have managed the same thing: the Stern Gang in Israel, the FLN in Algeria, Zanla in Zimbabwe, and so on.
In all these cases, the metropolitan power decided that the game was not worth the candle and retired back home. The supine nature of British foreign policy derives in part from the fact that Britain has been more often successfully bullied by such tactics than anyone else.
Another variant of giving in is the making of futile gestures. Exhibit A is Bill Clinton. In 1993, after all, Islamic terrorists tried to blow up the World Trade Centre. The intention could hardly have been made clearer.
Then came the attacks on the American embassies in East Africa in 1998. President Clinton's reply was to launch cruise missiles to blow up an aspirin factory in Sudan and to re-arrange the sand in Afghanistan. Bin Laden, Saddam and Gaddafi must have laughed with incredulity. President Reagan's raids on Libya had been a serious riposte - and terrorism actually diminished thereafter for a while.
But Mr Clinton was squeamish, not least in his willingness to rely on Jesse Jackson as a roving ambassador in Africa, despite the latter's determination to look hard the other way over the Rwandan genocide.
Just as Churchill's drawing of a line in the sand in 1940 made Chamberlain look awful, so President Bush's far tougher response has thrown Mr Clinton into unflattering relief.
The big point about the present crisis is globalisation. The United States says it cannot respond to this terrorism by simply "going home", and has therefore declared the whole planet off limits to terrorism. It will be an epic struggle.
Terrorism works by standing on its head the normal military objective of killing the maximum number of enemy soldiers while taking minimal casualties oneself.
Now, the logic has been pushed further still: today's terrorists assume a 100 per cent casualty rate among their own soldiers.
They believe that the US can still "go home" - by which they mean stop supporting Israel and stop harassing Gaddafi and Iraq. This could still happen. The brutal truth is that Israel is being rejected by its region in the same way that an alien heart is often rejected by a body into which it is transplanted.
Because of American support, Israel cannot be beaten militarily or diplomatically - which just leaves terrorism. It is not clear, long term, that America will settle for an endless diet of that: terrorism may still work, in other words.
The main American interest in the Middle East is oil, rather than helping Israel to find room for more immigrants.
Indeed, the first thing America has to do when the chips are really down - during the Gulf war or now - is to ensure that Israel is not part of its alliance, because that would put off far more important Muslim allies.
Governments never openly give in to terrorism: they gradually change policy, like Britain in Ireland, while protesting that terrorism has nothing to do with it. Will Mr Bush gradually give in to terrorism in that way? Despite his rhetoric, he still might.
The oddity of this virtual war is that it will be entirely up to Mr Bush to decide when to declare victory. He has just three years: by September 2004, as he runs for a second term, he will want - with whatever caveats - to announce that "we licked terrorism".
This is not such a bad deadline. If America cannot throttle its foes in that time, then it probably cannot be done at all. But if Mr Bush's second term were to begin with another terrorist outrage, America's policy towards Israel might start to shift.
In any case, it is extremely doubtful whether America can maintain its current broad alliance longer than that.
Washington will not have forgotten that, only four weeks ago, Muslim and African countries at the United Nations conference against racism in Durban were able to marshal a majority against the US-Israel axis.
That knowledge is enough to make America adamant that it will not allow the UN any control over its retaliatory action now - but it is also a reminder that, if the terrorist menace cannot be extirpated soon, the majority that has swung behind America now could swing back against it.
This, in turn, means that America cannot stop once it has overthrown the Taliban. To be sure of success, it has to make a long march through Libya, Iraq, Iran, Syria and the Sudan, overthrowing regimes or at least terrifying them into good behaviour.
There would be a lot to be said for making these strategic options explicit now, before we get lost in the fog of virtual war.
R W Johnson is the director of the Helen Suzman Foundation in Johannesburg.
I hope they are, the future of America depends on their success.
Do you think GWB should take that deal now?
This mass slaughter by suicide bombers is about the fanatic spread of Islam throughout the world using the sword upon all "infidels." The Koran calls for such tactics and these nutballs take it deadly seriously.
If Bush concedes to these people, civilization ends and we have a reversion to the 7th Century AD run by barbarians.
This is a worldwide war between civilization and murdering madmen with a twisted, satanic vision of their religion.
They haven't used nuclear weapons yet but they will as they are working overtime toward that end.
We either win or die. Those are the two options. There is no middle ground and George W. Bush realizes that.
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