Before I let Mr Brzezinski go, I must, with mixed feelings, point out another of his criticisms of Bush’s rhetoric:

"America would be better served if Bush avoided semantic traps that create uncertainty about our true motives or fuel the worst suspicions regarding U.S. strategy in the Middle East. Neither Islamophobic terminology nor evocations of the victorious struggle with communism help generate a better public understanding of what policies are needed in order to pacify (sic)(my God Zbigniew any word but "pacify"!) the Middle East and to speed the fading away of terrorism…"

Many have expressed the opinion that the heart of the problem of terrorist Jihad lies in a fundamentalist adherence to the basic tenets of Islam. The equating of suicide terrorism with religious fervor is at odds with the latest most nearly comprehensive study of suicide terrorism by Robert A. Pape, which Brezjinski favorably references in his essay. In this landmark study, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (2005), Pape asserts that the religious impulse and the desire for martyrdom are far from the paramount motivations for suicide bombers. The single most significant factor in all modern suicide terrorist attacks has been the strategic, "humanitarian" motives of removing the occupying force from the native soil of the bomber. The occupying force must be a democracy where popular opinion can be influenced by the suicide and pressure can be brought to bear on the occupiers. This certainly helps explain why 15 of the 19 9/11 martyrs were Saudis. Many Saudis are upset with the presence of the profane boots of the infidel soldiers on the sacred sands of their homeland. Whether they were invited there by the rulers doesn't matter. The young men who flew those planes were not poor, uneducated or even particularly religious. I remember being puzzled when I heard that some of the 9/11 suicides were out drinking and entertaining lap dancers the night before their deaths – hardly the concerns of people on a holy mission consecrating their bodies for martyrdom. This is not to say that many suicide attackers do not couch their rhetoric in fanatical religious frameworks – especially when people like president Bush reinforce such rhetoric.

Pape's conclusions, like many conclusions in science, are, to my mind, definitely counterintuitive. Most people who have influenced current US foreign policy hold the intuitive views reflected by the belief that suicide terrorists are poor, oppressed Islamic religious fanatics. Most are none of the above.

The implications that follow from this are also counterintuitive vis-a-vie our foreign policy. Withdrawal from Iraq and even Saudi Arabia will not, in itself, unleash a barrage of universal suicide terror. Quite the opposite is likely to occur. You might find this difficult to believe, but our immediate withdrawal from Iraq as well as Saudi Arabia will (according to Pape's study) most probably stop the incidence of suicide bombings cold. Continuing present policy will guarantee more 9/11's both in the US and in coalition countries.

Even though poverty, religious zealotry and actual desire for revenge may have little to do as the primary motivators of suicide terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism itself often feeds on these very conditions. The same conditions that our jack-booted troops and our globalization exploitations create, causes Jihad to thrive as communism did decades ago. These philosophies exploit the conditions we have created in the world. In this fertile soil we, like heroic Kadmos of old, have sown the seeds of our own destruction: a prodigious crop of holy warriors, arising fully armed and lusting to do battle against us. I could only pray that we possessed the wit to dispose of them the way clever Kadmos did.

I am puzzled by Mr. Brzezinski’s feigned ignorance of "our true motives…regarding U.S. strategy in the Middle East." He certainly understands that our foreign policy (his administration’s included) has never been interested in cultivating a democratic, moderate Islam. From our 1953 overthrow of the popularly elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh, to our unwavering fawning over the bloated House of Saud to our support of the atrocities of Saddam Hussein, we have never been interested in anything other than dealing with corrupt, undemocratic, and pliant regimes both in the Middle East and the rest of the world. We only support democracies when they suit our purposes. When they don’t, we smash them. Besides, dictators are easier and less messy to deal with. Do you really think we will allow the newly elected Iraqi government to kick us out?

The greatest failure of Mr. Brzezinski’s essay lies in his beneficent hypothesis concerning Bush’s motives. I surmise that he supports Bush’s stated goals but merely thinks he is using the wrong strategy in equating communism with Islamic terrorism. Bush and his stealth, neocon advisors know exactly what they are saying and doing. It is, I think, Mr. Brzezinski who pretends not to have a clue. Sorry Zbigniew.

PART FIVE – BY OUR ENEMIES THOU SHALT KNOW US

Obviously Bush would like to see himself framed in historic, heroic terms: Leonidas at Thermopylae, Kennedy in Berlin and Reagan ordering Mister Gorbachev to "Tear down your wall!" Unfortunately, unlike the cold war, we seem to be out of villains of suitable stature. Like a small boy, of short attention span, Bush likes to play-fight with Osama for a while then drop him and pick up another like Saddam and then al-Zarqawi. Will Iranian president, MuhamoudAhmadinejad be next? None of them seem to suit his sense of the truly heroic, historic struggle. They are so little on the grand stage, so unlikely. He cannot conceive of the US going down like Gulliver before the Lilliputians.

He is not living in the time of Reagan, who, by grossly exaggerating the military might of the Russians as well as their wickedness, helped stuff the pockets of his beloved military subcontractors and deftly distracted us from his own peccadilloes. What a guy!

United States foreign policy is currently, in defiance of John Quincy Adam’s promise of never "going abroad in search of monsters to destroy." The American psyche has always needed some sort of bogyman to fear and hate, real or imagined (or so our leaders believe) to take our minds off the true issues, domestic and foreign. After the collapse of the Russian’s Soviet Union, there must have been a lot of consternation in Washington. The cry must have gone up: "Whom will we find for them to hate now?" Bush’s speeches, referenced by Brzezinski, seem to possess a longing to somehow recapture those simpler days.

Let us call this situation for what it is: plain and simple obfuscation and a literal application of a word originally intended for use only as a metaphor. There is no WAR ON TERROR, at least not as we understand it in any sense that the word has ever been used for conventional military conflict. The excesses that have resulted from the president’s misuse of this term exceed any benefit that might possibly be derived from it. I think the time has come to call the president on this. His use of the word WAR is not appropriate to the situation he is attempting to apply it to. Certainly there are conditions under which the use of military intervention might be justified. There are certainly justifications for increased vigilance and security in connection with US and world communications, transportation and infrastructure. It is my contention that framing this conflict in terms of an ideology reminiscent of the nation v nation conflicts of bygone eras is not only erroneous but is also harmful and will leave us less informed and unprotected vis-a-vie the very real problems we face in the world. While there is certainly a military component to the fundamentalist holy warriors we face, it is misleading to think that the emergency wartime powers we give to the president will avail us any special advantage in combating them. Bush disagrees and is riding the situation to full advantage essentially declaring "L’Etat c’est Moi!"

Our WAR ON TERROR is based upon profoundly fraudulent assumptions. For the most part, the holy warriors we would do battle with will never be defeated in a military rout. Former CIA analyst, Ray McGovern has compared THE WAR ON TERROR to our attempting to fight a "war on malaria" by stationing sharpshooters at ten-foot intervals around the swamp and attempting to shoot down departing mosquitoes. Compare this to combating malaria by simply draining the swamp. Not only is our government’s approach to terrorism fundamentally wrongheaded, it is ultimately destructive and totally useless even in accomplishing its own espoused goals.

I’m sorry to say that even the one military solution that I initially thought seemed a good idea, the invasion of Afghanistan, has backfired on us rather disastrously. I don’t know what the alternative might have been to kicking out the terrorist-hosting Taliban, but now we seem to have rapidly metastasized al Qaeda into a worldwide virus from a somewhat localized phenomenon. This is not to say that such a thing would not have happened eventually, as their goal certainly was the exporting of terrorism to the world. Our inspired diaspora just seemed to accelerate this spread.

Bin Laden must be, by now, a devout believer in the old adage: "When one door closes; another opens." Just as we were making life very difficult for his terrorist trainers in Afghanistan, we give him a new much better playground once owned by his arch-enemy, Saddam. Allah will provide! It is hard to believe that even bin Laden could have anticipated these marvelous consequences when the twin towers were struck. It is equally impossible to believe that he was strategically unprepared for our response.

Once again, I will not indulge conspiracy theories here, but, for some inexplicable reason, the war in Afghanistan seems to have become more of a half-assed PR movement than a really effective martial campaign. There were too few troops initially deployed, the campaign seemed to be totally lacking in any real logistical knowledge or preparation as to the cultural and geographical factors required. We pulled our punches at a couple of critical junctures allowing key opposition players, including possibly bin Laden himself, to escape and, worst of all, we cut the project off at the knees in order to (illegally) prepare and then prosecute the Iraqi war that had no relation to Afghanistan, terrorism or our security other than dubiously guaranteeing a supply of oil for the US for the future.

If our government could not even combat terrorism effectively in Afghanistan by military means, how the hell will we fare fighting it in the kingdom of Saud, Pakistan or even the suburbs of London, Paris or New York? As I said, the military option should not be ruled out as one option among many. Its just that it doesn’t even seem to be working in Afghanistan, where our rulers said it was most likely to be the first, best solution. Relying on our military as our first best resource for combating terrorism reminds me of the old proverb "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

PART SIX – DRAINING THE SWAMP AND THE PERILS OF U.S. SOLIPSISM

So how do we drain the swamp? First of all we need to approach this not merely as an American problem. It seems we have gone it alone long enough. Prior to 9/11, we acted as if we were immune from terrorism at home. If, as Noam Chomski says, we are the largest exporter of terrorism in the world, it was inevitable some day that someone might just decide to do a little importing. Certainly 9/11 was spectacular, but, as some American moviegoers may be dimly aware, other countries have had a long and colorful history of victimization all the way from William Wallace bringing the Scottish atrocities home to merry olde England to the Battle of Algiers. I ask you, what makes us so goddamned special? 9/11 seems to me to have initiated us as a rather late member in the large club of countries around the world, great and small, deserved and undeserved, who have had terrorism perpetrated upon them. At the time the event drew us together as a country and brought the world community, our friends and critics alike, in sympathetic alliance. Sorry, Bush was not interested. In announcing a unilateral WAR ON TERROR, "Yer either with us or again’ us" mentality, Bush has mortally divided this country and made US a global pariah.

Osama clearly is a brilliant man. Scholars will be studying his strategies and his biography for generations to come, but I find it hard to believe that even he could have anticipated a more fortuitous reaction from this country than that taken by Bush in his WAR ON TERROR.

CONCLUSION

What are we to do? Besides the usual protests, writing Congress and the local editor, I propose we stop using the phrase, WAR ON TERROR. I would suggest that when the expression comes up in a discussion or a debate, we stop the discussion or the debate on the spot (point of order) and insist that the use of WAR ON TERROR not be used. Suggest some alternatives, such as: apprehension of terrorists, worldwide advocacy for equity and human rights, freeing the world from the curse of fundamentalist monotheism, rooting out terrorist networks by international cooperation, throw the criminals in jail, etc. I could even go with Rumsfeld’s "struggle against worldwide terrorism." Just don’t use the word WAR. Suggest that when one uses that word in such an equivocated way, one is tacitly encouraging the destruction of the rights of American citizens, authorizing abuses of authority by a president who is laboring under the pretense of the idea of conventional warfare. Refuse to go along with this shell game. When you read your newspaper circle the words WAR ON TERROR every time you read them and then put in a question mark or cross them out altogether. It will remind you of just how insidiously you are being brainwashed. We must stop using this expression because our allowing its use is permitting Bush to commit with impunity all manner of lies, atrocities and other high crimes and misdemeanors in our name and in the presumed name of his hallucinated war making powers.

There are many important struggles to be fought in order to restore our democracy, to rebuild our reputation in the world and, most importantly, to begin – yes, at long last - to begin to deal with the problems that have resulted in the rise of universal terrorism. To start, everyone must come to realize, once and for all, that there is no such thing as a WAR ON TERROR. It is a small thing to be sure, but a first step worth taking.

PEACE,

============

Robert Boldt MWC Political Cartoonist  is a freelance film/video producer living in Jefferson City, Missouri.

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