Why I will Not Vote For Bush #2a: The War on Terror

The second reason why I will not vote for George Bush is his handling of the war on terror. I supported basically everything Bush did in this area between 9/11 and sometime around the end of 2001. Since that time, I don't think he has done well at all. This post is a sort of preface to several subsequent posts on specific aspects of the war on terror.

Here's how I see the war on terror. When I call it a war, I mean that we should pursue it with the determination and focus we brought to, say, World War II. I do not assume that the means by which we prosecute it will necessarily be military. Sometimes they will be, as in our invasion of Afghanistan. Sometimes they won't: for instance, I assume that the vast majority of our efforts to destroy al Qaeda's financial networks will not involve military action. I reject the idea that we have to choose between "a law enforcement approach" and some other sort of approach, or between offense and defense. We should use whatever means are best, within the bounds of morality.

I take it that we are fighting this war against any terrorist organization that has the will and the capacity to harm us. (In the case of terrorists who have only one of these, we should try to prevent them from getting the other.) Some terrorists may not fall into this category: e.g., I don't know of any evidence that the Tamil Tigers contemplate acting against us. (If I'm wrong about them, substitute your own example.) We will probably have other reasons to oppose these groups, but they are not our primary targets in this fight. Our primary aim is to destroy these terrorist networks, or if we can't, to degrade them to the point where they no longer pose a threat to us. Our secondary aim, according to me, should be to deny them the things they need to operate: countries that allow them safe haven, financial institutions that they can use to do business without detection, weapons, money, and so forth. Finally, we should also try to alter the conditions in which they can successfully recruit. We should not imagine that any country can avoid having any potential terrorists among its citizens: there will always be Timothy McVeighs and Theodore Kaczynskis in the world. But we can try to reduce their numbers. At the same time, we should try to strengthen our defenses, so that the likelihood that any terrorist attack will succeed is as low as possible.

About efforts to break up al Qaeda itself I have little to say. We have had some successes, but bin Laden and al Zawahiri are still at large. I assume that I don't know about most of our efforts, so commenting on them would be silly. I do, however, wonder what on earth we were thinking when we decided to let Afghans take the lead in the fighting at Tora Bora, and the Pakistanis take the lead in securing the borders. What could possibly have made that seem like a good idea? I am baffled.

As far as breaking up their financial networks, here too I have a hard time commenting, since I assume most of the information is classified. However, what reporting there is suggests that while we have had some success, we have not done nearly all we could. Thus, the New York Times reports the following:

The federal authorities do not have a clear understanding of how terrorists move their financial assets and are still struggling to prevent the flow of money to terror groups, according to a new Congressional report. The report, by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, also finds that the Internal Revenue Service has not developed a formal plan for sharing financial information with state authorities about charities under investigation. And the report says the Treasury and Justice Departments have fallen nearly a year behind in developing a plan for attacking money laundering and issues like terrorists' use of black-market gems and gold. It says some agencies have failed to make terrorism financing a high priority or have set unrealistic goals for overhauling their tactics.

In addition, al Qaeda is reported to have shifted its assets out of banks and into commodities like diamonds and opium. The latter is particularly galling, since the opium in question is being grown in Afghanistan, a country that, obviously, we now occupy.

U.S. and British counterterrorism experts say al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies are increasingly financing operations with opium sales. Antidrug officials in Afghanistan have no hard figures on how much al-Qaeda and the Taliban are earning from drugs, but conservative estimates run into tens of millions of dollars....

For their part, U.S. military commanders have been reluctant to commit the nearly 20,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan to opium eradication, fearing that doing so would divert attention from the hunt for terrorists. Afghan officials say that several times last year U.S. special forces spotted suspicious convoys that appeared to be ferrying opium. Radioing in for orders, the special forces were told to leave the convoy alone and keep hunting for al-Qaeda, the Afghan officials say. A senior Afghan security official says the U.S. military doesn't want to jeopardize the help it receives from local commanders by seizing drug stashes or busting labs controlled by friendly warlords.

But the U.S. is finally starting to pay attention. Its ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, has tapped top Drug Enforcement Administration official Harold D. ("Doug") Wankel to lead an intensified drive to nail kingpins, shut down heroin-production labs, eradicate poppy fields and persuade farmers to plant food crops. If the drug cartels aren't stopped, the U.S. fears, they could sow more chaos in Afghanistan, which al-Qaeda and the Taliban could exploit to wrest back power. "We need to make a difference in the next couple of years," says Wankel. Miwa Kato, a Kabul-based officer for the U.N.'s Office on Drugs and Crime, puts it this way: "The opium problem has the capacity to undo everything that's being done here to help the Afghans." Few outcomes would please America's enemies more.

To those who say that Iraq has not distracted us from the war on terror, ask yourselves what, exactly, our troops are currently doing that is more important than blocking a major source of al Qaeda's income.

However, my biggest concerns about our prosecution of the war on terror concern three other topics: our policy in Afghanistan more generally, weapons of mass destruction, and homeland security. I will address these in three separate posts over the next few days, starting with Afghanistan.

Comments

[CharleyCarp]

Moe:

It's as much a mistake to assume that the opponent's goal is always to hit a home run. Sometimes a single is adequate. People who are on the fence about supporting AQ may not "do nuance" either . . .

From your remark about cleaning old messes, I see that you're not really fully committed to the Necessity of invading Iraq in 03 (after a 6 month run-up).

Marg:

As I understand it, anywhere in SA is too close to Mecca.

[Moe Lane]

"From your remark about cleaning old messes, I see that you're not really fully committed to the Necessity of invading Iraq in 03 (after a 6 month run-up). "

CharleyCarp, when I want somebody to tell me what I'm thinking or saying, I'll ask my mom.