Now, the Hard Part

By Russell Shaw
HERALD Columnist
(From the issue of 1/3/02)

Much praise has been heaped on Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for the simple fact that when talking about killing people he calls it killing people, not degrading human resources. Plain speech is prized in the age of spin.

Here’s hoping for more plain speech before a self-congratulatory mood sets in regarding the American military success in Afghanistan. In this case, the simple fact is that this was the easy part—the rest of the war on terrorism could be a lot more dicey than anything we’ve seen so far.

For one thing, simply from a military point of view, the Taliban and el Qaeda were uncommonly obliging in that they chose to stand and fight. This folly allowed the United States to pound them from the air while leaving most dirty work on the ground to the Northern Alliance. Future foes, having before them the lesson of such spectacular bad judgment, can’t be counted on to repeat it.

Will there be future foes? For weeks we’ve heard the drumbeat for military action in Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, and—biggest prize of them all—Iraq. All of these are said to harbor or sponsor terrorists, or, in the case of Iraq, to be preparing serious mischief of their own.

But the first difficulty facing the American military in at least some of these garden spots could be finding anything to bomb. And if bombing doesn’t work, it’s far from clear what happens next.

Even supposing a workable strategy, it is necessary to ask whether military action will put an end to terrorism. There are those who warn that prolonged use of force against Islamic states is at least as likely to have the opposite result, by recruiting new terrorists and making future terrorist attacks more likely than they already are—which, unfortunately, may be very likely indeed. This could be a case of damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don’t for the United States.

There also is a moral dilemma. Here words of Pope John Paul deserve close attention.

Following Sept. 11, the Vatican let it be known that the Pope recognized the right of the United States to use force in self-defense. His World Day of Peace message, released in mid-December, makes that explicit. Decrying the evil of terrorism, the Pope affirmed "a right to defend oneself" against it.

But the right must be exercised "with respect for moral and legal limits in the choice of ends and means," added John Paul, who is preparing for a major interreligious peace prayer event in Assisi Jan. 24. Furthermore, the response must be aimed at those who are truly guilty, since culpability is "always personal and cannot be extended to the nation, ethnic group or religion to which the terrorists may belong."

It is possible to argue plausibly that what’s happened in Afghanistan generally respects these principles. But even if it does, that in no way constitutes blanket justification for future military action in very different circumstances.

All this is simply to make the point that, if the Bush administration means to pursue the war on terrorism by military action beyond Afghanistan, it will have to make its case in both the court of public opinion and the court of moral judgment. That may not be so easy.

The case must be based on the argument that although the denouement in Afghanistan may have brought a pause in the terrorist war against America, by no means has it achieved the definitive end of terrorism. That argument may be correct. But its speculative character is its weakness.

Shaw is a freelance writer from Washington, D.C.

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