Retire the "War on Terror" Rhetoric

In the July/August 2002 edition of Foreign Affairs, Grenville Byford contends that victory in the war on terror will be possible "only if the United States confines itself to fighting individual terrorists rather than the tactic of terrorism itself." He goes on to relate that,

...American anger does not stem from the fact that it [9-11] was terrorism. Americans would be just as furious if the carnage had been inflicted by the Afghan air force instead of a shadowy subnational group. And their outrage does not relate solely to the death of civilians. If it did, greater distinction would be made between the attacks on the World Trade Center and on the Pentagon, and certainly between both of these and the October 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen. No, what matters is quite simple: America was attacked and Americans were killed. The details of how it happened are horrifying but relatively unimportant.

This means that rather than proclaiming itself to be engaged in a necessarily nebulous war on terrorism, the United States should instead accept that it is dealing with a less grandiose and more specific question of national security. Its challenge is to protect itself in the future while demonstrating that attacks on Americans will be met with an implacable response. The government must show that it will brook no opposition in extirpating those responsible and anyone who helps them. If the country's enemies wish to surrender, they can have a fair trial. If not, they will be killed.

To accomplish its objectives, the United States will need the active help of some countries and the passive acquiescence of others. Such cooperation will not come from goodwill alone, nor will it emerge in response to peremptory commands. It will generally have to be purchased, in the usual coin of international politics. In other words, just as America is not about to give a blanket endorsement of how the Chinese, Russians, Indians, Israelis, and others handle their local "terrorist" problems, so the rest of the world is not about to do the same for America. Acknowledging this fact frankly would be useful; it would stave off a great deal of hypocrisy, confusion, and resentment while focusing attention on the real bargains that need to be cut.

Americans now realize that they have enemies and must deal with them seriously. The "moral clarity" in the rhetoric of the "war on terrorism" is more apparent than real. It takes a one-dimensional view of a multidimensional problem, and the sooner that rhetoric is retired the better. Interests first, ends second, means third -- this is how America thinks. It should be how it talks as well.

What Mr. Byford fails to acknowledge is that the awkward, ridiculous rhetoric surrounding the war serves a very nice purpose in masking our own imperial motives. I'd doubt that anyone in the White House or Pentagon wants anyone else to know what they are really thinking, in regards to foreign policy maneuvers over the past year, or, hell, the past half-century.