‘War’ Plays Into Terrorists’ Hands

In the early morning of Oct. 23, 1983, a suicide bomber crashed a truck loaded with 12,000 pounds of explosives through the security perimeter of Headquarters Battalion Landing Team 1/8 at Beirut International Airport. The resulting explosion killed 241 U.S. Marines and wounded 70 others. An almost-simultaneous suicide attack a few miles away destroyed a building occupied by French paratroopers; 58 died.

President Reagan later said he had been rendered “almost speechless by the magnitude of the loss.”

At the time, Colin L. Powell was a major general, the senior military assistant to then-Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger. Writing about the events in his autobiography, Powell decried the fact that the battleship New Jersey had previously been lobbing Volkswagen-sized shells into the hills surrounding Beirut -- “as if we were softening up the beaches on some Pacific atoll.”

“Since [the terrorists] could not reach the battleship, they found a more vulnerable target, the exposed Marines at the airport,” Powell wrote.

Today, as the year draws to a close with the United States pressing its global fight against terrorism and preparing for combat in Iraq, the Beirut bombings of almost 20 years ago stand as a bellwether for the U.S. military and for members of the counterterrorism community.

For those who read its history, Beirut also stands as a reminder to the public that failure to think carefully about seemingly obvious policy decisions may carry a heavy price.

Beirut happened two decades before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, brought the phrase “asymmetrical warfare” into the language. Yet much about it is painfully current: the tangled chains of command, the poor communications, the intelligence warnings that were discounted or ignored. Reagan was shown to be detached and ignorant of the complexity of foreign affairs. American policymakers were revealed as oblivious to the motivations of those they were confronting. Senior military leaders such as Powell saw their concerns brushed aside.

And what stand out most conspicuously 20 years after Beirut are the lessons not learned.

“What I saw from my perch in the Pentagon,” Powell wrote about Lebanon, “was America sticking its hand into a thousand-year-old hornet’s nest.”

Well, the hand is back in. The “groupthink” that once allowed political and military leaders to march headstrong into the Lebanese quagmire blinds our leaders now. What is more, the tangible and rhetorical resort to “war” strengthens the hand of terrorists and opens the way to potentially ruinous fissures in American society.

At this point in any critical analysis, it is mandatory to say that terrorism is monstrous. To fail to utter this mantra is to appear to sympathize with terrorists, or to join those who excuse the Sept. 11 attacks because of U.S. policies and actions in the Middle East and elsewhere.

I believe, in fact, that terrorism -- in that it intentionally targets the innocent with no other purpose than to terrorize -- is pure evil.

That said, in the 15 months since Sept. 11, defense spending has skyrocketed, war has been waged from Afghanistan to Yemen and a new Department of Homeland Security and an old national security state have sprung to life -- though the national security establishment has a new raison d’etre.

And, as evil as terrorism is, there is a cost in all this for America. By turning the country into a fortress, we cripple our spirit and inhibit our economy. Both diplomacy and military effectiveness are incapacitated by the never-ending demands of security and “force protection.”

Freedom is not, as Janis Joplin wailed, “just another word for nothing left to lose.” It is the vital core of our society, responsible for most of what we treasure -- including the material things. And freedom is wounded by secrecy and the curtailment of civil liberties.

Terrorists set out to kill ordinary people at random to sow fear and destroy civilian morale. Terrorists win when we escalate our response to the level of war. U.S. interests would be better served by not always responding to terrorist attacks.

Terrorists should not be allowed to determine U.S. foreign policy, nor exert such a powerful influence over the American spirit.

There is a third way between war and surrender: Putting terrorism in its place to deny terrorists much of what they crave.

Terrorists, expert Brian Jenkins wrote in 1984 after the Lebanon attacks, “can attack anything, anywhere, anytime; governments cannot protect everything, everywhere, all the time.” In other words, terrorists will always attack the least-defended target. And as long as grievances, real and perceived, persist, terrorism will persist.

To respond with military escalation and war is to create the exact state that terrorists most hope to achieve. The groupthink mode that seems so powerfully at play in the Bush administration blinds our leaders to this truth. It suppresses critical thought and silences dissidents. It also creates an illusion -- and an expectation -- of invulnerability.

Opponents of American and Western culture need not be underestimated or excused, but we should not fail to reckon the costs and risks of the path we choose. Nor should we assume there are no alternatives to the current course.

It is military professionals themselves, those who might be thought the most gung-ho about the war on terrorism, who are most likely to question the present course. “Killing ants” is how military leaders often describe it in private.

Moreover, Washington looks more and more like the city terrorist sympathizers are fond of describing: a mighty capital seized by fear and panic, giving free rein to aggression in the name of self-defense.

Self-defense? What’s wrong with that? After all, the United States was attacked. But the United States -- its sovereign territory in its embassies and ships -- has been attacked before. In some ways, nothing is new here except the magnitude of the American loss.

The effectiveness of any action against terrorism depends on limiting our definition of terrorism to the acts of private groups and not governments, to those with no political authority or pretense of political authority.

This is an important distinction because it rejects policy arguments, however indirect, that justify the intentional targeting of the defenseless.

Second, it is essential that we tightly confine the term “terrorism.” Pasting that label on everything from passive civil disobedience to environmental activism introduces the wrongheaded notion that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, allowing some to argue that even George Washington was a terrorist.

In the end, our response to terrorism must stem from clear thinking. We must reject groupthink. Osama bin Laden has his grievances: the inroads of secularism into Islam, the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, the uncritical U.S. support of Israel and the supposed defense of the innocent in Iraq.

Though we must abhor Bin Laden’s actions and seek to neutralize his minions, the issues should provoke introspection on our part. We must not reward the absolute evil of terrorism by stampeding into policies that ultimately work against our own interests -- not even in the name of Sept. 11.

A military friend of mine quips that when the war on terrorism began, 80% of the Islamic masses hated us. Now, he says, 100% hate us. That is not the arithmetic of success.

Today, the entire U.S. military, NATO and a large coalition of others -- a total of more than 90 nations, according to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld -- are mobilized to fight the war on terror. We have elevated evil and amoral thugs into soldiers, the equals of our own. And our war has given aid and comfort to an illegitimate leadership, to people we should otherwise dismiss.

When Rumsfeld and other administration officials describe terrorism as the gravest threat to America, when they warn that it will last decades, they are most likely pleasing terrorists no end.

After Beirut, after the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, after embassy bombings and countless hijackings and suicide attacks, after the blasting of the battleship Cole -- and finally, after the World Trade Center and the Pentagon -- now, the United States is recognizing “them.” Indeed, the United States has virtually recognized the state of Bin Laden, declared war, and through short-term successes in military action, inadvertently increased sympathies for the terrorist “cause.”

Meanwhile, the administration’s fervor to eliminate terrorism raises each attack to the level of a battle victory -- thereby aiding recruitment and bolstering terrorists’ credibility.

Obviously, the American government should protect American lives and interests. That is its job. But it should not be at war with terrorism as an entity, because that opens the way to reorganizing the American government in a frenzy, taking liberties from the American citizenry and threatening freedom of information and the sanctity of privacy.

And overseas, we will have recreated Beirut, providing new power and identity to those who have no legitimate claim upon them.