Haig: Target Syria Next, Not Iraq
NewsMax.com Wires Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2002 Editor's note: Alexander Haig Jr. and Arnaud de
Borchgrave serve on NewsMax.com's Board of Directors.
WASHINGTON - Former Secretary of State Gen.
Alexander M. Haig Jr. said Monday that Syria, not Iraq, should be the next
target in the war against international terrorism.
His comments came in an exclusive interview with
United Press International's editor at large, Arnaud de Borchgrave.
Here is the transcript of the interview:
Q (de Borchgrave): What did the United States do
right in Afghanistan and what did it do wrong? And what lessons have we learned
for the future?
A (Haig): We didn't do anything wrong, but among
the lessons learned, given the magnitude of the problems we now face in
Afghanistan, a major U.S. force on the ground would convince the world we were
in for the long-haul recovery of a country devastated by 21 years of warfare.
We lost interest in Afghanistan and left it in the
lurch after the Soviets pulled out in 1989, and paid a terrible price for our
shortsightedness, witness the emergence of Taliban and its alliance with
al-Qaeda. If we are to thwart another round of warlordism and tribal warfare,
such as what followed the Soviet withdrawal, and encourage the Afghans to get on
with rebuilding their own nation, U.S. assistance, diplomacy and a muscular
military presence will be required.
In Desert Storm, we had too many troops; in
Afghanistan probably not enough for the major commitment we have made. President
Bush and his team did a superb job winning the war, and we need to remember how
he achieved maximum success despite a number of formidable restraints. The
United States first had to negotiate with Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan
for basing rights to bridge enormous distances to a land-locked Afghanistan.
Q: Is a lack of an institutional memory and a sense
of history to blame for the crises that seem to hit us with tedious regularity
in that part of the world?
'Clinton's Woefully Inadequate and Weak Iraqi
Policy'
A: You have to look at the history of the Middle
East in particular. It has been one of failure and frustration, of feudalism and
tribalism, of Pan Arabism under Egypt's [Gamal Abdel] Nasser and its flirtation
with the Soviet Union, then a flirtation with the Western world which led to
more frustration when our great victory over the Iraqi aggressor left Saddam
Hussein in power who then became a hero to the Arab masses because of Clinton's
woefully inadequate and weak Iraqi policy.
Then you look at Iran, which became the crucible of
fundamentalism coupled with terrorism, a situation we totally misread. Prior to
his takeover of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini was camping near Paris, giving daily
news conferences to a fawning international press corps without a murmur of
complaint to France from the United States about the disaster it was coddling in
the incredibly naïve liberal belief that this extremist cleric would be an
improvement over the Shah.
Stabbing the Shah in the Back
For years we leaned on the Shah for land reform,
which led to the expropriation of the massive land holdings of the clergy,
which, in turn, triggered the clergy's revolution against the monarchy. And when
the Shah found himself in trouble, we quite literally stabbed him in the back.
It didn't take long for the world to realize that
the Shah was an enlightened liberal next to the bloody reactionary regime that
followed, and which executed more people in three months than the Shah had done
in 30 years.
Then came the hostage crisis during which Carter
did nothing to rattle the ayatollahs who hung tough until Ronald Reagan was
inaugurated, when they suddenly backed down. After that we saw the killing of
241 U.S. Marines and 58 French soldiers in Beirut on Oct. 23, 1983. But the two
culprits – Syria and Iran – got away scot-free.
Q: You mean the United States and its allies never
understood that terrorism was a transnational terrorism?
A: Exactly right. We contributed to its
attractiveness among people who were frustrated and disenfranchised.
Fundamentalism was the first of two perversions.
Nation states converted guerrilla warfare into terrorism to conduct asymmetrical
warfare against the world's only superpower.
Sun Tzu said 2,500 years ago that successful
guerrillas float on the sea of people. The Bush administration understood early
on that the particular perversion we saw with Taliban and al-Qaeda required
coalitions to defeat it, but not coalitions for the sake of coalitions.
And as Secretary [of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld has
stated with great clarity, the mission decides the coalition and not the
coalition deciding the mission, which is what happened in Iraq.
Q: So this should not deter the United States if
Iraq is the next target?
A: Or Syria.
Q: So you think Syria's a possibility?
A:- Syria is a terrorist state by any definition
and is so classified by the State Department. I happen to think Iran is too.
Iraq, Iran, Syria, they're all involved.
If al-Qaeda terrorists need a favor, such as safe
houses, you can bet your bottom dollar that Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad
would not hesitate to accommodate them. And all these groups are protected by
these states which makes them sponsors of state terrorism and therefore
potential targets in President Bush's global war against terrorism, when the
footprints, that is, are clearly established.
Q: Where are the footprints clearer – Iraq or
Syria?
Evidence 'Clearer in Syria Than in Iraq'
A: It's clearer in Syria than in Iraq. This doesn't
mean that Iraq isn't a more venal threat. If it's proven that Iraq has provided
aid and succor to international terrorist groups – and we're not just talking
al-Qaeda, which is just another tentacle that has enjoyed the most success and
was leading the attack against the United States, but its defeat in Afghanistan
didn't neutralize the venality of other tentacles, such as Islamic Jihad, Hamas
and Hezbollah.
Q: And what is the second perversion you mentioned
earlier?
A: The first one is guerrilla warfare transformed
into terrorism that singles out non-combatants, innocent civilians, including
women and children. The objective is to spread fear to break the morale of the
target country.
'Perversion' of Islam
The second perversion is what has been done to
Islam, a pacific religion that believes in the rule of law and peaceful change.
Q: But radical Islam is at war with the United
States. So how does one separate fundamentalism from anti-U.S. and anti-Israel
radicalism?
A: That's where the perversion comes in. If they
analyze the situation as thoroughly as they should, Muslims will realize they
are the first targets. What are the fundamentalists really after? Simply taking
over Islam and then turning its back on modernity.
The House of Saud would be the first to go, so the
Saudi royal family's policy of exporting Wahhabi fundamentalism to buy peace at
home is shortsighted in the extreme and has now been proved to be tantamount to
funding terrorist-prone organizations from Indonesia to North Africa.
Q: So what is the Bush administration attempting to
do about this kind of extremism?
A: It's an enlightened approach that keeps trying
to separate classic Islam from radical Islam. What the fundamentalists are doing
is a total negation of their own faith – encouraging and lionizing suicide
bombers and killing women and children, hardly in keeping with the teachings of
Prophet Mohammed.
Bin Laden's Escape
Q: To what degree has the U.S. campaign against
transnational terrorism been hurt by the fact that Osama bin Laden and Mullah
Mohammad Omar have eluded U.S. forces so far?
A: Anyone who believes that doesn't understand the
nature of this war. We went in there and in 60 days with unprecedented use of
precision weapons we wiped out both Taliban and al-Qaeda's extensive
infrastructure in that country. To rebuild that in another country will be
impossible as the most likely candidates are under a U.S. magnifying glass.
Unlike Kosovo or Bosnia, we had precise targeting
with an on the ground presence of Special Forces and anti-Taliban militia,
equipped with sat phones and GPS to laser paint targets. It was not accompanied
by a large ground presence.
Q: Which you think was a mistake?
A: I didn't say that. We did what we were able to
do.
Q: In other words, we didn't have the wherewithal
for a large ground presence?
A: With all the commitments that were made by the
previous [Clinton] administration, and a continued reduction in our manpower
base in all the services, we should be asking ourselves whether or not we have
sufficient forces to cope with a global war against terrorism that involves
several nation states. Sooner or later something had to give. But President
Bush, faced with the unprecedented affront of 9-11, could not wait to take
action. So he had to do what we were capable of doing, and he did it
brilliantly.
To be continued: the next U.S. target, the U.S.
military's role in Europe, NATO and Russia, China and Taiwan, Pakistan.
While we were sleeping, the enemy came and sowed
weeds among the wheat.
Matthew 13:25 Archibald Bard
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