The Terrorists and How to Fight Them

The way to fight terrorism is to fight the terrorists. The Bush Administration’s idea of fighting terrorism by designating an affiliate of terrorists as the real enemy and then committing our nation to a deadly war against this straw horse does not resolve the problem.

I repeat: The way to fight terrorism is to take the fight to the terrorists. Osama Bin Laden has not been captured. The terrorist groups have not been destroyed. Our commitment to create a stable anti-terrorist government in Afghanistan has been ignored. Large portions of Afghanistan have fallen back into Taliban control as we have shifted our resources into Iraq. Our involvement in Iraq has been used as a recruitment tool that may be strengthening terrorist organizations. Terrorists threaten the stability of the Pakistan government, which is a country with nuclear weapons. Terrorism continues.

Instead of concentrating on ending terrorism, the Bush Administration has concentrated on ousting Saddam Hussein (who, ironically, al Qaeda wanted overthrown.) This was a major mistake, as it shifted resources from fighting terrorists to a war in Iraq. A report issued last month by the U.S. Army War College confirms this analysis. The report, “Building the Global War on Terrorism” by Dr. Jeffrey Record, concludes the war in Iraq “was a war-of-choice distraction from the war of necessity against al Qaeda.” The war in Iraq may have actually harmed our fight against terrorism by moving operational forces away from combating the terrorists.

Dr. Record points out that “a cardinal rule of strategy is to keep your enemies to a manageable number.” We were busy fighting Iraq while mistakenly paying less attention to the terrorist threat of al Qaeda. Bush’s mistake was “launching a preventive war against a state that was not at war with the United States and that posed no direct or immediate threat to the United States at the expense of continued attention and effort to protect the United States from a terrorist war with which the United States was at war”, according to the War College report by Dr. Record.

Saddam Hussein was not behind the September 11 terrorist attacks. George Bush even states this, yet in the same statement describes the war in Iraq as a war against terrorism. George Bush knows this ploy is working: polls indicate that many Americans believe Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks. Ed Goeas, a pollster who works for Republican candidates, was quoted at a recent legislative conference as stating the terrorism issue is seen by Republicans as the issue that will guarantee Bush’s reelection. Voters tend not to want to change leaders in the middle of a war. Republican leaders believe Bush’s reelection depends upon his being seen as being in the middle of a war. Unfortunately, this is not a war that stops terrorism. Nor does it appear that the upcoming elections provide any incentive for Bush to end the war. We must not reward with re-election an Administration that has been, and continues to be, so mistaken in its foreign policy.