For the last week I have taken a breather from the blog wars and spent considerably less time with the news. Such a respite, with the family all gathered and in good form, can help with gaining some perspective. Among the many important events of the last week, the attempted Christmas bombing stands out as the most significant, for several reasons. It is now 9 years post-9/11 and we have still not determined the nature and identity of our enemy nor have we reached a consensus concerning how and what we should be fighting whoever/whatever it is we are fighting. 9 years post-9/11, we have still not resolved the tension between left and right over our approach to the single greatest threat to our freedoms and prosperity.
[To be clear, the potential death toll from all acts of terrorism short of biological or nuclear weapons being used, suggests terrorism should be considered more of a nuisance than an existential threat. However, our reactions to terror, including our reactions to the perception that our leaders treat our safety with insouciance, presents significant political danger to our leaders. Further successful attacks can, and would be, leveraged via the Media and our enemies in ways which would exponentially increase their expense. The failed Christmas bombing is on a direct continuum with the 6 hour delays from Newark Airport experienced by Christmas travellers yesterday. In John Robb's terminology, terror's ROI can be in the thousands of percent.]
Immediately post-9/11, there was a brief moment of resolve when all agreed that radical Muslims had declared war on the United States and a military response was warranted. This Thesis was presented to near unanimous acclaim by George W. Bush. The invasion of Afghanistan and the follow-up invasion of Iraq were supported by large majorities of the population and the elites (although there is good reason to believe that many Democrats supported the Wars based more on he polls than any strategic vision.)
I do not need to repeat the sad history that combined poor execution of the post-Iraq victory nation building with the domestic opposition, some rigidly ideological and most basely opportunistic, to militarizing the poorly named "War on Terror." The Left leveraged our weariness for the fight (ably assisted by a fairly inept and often incoherent PR effort by the Right) to electoral victory in 2006 and the White House in 2008. The (primarily) Democratic Antithesis could be summarized in brief: terrorism is a minor annoyance, incapable of causing significant harm to America and that the far greater threat lay in our over-reaction to the danger. By curtailing civil liberties and denying rights to those accused of terrorist acts or inclinations (since many of those incarcerated at Gitmo should be given the presumption of innocence) we have forfeited the moral high ground against those who would wish to harm us, simultaneously offering them enhanced recruitment potential while damaging our body politic in untold ways.
Once ascending to the Presidency Barack Obama had a unique opportunity: He could have gone beyond the Antithesis to find the necessary Synthesis. He should have had tremendous incentive to do just that. In an attempt to attack the Right's attack on the liberal approach to terrorism (and there is a delicious irony in the Left's complaints about the Right's incivility considering the vitriol of the Bush years; the irony would be more entertaining if the stakes weren't quite so high) Matthew Yglesias points out that success int he War on terror is a prerequisite for a successful Presidency:
The Anti-Terror Right’s Incentive Problem
It’s clear that if you want to accomplish the left’s political goals, the only reliable way to achieve that is going to be to in fact succeed in reducing the quantity and severity of terrorist attacks. Similarly, it’s clear that right-wing politics benefits from an increase in terrorist attacks. The most comprehensive research on this comes from Israel, where they have longer years of experience with terrorism, and it’s clear that terrorist violence boosts the fortunes of right-wing parties. This is why it’s easy for an issue that seemed close to a solution 10 years ago to devolve into the current mess—Palestinian violence brings right-wing Israelis to power, whose anti-Palestinian violence empowers right-wing Palestinian movements whose anti-Israeli violence empowers right-wing Israelis.
In America, it’s just the same. I have no doubt that conservative politicians and pundits have a subjective desire to see the country well-defended, but their objective interests point in the other direction. And objective incentives matter to people.
While Matthew Yglesias intends the point of his post to be an attack on the supposed Right wing incentives to what? Enable terror? he does make the valuable point that fighting terror effectively should be a primary concern of the Obama administration. The fact that the under Obama we have ramped up the use of UAV strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, have started a surge in Afghanistan, and have maintained our ability to monitor terrorist communications suggests that at least parts of the administration understand the need to prevent successful terrorist attacks. However, other parts of the administration have apparently privileged ideology over successful anti-terror efforts:
There is no doubt that some of Obama's actions as president are consistent with treating the fight against terrorism as a war. However, handling a captured foreign terrorist who has tried to blow up an airliner as an ordinary criminal defendant, so that we provide him with a lawyer and he stops providing us with information, is not consistent with treating the fight against terrorism as a war. Setting an arbitrary date on which we will begin pulling out of what Obama stipulates is the central battlefield against terrorism is not consistent with treating the fight against terrorism as a war for very long.
Sending terrorist detainees back to an emerging center of terrorist activity even after we have seen other detainees returned there emerge as key leaders in terrorist activity is not consistent with treating the fight against terrorism as a war. Expressing a desire to negotiate with regimes that are key participants in the "network of violence and hatred," and failing wholeheartedly to back those who would overthrow the most dangerous of these regimes, is not treating the fight against terrorism as a war.
The internal contradictions in the Obama administration have led to significant political problems and, more importantly, threaten to preclude the development of a more coherent policy that could be supported by most of the political spectrum.
The political problems are bad enough. We have the TSA bureaucracy doing what bureaucracies do, ie practicing CYA and appearing to be idiotic in the face of an unexpected problem. We have political appointees doing what political appointees do, ie practicing CYA and appearing to be idiotic in the face of an unexpected problem. We have charges that the Right is politicising the War on Terror and charges that the Left does not even understand we are at war. We have parts of the Right suggesting we suspend civil liberties en masse while the Left continues to insist we should prosecute those who have tried to prosecute the War as best they were able. At the same time, both Right and Left appear to believe that the American people cannot tolerate some simple truths and are unable to make reasonable differentiations.
Operationally,our confused efforts are hampering our ability to actually evolve a winning strategy against the long term threat of Islamic fueled terror. Worse, many of our attempts to ameliorate the situation have lead to a paradoxical worsening of the situation. We practice diffidence in order to avoid provoking and all we have done is cede our own freedoms and become less secure in the balance.
A Synthesis beckons. My suggestions will be forthcoming in another post. Presumably President Obama's would include different emphases. The question will be whether or not he has the wisdom to construct a Synthesis amenable to the majority of Americans.
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