Date: October 4, 2006 11:44:14 AM PDT
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: [IPCUSA] There Is No War On Terror
There Is No War On Terror
Robert Dreyfuss
September 13, 2006
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Robert Dreyfuss is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States
Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books,
2005). Dreyfuss is a freelance writer based in Alexandria, Va., who
specializes in politics and national security issues. He is a
contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother
Jones, a senior correspondent for The American Prospect, and a
frequent contributor to Rolling Stone. He can be reached through his
President George W. Bush, Vice President Cheney and the entire
Republican election team are scrambling to make their so-called war on
terror the focus of the next seven weeks. As in 2002 and 2004, they're
counting on their ability to scare Americans with the al-Qaida
bogeyman. And while the trauma of 9/11 has begun to dissipate and
American voters seem less susceptible than ever to the scare tactics
used by the White House, for the past five years the Democrats have
been singularly unable to develop an effective counter to the Bush
administration on terrorism. So, for that reason, here are 10
important facts about terrorism that opponents of President Bush
should understand.
Part of what follows is derived from a series of some two dozen
interviews I conducted over the summer with leading U.S.
counterterrorism officials, many of whom served in top posts during
the Bush administration. Not all of them agree with each other, nor
with all of my conclusions, which can be found in the Sept. 21 issue
of Rolling Stone . But most of them served on the front lines of the
so-called "war on terror." If U.S. counterterrorism efforts were run
by these officials, instead of Bush and Cheney, those efforts would
look radically different than they do today.
I. The threat of terrorism is wildly exaggerated.
A strong and convincing case that the al-Qaida bogeyman is inflated
far beyond the real but limited threat that it poses is made in the
current issue of Foreign Affairs , in an article by political
scientist John Mueller. He and others argue persuasively that the
reason the United States has not been attacked since 9/11 is that
terrorists are far less powerful than the White House claims. "If al
Qaeda operatives are as determined and inventive as assumed, they
should be here by now. If they are not yet here, they must not be
trying very hard or must be far less dedicated, diabolical, and
competent than the common image would suggest," writes Mueller. Why
haven't the Democrats picked up this argument?
II. Al-Qaida barely exists at all as a threat.
The organization that attacked the United States on 9/11 has been
shattered and pushed to the brink of extinction, despite claims to the
contrary of the vast anti-terrorism industrial complex and its
journalistic heavy-breathers. I interviewed Carl Ford, the former
assistant secretary of state for intelligence, who told me:
We're overstating their capability, because we can't believe that
there isn't a more nefarious explanation for the fact that we haven't
been attacked. There aren't a lot of terrorists out there, and they're
not 10-feet tall. ... One appealing hypothesis is: they've been damaged
more than we know.
The Democrats should stop ringing alarm bells about al-Qaida and
explain calmly that the terrorist threat, which was small five years
ago, has been greatly reduced since 9/11.
III. There is no Terrorist International.
President Bush lumps the remnants of al-Qaida together with states
such as Iran and Syria, the resistance movement in Iraq, insurgent
political parties such as Hezbollah and Hamas and other assorted
entities into one, big "Islamofascist" enemy. Nothing could be more
ill-informed or further from the truth. "That's an oversimplification
of the task of dealing with the tactic [terrorism] that is used by
many different groups, with many different ideologies," Paul R.
Pillar, a former top CIA analyst and the author of a respected book on
terrorism, told The Washington Post . "It leads to a misunderstanding
of the need of what is in fact a different counterterrorist policy for
each group and state we are dealing with. . . . Hamas is an entirely
different entity than al-Qaeda. . . . Their objectives are very much
different." Pillar said much the same thing to me. Bush claims that
al-Qaida and its terrorist allies want to create an "empire than spans
from Spain to Indonesia." Not a chance. Larry Wilkerson, the former
top aide to Colin Powell, told me: "I don't think there's a soul in
the administration, except for Vice President Dick Cheney, who
believes that crap about Islamofascism." Why don't Democrats ridicule
this specific sort of fear-mongering?
IV. Iraq will not, and could not, fall to al-Qaida.
The Iraqi resistance is overwhelmingly made up of Sunni, former
Baathist, nationalist members of Iraq's former military and
intelligence services, Sunni tribal leaders and just plain old
"pissed-off Iraqis." It is not al-Qaida. When Bush says that by
leaving Iraq we would turn Iraq over to the al-Qaida types, he is
making the same false argument that he made five years ago. Then, he
told us that Saddam Hussein backed Osama bin Laden. Now, he tells us
that pro-Saddam Hussein Iraqis back pro-bin Laden al-Qaida types. He
lied then and he is lying now.
V. The Taliban is not al-Qaida.
In 2001, the Taliban and al-Qaida may have had a marriage of
convenience. But, as in many marriages, it was not a happy one. Mullah
Omar and the Taliban leadership were suspicious and resentful of
al-Qaida, and some Taliban leaders were openly hostile to bin Laden.
Today, the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan is a sad reminder
that Bush bungled Afghanistan, too---but the Taliban fighters are Afghan
Islamists, like the mujahideen that the CIA supported in the 1980s.
They are not Arabs or foreign fighters, and they are not al-Qaida. If
the Taliban pose a threat to U.S. interests, it is not a terrorist one.
VI. Neither Iran nor Syria sponsor anti-U.S. terrorism.
Al-Qaida has zero support in Iran and Syria. The Syrian regime is
fiercely hostile to al-Qaida-style fundamentalist Islam. Iran, a
Shiite theocracy, is bitterly hostile to Sunni fundamentalism and to
al-Qaida. Although both countries tactically support Hamas and
Hezbollah against Israel and although Iran routinely assassinates
opposition leaders abroad, neither country has attacked the United
States in decades. The few al-Qaida leaders---including Osama bin
Laden's son---reported to be in Iran are under house arrest and do not
lead operations for the shattered terrorist group. Yet that hasn't
stopped Bush administration officials, such as Nicholas Burns of the
State Department, from accusing Iran of "harboring" al-Qaida. Nonsense.
VII. It is not a "war."
Although the Pentagon has garnered 90 percent of the money for the
so-called war on terrorism, and although the Pentagon's special
operations command is supposedly in charge of the "war," it is not a
war. Terrorism cannot be fought with tanks, planes and missiles. The
Defense Department cannot invade the London suburbs or mosques in
Hamburg or the teeming cities of Pakistan. Cells of angry Muslims will
coalesce spontaneously to seek revenge for real or alleged wrongs for
decades to come. That is a problem for the CIA, the FBI, and,
especially, foreign police and intelligence services, not Donald
Rumsfeld's legions. "I hate the term `global war on terrorism,'" John
O. Brennan, who headed the National Counterterrorism Center until last
year, told me. "The Department of Defense and others insist very
strongly on calling it a war, because that allows the Pentagon to
prosecute the military dimension of the conflict. It fits their strategy."
VIII. There were never any al-Qaida sleeper cells in the United States.
In 2002, the Bush administration leaked to the press its assertion
that al-Qaida had 5,000 "sleepers" in the United States, dormant
agents that could be activated by Osama bin Laden. There were none---at
least, not a single one has been found, and no terrorism has occurred
in five years. No terrorism at all: In five years, no one in the
United States has as much as been punched in the nose by an angry
Muslim fundamentalist.
IX. Vulnerabilities are not threats.
The unnecessary, superfluous Department of Homeland Security is
tracking countless points of vulnerability. Trains and trucks, buses
and subways, chemical plants and factories, airports and ports,
skyscrapers and bridges, tunnels and dams---the list of potential
targets is endless. But the list of potential terrorists is
infinitesimally small. Despite the recently uncovered London
plot---details of which have still not been revealed and which is
increasingly looking exaggerated---there hasn't even been a single
advanced terrorist plot uncovered in the United States since 9/11.
President Bush gamely cites 10 supposed plots stopped by U.S.
counterterrorism efforts, but on closer examination all 10 are either
bogus or were to take place overseas. According to several top
counterterrorism officials, the number of serious terrorist plots
against the United States in the past five years is: zero.
X. No one is in charge.
After the creation of the DHS, the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence, the National Counterterrorism Center, the U.S. Northern
Command, the FBI's new intelligence division and other
counterterrorism agencies, no one is in charge. "We have a more
confusing organization now," Pillar told me. "It's really hard to
answer the question `Who's in charge?'" Every agency, from the
Pentagon to the lowliest police department, has used the threat of
terrorism to win ever-larger appropriations from federal, state and
local governments for the ostensible purpose of fighting terrorism. So
far, none of them have found any actual terrorists---but the
proliferation of competing agencies continues, and they continue to
step on each other's toes.
After 9/11, the Bush administration launched an open-ended war on an
ambiguous enemy ("terror") while offering the nation no definition of
what victory would look like. Five years later, the nation has spent
billions in taxpayer dollars and lost thousands of American lives
fighting a threat that should be the province of law enforcement and
intelligence services, not the military. And the White House tells us
there is no end in sight.
Mr. Bush: Do you still want the November election to be decided on
this sorry record?
_________________
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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