War on Terrorism

Slate offers a brief overview of the history of Chechnya, which goes a long way in explaining why Chechens do things like what they did last week--not excusing or justifying, but explaining.

The article also briefly hints at one of the biggest problems with fighting a "war on terrorism": terrorists are not a unified group you can fight. Currently, the State Department lists more than 70 groups as terrorists, and they all seem to have two characteristics in common: they use the same broad family of tactics known as "terrorism" (threats, bombings, hostage-taking, random civilian killings, etc.) and they each have an end result that they hope to bring about--a "cause" if you will. Thing is, there are about 70 groups and just about as many causes. We can't fight all of them.

No one seems to be saying this, but although some of those causes are linked to the US or American interests, not all of these terrorist groups have an interest in the United States. Being "The Lone Remaining Superpower," it's hard to believe that there are bad guys out there who find America completely irrelevant. Groups like ETA (the Basque separatists), the Irish Republican Army, and the Chechen rebels have narrowly focused beefs with other countries. It's like having a wasp's nest in your neighbor's backyard: makes you nervous that they're there, and there's always the chance that they might migrate over the fence, but for the time being, the problem is between the wasps and your neighbor, and you've got hedges of your own to take care of. As long as we don't do anything to rile these groups up, they'll largely ignore us, and there is a chance that the other countries might be able to fight their own war without us.

If we are to fight a comprehensive War On Terrorism, what we are really intending to do is to get involved with conflicts worldwide. Yes, these people do very bad things and should be stopped, but even the Lone Remaining Superpower has limits. We can't fight a 70-front war, which is what a War on Terrorism must be. We can fight the groups who want to fight us, though even that will tax our resources and patience. Terrorists, like small ill-behaved children, tend to cling tenaciously until they get what they want, and this country has a policy of not giving in to terrorists--a recipe for a very costly stalemate. The President has said that the War on Terrorism (he calls it a War on Terror, but you cannot fight a war against a feeling that the enemy is supposed to evoke in you) is not a conventional war. A War on Terrorism cannot be declared, fought, and won by conventional means, but a War on Terrorist Groups can. We can declare war on Al-Qaeda and fight them. It will hard, long, and messy, but it can be done, and there is even a chance we can win. First, though, we must define the enemy. Terrorism is not an enemy. Terrorists are.