WASHINGTON -- Decisive use of air power gave the United States control of the skies over Afghanistan this week. The Bush administrations larger task is to transform the shock waves of the military strikes into a force for change in societies that have fundamentally given up on themselves and the world. The initial reactions to the U.S. raids demonstrate that this is a realistic goal. Other nations and leaders quickly took the expressions of American anger and determination into account in their own calculations of advantage or survival. As exhortations and promises never could, the exercise of raw American power moved others to act or speak in ways that undermined previous complicity with terrorism. Understanding and shaping that reaction -- I see it as reasoned respect for the effective use of power -- is vital to the Bush administration as it develops and pursues its war aims. The United States possesses few ideological or cultural assets, and a large number of political drawbacks, in getting others to help fight anti-U.S. terrorism in the Islamic arc of the Middle East and South Asia. Coercive power is one of the few readily available U.S. assets in this campaign. It must not be squandered or neutralized by excessive fear of reaction in the so-called Arab street or of the fragility of the rulers of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. The Clinton administration demonstrated for eight years, primarily in Iraq, that the shock effect of air raids and missile strikes wears off quickly when they are not linked to a strategy of national survival. The Bush White House has every reason and opportunity to avoid that mistake. This is not to underestimate the difficulty of using the blunt instrument of military force for political effect, especially in the Third World. Missiles and precision guided bombs cannot reach to root causes. They cannot -- even if used in disciplined fashion -- reduce the deep resentments that terrorists like Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida gang manipulate. If misused, force will magnify those resentments greatly and breed new outrages. But like individuals, nations command respect -- and support -- when they respond decisively to protect themselves against those who seek to inflict harm and destruction. Not choosing can no longer be a choice when a nations existence is at stake. Extremists glorifying the Sept. 11 mass slaughter of Americans staged by al-Qaida rioted in Gaza on Monday. Palestinian policemen turned their guns on the protesters and killed two of them. Palestinian Authority spokesman Yasser Abed Rabbo belatedly stepped out of the blood-stained embrace of bin Laden to say: We dont want crimes committed in the name of Palestine. That is a small step, but it is an important one in deflating the unthinking acceptance in the West of the view that Arab public opinion -- colorfully styled as the Arab street since Arab governments wont permit expression of political views at the ballot box or in the media -- is a one-way avenue that runs only toward a chauvinistic extremism that dare not be challenged. If Yasser Arafat is willing to confront directly in words and deeds the malignant anti-Americanism of his followers, can Egypts Hosni Mubarak, Saudi Arabias King Fahd or even Syrias Bashar Assad continue do less? Can the highest ecclesiastical authorities of Islam remain silent about the enormous damage that bin Laden does their religion and fail to denounce him as the infidel? They can. But only at enormous risk as the neutral ground shrinks in a global conflict that has turned hot. The civilization most at risk of failure in this conflict is not that of Western secularism but that of Islam. Islam is at risk from its own submerged internal civil war. The Arab political system faces a similar risk in refusing to face up to internal challenges while falsely blaming external factors for its difficulties. In Pakistan, as U.S. bombers loaded up for the Afghan campaigns opening, President Pervez Musharraf finally acted. He fired senior intelligence officers who ran terror camps in Afghanistan for him and who created Taliban rule there. The fear of Musharrafs apologists that he could not do that and survive was rapidly overtaken by the generals own fear that he probably would not survive if he did not fire the Talibans allies. That is a clarity that flying bullets can induce when reason has regrettably failed. Rightly reluctant to establish an empire that it would not sustain in that tumultuous region, the United States must use and manage its power to shape the behavior and limit the choices of friend and foe alike in this struggle of survival.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 08:54:18 +0000
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