President Bush now describes the war on terrorism as the "ideological struggle of the 21st Century." The war is the "necessary successor to the battles of the last century against Nazism and Communism." He equates Osama Bin Laden with Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. In the president's view, the insurgency in Iraq, the recent Israel-Hezbollah battle in Lebanon, the Iranian regime's perceived nuclear threat; Sunnis loyal to Al-Qaeda; Shiites loyal to Hezbollah and homegrown terrorists supposedly waiting to destroy the free societies in which they live all share one common denominator: "To turn back the advance of freedom and impose a dark vision of tyranny and terror across the world." By these words he means a restored Islamic caliphate and an attendant Islamic empire stretching from Spain to Indonesia. He warns his audiences that "(i)f we give up the fight in the streets in Baghdad, we will face the terrorists in the streets of our own cities."
The President's conclusions are false because his premises are false. His is a simplistic and unrealistic view of today's world. Rather than sharing a common denominator, today's terrorists are a diverse lot with conflicting ideologies and political goals. Until the president better understands the world around him, he has very little chance of victory.
His comparisons to Nazism and Communism are especially specious. The Axis powers of World War II, Germany, Japan, and Italy, were fascist nation-states who sought to expand their ideology by invading their neighbors. President Bush's enemies are, for the most part, non-state actors like Al-Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah. Though he depicts Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations and their supporters, Syria and Iran, as terrorist states, most countries of the world disagree with these assessments. Both Hamas and Hezbollah function as political parties and social welfare organizations in Palestine and Lebanon, respectively. In Palestine, Hamas is the majority party in the Parliament. In Lebanon, Hezbollah occupies fourteen seats in the Parliament and two Cabinet positions. Neither Syria nor Iran has invaded its neighbors in modern times in order to further any ideology, including Islam.
Although President Bush was correct in pointing out that the Nazis were defeated during World War II, he was wrong about Communism. The Soviet Union suffered an economic meltdown in the early 1990s, not a military defeat. And today, several Communist nation-states continue to exist: China, Cuba, North Korea, and Vietnam. Moreover, with China fast becoming an economic and military superpower, the final battle between the West and that particular brand of communism has yet to be fought.
Although President Bush predicts victory in his "war on terrorism," he cannot tell anyone where, when, how, or over whom such a victory will be achieved. He preaches that democratic nations neither support terrorism nor invade their neighbors. A democratic Iraq will be a beacon of freedom that will defeat terrorism by spreading its light throughout the Middle East.
Unfortunately, he forgets that democratic Israel has a history of state terrorism against the Palestinian people and has just recently unilaterally invaded Lebanon in a failed effort to destroy Hezbollah. He also forgets that democracies like India and the Philippines repress indigenous Muslims, who have mounted insurgencies seeking freedom and independence.
Moreover, President Bush's idea of a free and democratic Iraq is one "that is a friend of America and an ally in the war on terror." No other model is acceptable to him. What will he do if a Shiite-majority government in the newly democratic Iraq votes to oust the United States from within its borders, seize back the United States-created Kurdistan in the north, and declare itself allied with its Shiite brothers and sisters in Iran?
Perhaps the answer to this question lay in his administration's responses to the democracy movements in Palestine and Egypt. In Palestine, the administration conspires with Israel to destroy the democratically elected Hamas government. It also stands idly by as Egypt violently represses the Muslim Brotherhood, whose candidates scored significant victories in recent Egyptian elections. At best, President Bush's vision of democracy in the Middle East has been little more than a mix of pious platitudes and business as usual.
Nor can a single common denominator of a hatred of freedom be applied to President Bush's terrorist enemies. Osama Bin Laden has stated that if, indeed, he hated freedom he would have attacked Sweden. To the contrary, he hates discrete policies of the United States that have alienated Arabs and Muslims around the world. E.g., unremitting bias in favor of Israel in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and most recently, during the Lebanon debacle; unremitting support for autocratic regimes in the Islamic world; and the growing United States military footprint throughout the Middle East and South Asia.
In Iraq, the indigenous Iraqi Sunni insurgents are resisting foreign invaders. Once Iraq is cleansed of the invaders, the Sunnis' goals will be to press the Shiite majority for a representative role in the government and for a fair share of the oil revenues. A restored caliphate is nowhere on their agenda.
For the present, Iraq's majority Shiites are only interested in ruling Iraq. Led by Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, most of Iraq's fifteen million Shiites have elected to cooperate with the United States in order to ensure their ultimate control of the Iraqi government. However, approximately two million of them are followers of the young cleric Moqtada Sadr, who opposes the occupation and whose Al-Mahdi army has been the prime suspect in the sectarian killing of Sunni civilians throughout Iraq. Should the 77-year-old Al-Sistani pass from the scene, Sadr will probably demand the immediate removal of foreign forces and ramp up the pressure on the Sunni minority. Neither Al-Sistani nor Sadr dwells on the restoration of the caliphate.
Turning to Lebanon, but for Israeli Prime Minister Olmert, President Bush is alone in depicting Israel's wanton destruction and invasion of that country as a front in the war on terrorism. Since Israel's withdrawal from most of south Lebanon in 2000, the border between Lebanon and Israel has been a main line of resistance. Like it or not, Hezbollah was Lebanon's surrogate army in the south - the only viable military force capable defending Lebanon against Israeli incursions. Violence between the two sides has been ongoing because of Israel's continued occupation of the Sheeba Farms, territory claimed by Lebanon. This situation has absolutely nothing to do with the war on terrorism.
President Bush vociferously complains about Iran's supposed nuclear threat; but he does not discuss Israel's nuclear threat to Iran or Iran's legal right according to the Non-Proliferation Treaty to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. And if, indeed, Iran is attempting to develop nuclear weapons, the obvious impetus is Israel's nuclear arsenal. So long as Iran remains a potential target for Israel's 200-400 nuclear weapons, Tehran has a moral duty to develop those same weapons in order to deter an Israeli attack. Unless and until President Bush begins speaking of a truly nuclear-free Middle East that includes Israel's nuclear arsenal, his complaints against Iran will be seen as little more than doublespeak aimed at ensuring Israel's continued military dominance over its neighbors.
Ironically, however, there exists in today's Middle East a common denominator that could, indeed, weld all Muslims, Shiite and Sunni alike, into one fist: A Judeo-Christian Crusade against Islam. The invasion of Iraq by the United States and its complicity in Israel's recent destruction of Lebanon have given some credence to this proposition. But if persistent rumors are correct and the United States and Israel actually launch military attacks against Iran, then millions of Muslims everywhere would certainly answer the new calls for jihad in defense of Islam.
Hopefully, more reasonable minds in the Bush administration will prevail; and pious platitudes and simplistic views of the modern world will give way to reality. Otherwise, the United States will lose the war on terror and instead provoke a holy war against a united Islamic world - a holy war that it cannot possibly win.
- Randy (Nadeem) Hamud is an attorney at law based in San Diego, CA.
