URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/09/opinion/09WRIG.html
New York Times April 9, 2004 One Hearing, Two Worlds By ROBERT WRIGHT <snip> Even a quite vigilant administration would have needed some luck to catch wind of Al Qaeda's plans. Moreover, President Bush was hardly alone in the central confusion that kept him from being quite vigilant: the idea that "rogue states" are a bigger threat than terrorism per se, and indeed that terrorists can't do much damage without a state's help. More scandalous, as some have noted, is that the administration didn't change this view after 9/11, when terrorists based in places like Germany killed 3,000 people using weapons (in this case airliners) acquired in America. Hence the war in Iraq. The polar opposite of a preoccupation with state support of terrorism is the view that, in the modern world, intense hatred is self-organizing and self-empowering. Information technologies make it easy for hateful people to coalesce and execute attacks and those same technologies can also help spread the hatred. That's why opponents of the Iraq war so feared its effect on Muslim sentiment. If Ms. Rice didn't appreciate that fear before the war, she should now. The current insurgency seems to have spread from city to city in part by TV-abetted contagion. And insurgents are handing out DVD's with deftly edited videos featuring carnage caused by the war. But Ms. Rice is unfazed. Yesterday she said the decision to invade Iraq was one of several key choices President Bush made "the only choices that can ensure the safety of our nation for decades to come." Meanwhile, down at the bottom of the screen: "IRAQIS SAY AIRSTRIKE KILLED DOZENS GATHERED FOR PRAYERS." Do headlines like that make us safer? And as Ms. Rice lauded the president for putting states that help or tolerate terrorists "on notice" and recognizing that the war on terrorism "cannot be fought on the defensive," the crawl read: "DEFENSE SECY DONALD RUMSFELD WARNS OF POSSIBLE VIOLENCE AGAINST PILGRIMS IN IRAQI HOLY CITIES, PARTICULARLY NAJAF, IN DAYS AHEAD." Yesterday even Bob Kerrey, a committee member who stoutly favored the war in Iraq, said that it is now helping terrorist recruitment through televised images of "largely a Christian army in a Muslim nation." He didn't pose the observation as a question, and Ms. Rice offered no comment. There is one rationale for the Iraq war that might appeal even to those who see raw hatred as the root problem: a prosperous democracy would serve as a model, creating a Muslim world marked by less frustration and resentment. Yesterday Ms. Rice cited this rationale, criticizing a pre-Bush American policy that "looks the other way on the freedom deficit in the Middle East." Good point. But what of our current cozying up to an Uzbek regime that represses Muslim dissidents? This is a natural consequence of a state-based approach to fighting terrorism of viewing the world as a realpolitik chessboard across which we project military force so that all governments will either like us or fear us (regardless of how the masses feel). <end excerpt> Full at: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/09/opinion/09WRIG.html
