We Still Don’t Get It
Seven years later, America’s conversation about terrorism hasn’t grown up.By Jesse Singal
September 11, 2008
The World Trade Center Memorial.
Let’s face it: Every year, this day becomes a bit less visceral for those of us who didn’t suffer a personal loss as a result of the attacks of September 11, 2001. The same sense of sorrow and anger is there, yes, but it’s slightly more rote, more connected to how we think we should feel than to the actual events of the day. So what, in addition to the simple, important act of remembering, should we try to accomplish every time the calendar turns to 9/11?
One obvious answer is that it should be a time to reflect on how good of a job we are doing of protecting ourselves. What is the state of our defenses? This includes not just physical bulwarks against possible threats, but also the intellectual framework through which we define what we are fighting. When we view our security problems through this prism, our weaknesses become all too apparent.
The story of the last seven years—a story that includes the disaster that has been the invasion of Iraq and the still-unfinished war in Afghanistan—has as much to do with Americans themselves as their leaders. Americans may have wised up about the Iraq war, and may be slightly more skeptical of bellicose approaches to responding to terrorist threats than they were earlier this decade, but in general they still hold a flawed, incomplete view of what terrorism is. And as long as it remains the conventional wisdom, this view that enabled the Iraq war will continue to hamper our efforts at protecting the homeland.
The phrase “war on terror” is an inaccurate description of the threats our nation faces, but it reflects most Americans’ understanding of the situation: that the “terrorists” are all in the same boat together, and that seeking out and killing them is the only real option. We’ve refused to let any of the complexities of terrorism get in the way of this stark, good-versus-evil narrative. “Different groups, from all backgrounds with diverse objectives use terrorism as a tactic to further their goals,” Caroline Wadhams, a senior policy analyst for national security at the Center for American Progress (of which Campus Progress is part), told me in an email. “The United States is not fighting all of them right now. The United States should be more precise in its language regarding what it is fighting,” she says.
A lack of precision is exactly the problem here; the misconception that every Muslim or Islam-related group that commits terrorist acts is joined in a unified bloc is tactically unsound. Not because many of them aren’t dangerous—we know that they are—but because foolishly lumping them together lends credence to the terrible idea that there’s a one-size-fits-all approach to protecting civilian populations from terrorist attacks—an idea that paved the way for the disastrous invasion of Iraq.
It’s also dangerous to underestimate our enemies and would-be enemies by assuming they are simply poorly educated or impoverished, that a healthy dose of wealth and education is all it will take to end the scourge of terrorism. “Americans believe that terrorism is caused by poverty and lack of education, while the truth is that most modern terrorists are middle-class and relatively well-educated," writes Lawrence Husick, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, in an email. "The ‘root causes’ approach leads Americans to say that if we solve poverty, we end terrorism, which is both unproven and likely untrue,” he argues.
This view can mistakenly lead to the belief that terrorists aren’t influenced by external events, that poor, hopeless people are simply “infected” with the hatred that leads them to commit terror acts, and that education and wealth are surefire correctives. But we know this isn’t the case. By 2003, the New York Times was reporting on research downplaying the link between poverty and terrorism, and long before that experts were aware that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden had completely different, oftentimes competing agendas, and therefore were not likely allies. None of these well-established facts about terrorism is particularly new.
But the view of a global jihadist conspiracy preying on poor, uneducated young Muslims persists long after 9/11, however, because it is much more politically palatable than the more complicated, fine-print-containing alternatives. If terrorists are everywhere and are simply insane or ignorant, then surely the only solution is for the United States to use its strong military to hunt them down wherever they reside. Politically, this is a simple, clean, appealingly strident approach. But if we are going to get serious about the threat of terrorism, accepting the reality of the situation—that different militant groups have different agendas, that some groups that have used the tactic of terrorism in the past have been or want to be folded into legitimate political structures, and that attempts to dismantle terrorist groups via military action have not historically been effective—is our only hope.
Many on the right have taken active steps to ensure that our most overly simplistic views on terrorism remain in place, treating competing assessments of the threat in fundamentally political, not strategic, terms. Karl Rove infamously remarked in 2004 that “Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers,” while conservatives “saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war.” President Bush, for his part, has carelessly derided anything deviating from his blunt, hard-line approach as “appeasement.”
Turn on the cable news networks and you will see that Bush, Rove, and other politicians and commentators have effectively dumbed down the debate to the point where few pundits discuss terrorism with anything approaching the intelligence that such an urgent subject demands. Instead, they rail on and on about the threat of “Islamo-fascism,” a term that doesn’t really mean anything, and which Wadhams accuses of “fall[ing] into the same trap as War on Terror language by lumping together disparate groups.”
It’s clear, then, that an inadequate, overly simplified framework is in place. This will become a problem if we are ever again attacked by terrorists on American soil, because it will enable politicians and pundits who don’t truly understand the situation to again call for overblown, ill-advised responses. The impetus for the Iraq war wasn’t just the neoconservatives who had been yearning to invade Iraq since the 1990s; we were led to war by a combination of their delusional fantasies and a populace that fundamentally misunderstood the situation. The only way to make sure we don’t repeat the same old mistakes is to take an honest look at what experts have learned about terrorism and integrate it into the national conversation. There is no better day to do this than today.
Jesse Singal is an associate editor of CampusProgress.org and Pushback.org.
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Comments
In remembering 9/11 this day years after the event I find it difficult to give a pass to the religion of Islam. The entire religion of Islam.
The prophet of Islam was of two natures; a wise and good teacher and a vicious evil spouting and flawed human being.
Islam must rid it’s bowels of the second Mohammed before it can earn forgiveness for teaching terrorism of innocents.
Dixon
— Dixon Webb - Sep 11, 04:16 PM - #You’re totally on point, Jesse. I would point out another mistaken conflation that people on the Right keep making about this whole War on Terror thing: linking the Iraq War to revenge for 9/11 (see www.washingtonpost.c…)
— Tanya - Sep 12, 10:45 AM - #Thought this would be of interest.
Since September 2001 I have maintained a free and confidential “9/11 list-serv”.
The “9/11 list-serv” distributes daily e-mails containing newspaper articles and other relevant information re: 9/11 issues of interest to 9/11 families, 9/11 organizations and interested individuals.
The 9/11 List-serv archives can be accessed at groups.google.com/gr…
If you would like to ‘subscribe’ to this free news service – send an e-mail to amkorotkin@aol.com with the word “subscribe” in the subject box.
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