A Choice of Enemies: America Confronts the Middle East - Hardcover

Freedman, Sir Lawrence

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9780385664509: A Choice of Enemies: America Confronts the Middle East

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385664508 ISBN 13: 9780385664509

Publisher: Doubleday Canada, 2008

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The United States is locked into three prolonged conflicts without much hope of early resolution. Iran is pursuing a nuclear program; the aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein has seen unrelenting intercommunal violence; and the Taliban have got back into Afghanistan. George W. Bush will almost certainly leave office without solving any of these big foreign policy issues that have defined his presidency. Sir Lawrence Freedman, distinguished historian of 20th-century military and political strategy, teases out the roots of each engagement over the last thirty years and demonstrates with clarity and scholarship the influence of these conflicts upon each other. How is it that the US manages to find itself fighting on three different fronts?

Freedman supplies a context to recent events and warns against easy assumptions: neo-conservatives, supporters of Israel and the hawks are not the sole reasons for the failure to develop a viable foreign policy in the Middle East. The story is infinitely more complex and is often marked by great drama. Unique in its focus, this book will offer new revelations about the history of the US in the region, and about America’s role in the wider world.

A Choice of Enemies is essential reading for anyone concerned with the complex politics of the Middle East and with the future of American foreign policy.

“Freedman is not just a good historian but a terse, readable writer.” Simon Jenkins, Sunday Times (UK)

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About the Author:

Sir Lawrence Freedman is professor of war studies at King’s College, London. In 2001 he was appointed head of the School of Social Sciences and Public Policy at King’s and then in 2003 vice principal for research. Before joining King’s he held research appointments at Nuffield College, Oxford, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and the Royal Institute of International Affairs. He is the author of several books of history, including Kennedy’s Wars and The Official History of the Falklands Conflict.

Choosing Enemies

When war comes, choosing an enemy is normally the least of a government’s problems. The choice tends to be obvious. Speaking after the “unprovoked and dastardly” Japanese attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, “a date which will live in infamy,” President Franklin D. Roosevelt saw no need to elaborate on the meaning of these events: “The facts of yesterday speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.” The next “unprovoked and dastardly” attack against American territory, on September 11, 2001, was naturally compared to Pearl Harbor. Yet in this case the facts did not speak so clearly. Four commercial aircraft had been hijacked. Two had been flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, a third into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., while a fourth, probably destined for the U.S. Capitol Building, crashed in Pennsylvania. The immediate cost in lives was higher: 3,021 (including nineteen hijackers) as against 2,382 in 1941. A measure of the traumatic impact, however, is that early estimates suggested that some 10,000 might have died as the two towers collapsed into dust and rubble. Moreover, the enemy had struck from within the United States, and a link with foreign organizations or states could only be assumed. There was no transparent sequence of events with which the attack might be linked: no crisis, no failing negotiations, no ultimatums, no warnings. When the president spoke to Congress about the attacks on September 20, he realized that he needed to address a number of questions that “Americans are asking.” The first was, “Who attacked our country?”1

The apparent culprit was al Qaeda, a terrorist group led by Osama bin Laden, a dissident member of a wealthy Saudi family, who had issued his own declaration of war against the United States. Bin Laden had found sanctuary in Afghanistan, run by the Taliban, a sympathetic regime that was turning the country into an Islamist state. Multiple, spectacular attacks fitted in with the group’s known aspirations and tactics. American targets had been attacked before–embassies in East Africa in 1998 and a warship, the USS Cole, off the coast of Yemen in 2000. The CIA had been warning that al Qaeda was planning something for 2001. Although an obscure Palestinian group tried to take credit, the Agency merely required a look at the passenger lists of the hijacked aircraft to confirm suspicions. The manifests contained the names of people the Agency had been investigating.2

The enemy did not own up. Bin Laden denied responsibility. At first he suggested, somewhat disingenuously, that the attacks seemed “to have been planned by people for personal reasons.”3 He repeated the denial on September 28. “As a Muslim,” he said, “I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other human beings as an appreciable act.” There were all sorts of people who could be responsible, he suggested, “from Russia to Israel and from India to Serbia.” Perhaps it was “the American Jews, who have been annoyed with President Bush ever since the Florida elections and who want to avenge him.” Maybe it was the “intelligence agencies in the U.S.” They “require billions of dollars’ worth of funds from Congress and the government every year” and so “needed an enemy.”4

Bin Laden was not unique in suggesting that this might be a largely manufactured incident. This idea had, and still has, considerable currency around the world, especially in Muslim countries, and even has some credence in the United States. Allegations were soon circulating that the twin towers were felled as a result of a controlled demolition, or that the Pentagon was really struck by a cruise missile, or that there was a quiet exodus from the twin towers of people (Israelis/Jews) who had been alerted to the coming tragedy.5 In the absence of definite proof that al Qaeda was responsible, more fanciful theories could gain ground.

So President George W. Bush’s political task was more complicated than Roosevelt’s, even though the military task in 1941 was bound to have been much greater. Bush had to name the enemy and explain the enmity, as well as set out a strategy for its defeat. He had to do this for a country that was angry, shocked, and fearful of further attacks from unknown sources. His method was a series of carefully scripted statements culminating in the address to Congress and the American people on September 20, 2001, supplemented on occasion by unscripted, sometimes casual, remarks. Much of the rest of his presidency was shaped by the strategy decided upon and described over those days.

On September 11, Bush knew that al Qaeda was probably responsible and was convinced that the country was at war, but he made neither thought explicit. In his very first comments he referred, somewhat awkwardly, to “those folks who committed this act,” as if they might otherwise be friends.6 That evening he was only slightly more authoritative as he spoke about the “evil, despicable acts of terror” that had ended thousands of lives that day, declaring that the United States would not be frightened into “chaos and retreat.” According to Bob Woodward, his speechwriters wanted to include the phrasing “This is not just an act of terrorism. This is an act of war.” Bush scrubbed it out, arguing that the need that evening was for reassurance. It was not until the next morning that he made this statement. Yet that night he did talk about “the war against terrorism” and also made one important statement of policy, after consultation only with Condoleezza Rice, his national security adviser, “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.” The word “harbor” was Bush’s own, since he considered the original “tolerated” or “encouraged” too vague.7

In the context of al Qaeda operating out of Afghanistan with the connivance of the Taliban regime this was not unreasonable. Demands were already being formulated. The Taliban must surrender bin Laden and his close associates, close all terrorist camps, and comply with all UN Security Council resolutions. Soon, General Tommy Franks, the commanding general of Central Command (CENTCOM), was considering how to deal with the lack of plans for invading Afghanistan. The CIA began to develop proposals to engage al Qaeda by working with Afghan warlords opposed to the Taliban.8

In addition to the important tactical and diplomatic issues to be faced with regard to Afghanistan, the most difficult strategic question was whether the campaign could stop there or whether it would have to be extended into other countries. Some extension seemed unavoidable. George Tenet, director of central intelligence, pointed out that al Qaeda agents might be found in as many as sixty countries. “Let’s pick them off one at a time,” said Bush. But Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld posed a larger question to the National Security Council (NSC) on September 12: “Do we focus on bin Laden or terrorism more broadly?” Secretary of State Colin Powell responded that the goal was “terrorism in its broadest sense, focusing first on the organization that acted yesterday.”

There were no prior deliberations to consider the wisdom of taking on all terrorism. In the fraught and fevered hours after the 9/11 attacks, there was no time to think through the implications of that policy and subject it to any sort of critical analysis. Powell may just have been trying to postpone discussion of future campaigns until the United States had dealt with the matter at hand–al Qaeda and its Afghanistan base. There was at any rate a well established commitment to take on all forms of terrorism. This was not a new departure in American foreign policy. It had been present since the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan spoke regularly about the need to “stamp out the scourge of terrorism.” There were regular references then to a war on terror, a phrase that could be interpreted either as a reference to a real war or a rhetorical device to mobilize the nation to address some great problem, akin to the way previous presidents had also declared wars on poverty, drugs, crime, and cancer. Unfortunately, as Grenville Byford observed, and as these earlier campaigns demonstrated, common nouns “never give up” and so cannot be defeated. These were wars against categories with contested meaning and disputed boundaries. It was better to wage wars against proper nouns, “for the good reason that proper nouns can surrender and promise not to do it again.”9 That is what Powell wanted to do. Al Qaeda posed an urgent and demanding challenge, giving focus to all the government’s efforts. Powell had been garnering international support for whatever might have to be done next and was anxious not to put this fragile coalition at risk by extending the fight to places where American allies were less prepared to go.

The broader the definition of the task ahead, the wider the net, leading the United States into a range of conflicts with a variety of groups. Furthermore, as Cheney was keen to point out, one consequence of going after “terrorism,” broadly defined, was “then we get at states.” Rumsfeld was even prepared to skip the intermediate targets of the terrorists and go straight to their state supporters, because “it’s easier to find them than it is to find bin Laden.” To Rumsfeld, the notional leaders of these groups were less important than those pulling the strings. He warned against playing bin Lad...

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