Here is Ted Koppel's description of his upcoming documentary on the global war against terrorism: "The third chapter in this trilogy is something that the Pentagon calls "The Long War." And what they're really referring to is the battle against terrorism, which many of the leaders in the Pentagon now perceive as being an endless battle — one that may go on for 20 years, 30 years or more. So they have begun to preach the gospel that we have to adapt to this notion that we are in a permanent state of war, and that what we are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan and Somalia and certain other parts of the world right now and the way that we are fighting this, this war, requires a certain level of adaptation and we have to adapt to these new realities.
So the 9/11 show and how it's changed America, Iran and the influence that it's exerting throughout the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, and the Long War, those are all, in a sense, three chapters of the same story."
Here is something that's really worth a look--an unclassified version of "Fighting the Long War--Military Strategy for the War on Terrorism," a PowerPoint presentation created by Pentagon planners in January 2006. It compares and contrasts the struggle between the U.S. and Al Qaeda to the 45-year Cold War against the Soviet Union:
Cold War Similarities: •Measured in decades •Requires all elements of national power •Requires efforts of coalitions/alliances •Extremely high stakes–The further spread of terrorism –“Spillover”or “Domino Theory”–Greater restrictions of civil liberties to stem the expanding threat–Moderate governments in the Middle East at risk–Civil unrest in countries with sizable Muslim minorities Key Differences: •Religious basis of violent extremism versus a political ideology •Extremists are predominately a stateless enemy •We cannot discredit all of Islam as we did with communism, it is a divine religion. We can only discredit the violent extremist
The document also sketches out a grim scenario in the event that the U.S. is unsuccessful against Islamic extremists:
•Much of the worlds energy resources held hostage •Many of the world’s population repressed and isolated from growth and prosperity •Extremists with the resources to carry-on continued attacks •Countries isolated from a global trading economy •Other religious beliefs repressed •American security and standard of living at jeopardy
If you don't want to go through the whole 27-page presentation, here also a February 2006 Washington Times article that summarizes "Fighting the Long War."
Here's a February 2006 Washington Postarticle about a speech by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld entitled "The Long War." While Rumsfeld is gone, the Pentagon's vision of the present and future conflict probably won't change.
The United States is engaged in what could be a generational conflict akin to the Cold War, the kind of struggle that might last decades as allies work to root out terrorists across the globe and battle extremists who want to rule the world, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday.
Rumsfeld, who laid out broad strategies for what the military and the Bush administration are now calling the "long war," likened al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin while urging Americans not to give in on the battle of wills that could stretch for years. He said there is a tendency to underestimate the threats that terrorists pose to global security, and said liberty is at stake.
"Compelled by a militant ideology that celebrates murder and suicide with no territory to defend, with little to lose, they will either succeed in changing our way of life, or we will succeed in changing theirs," Rumsfeld said in a speech at the National Press Club.
Another snippet: Rumsfeld said he does not believe the war will end with a bang but, instead, with a whimper, "fading down over a sustained period of time as more countries in the world are successful," much as how democracy outlasted communism in the Cold War. He added that the early decades of the Cold War also brought confusion and doubt.
"The only way that terrorists can win this struggle is if we lose our will and surrender the fight, or think it's not important enough, or in confusion or in disagreement among ourselves give them the time to regroup and reestablish themselves in Iraq or elsewhere," he said.
From January 2006, here's a still-provocative critique of the "Long War" concept, from Washington Post national and homeland security blogger William M. Arkin:
Let me be clear that there are two reasons I reject the long war characterization: I think it is intellectually shallow to compare terrorists, "extremist networks," Islamic Jihadists or radical Islam with our enemies during the Cold War or the Second World War, who could have indeed destroyed our societies. Intellectually shallow sounds like a pretty weak attack, but I mean to suggest that this administration has the wrong vision of both the severity of the threat terrorists present to our societies.
Let's put aside for a moment their opportunistic flag-waving that insults every American who sacrificed during two wars that indeed were wars for our survival as a nation and a civilized people.
Terrorists can not destroy America. Every day we articulate a long war, every time we pretend we are fighting for our survival we not only confer greater power and importance to terrorists than they deserve but we also at the same time act as their main recruiting agent by suggesting that they have the slightest potential for success.
The Bush administration has been in panic mode since 9/11, and though it has tripped upon sometimes improved articulations of what it is doing to respond to the scourge of modern terrorism, it has both the wrong vision of the severity of the threat and it has shown itself, in four years of fighting, that no matter how much it articulates that the United States and the world must use all aspects of their power to thwart and defeat terrorism, the Bush administration is only comfortable with the military response, and it is only really happy with secret operations.
Here's a November 7 column by Ted Koppel on the "Long War" and its implications and possible consequences:
The Bush administration is trying to deal with a particularly nettlesome problem: preparing Americans for a struggle that may last decades without simultaneously demoralizing them. Centcom's commander, Gen. John Abizaid, likes to refer to it as the "long war," where "long" means generational, with no end in sight.
To the degree that such a war can be fought at arm's length, with a minimum of friendly casualties, it will be. To the extent that victory can be achieved with a minimum of personal sacrifice, the Bush administration will try to do so.
Senior members of the administration frame that struggle in existential terms. They invoke the nightmarish possibility of a Sept. 11 on steroids -- a terrorist attack using weapons of mass destruction, rattling the very foundations of our society. The Bush administration uses that frightening image to justify a new worldview, within which even associating with someone who belongs to an organization on the U.S. terrorist list justifies prosecution here at home.
This practice falls into the category of what Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty calls "preventative prosecution." It's an interesting concept: a form of anticipatory justice. Faced with the possible convergence between terrorism and a weapon of mass destruction, the argument goes, the technicality of waiting for a crime to be committed before it can be punished must give way to pre-emption.
TK continues: Does our system require calibration in the context of the Long War? Perhaps. We cannot, for example, expect to know everything our government does when transparency informs our enemies of what they must not know. That, however, has always been the case. Indeed, there are courts and congressional committees set up for the express purpose of reconciling the needs for secrecy and for transparency.
Furthermore, when officials deem certain crimes (torture, for example) unavoidable in the defense of liberty, those who commit those crimes must still know that they will be held to account before an uncompromised legal system. Congress recently passed a law that ensures exactly the opposite.
It is going to be a long struggle, and we may have to live with whatever adjustments we make to our liberties until the struggle is won, or at least over. Even liberties voluntarily forfeited are not easily retrieved. All the more so for those that are removed surreptitiously.
One might have expected that these issues would feature prominently in the debate leading up to the congressional elections. They were scarcely mentioned.
Apparently unnerved by the unceasing White House harangue that they are ill suited to waging the war on terrorism, Democrats have largely forfeited the argument that "war," particularly a "long war," may be the wrong prism through which to view the dangers facing the United States.
Those who once argued that the task was one for police and intelligence agencies have been mocked into silence. Democrats have given a wide berth to the invasion of privacy, selective suspension of habeas corpus and the mistreatment of detainees, preferring instead to echo the drumbeat of Republican warnings about terrorism in general.
There is a war to be waged. We should be building protective ramparts around our legal system, safeguarding our own freedoms, focusing on our own carefully constructed democracy and leading by example.
It's too bad that we have so little confidence in the most powerful weapon in America's arsenal.
Also worth reading: a Nov. 20 editorial from the Pakistan Times newspaper, commenting on a recent speech entitled "The Long War" by Gen. John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East.
Gen John Abizaid has said that ‘if the world does not find a way to stem the rise of Islamic militancy, it will face a third world war. He compared the rise of militant ideologies, such as the force driving Al Qaeda, ‘to the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s that set the stage for World War Two’. ... General Abizaid has not used the word Muslim or Islamic but that is what he means: a third world war against the Muslim extremists who might begin to control an extremist state. The subtext here too is Iran which is the third crisis faced by the United States. What he told the audience at Harvard was earlier theoretically expressed by a Harvard scholar Samuel Huntington in the most apocalyptic political thesis of the 20th century: the West — led by the United States — will fight the next global war against the Islamic world. ...Because he is an American general one can’t blame him for feeling the way he does. At this stage of the Iraq war, the frightening prospect of a third world war is easy to evoke especially when you know that you are about to leave the battlefield without winning the war. The Palestinian crisis is mentioned so routinely that it has lost its significance. It is clear to anyone looking at the Arab predicament that Palestine is one of the factors — apart from the Muslims’ inability to educate themselves and adapt to modern times — that feeds directly into the success of the extremists.
General Abizaid will not speak of his government’s handling of the Palestine question, but the entire world including the European allies of the United States — including too the United Kingdom — blames Washington for not doing anything about it, for not having a coherent policy on what to do as Israel kills the Palestinian civilians and invades Lebanon with impunity. The persistent US policy of ‘regime-change’ has pushed Iran’s theocratic rulers into a dangerous isolationism which might result in the emergence of another nuclear-armed state apposite Israel. America today is less and less able to work together with important regional players like China and Russia, both states otherwise strategically tied to it in other ways.
From the White House web site, here's a link to the "National Strategy for Combating Terrorism," a document released by President Bush in September.
Here's an excerpt, a section entited "Today's Terrorist Enemy": The United States and our partners continue to pursue a significantly degraded but still dangerous al-Qaida network. Yet the enemy we face today in the War on Terror is not the same enemy we faced on September 11. Our effective counterterrorist efforts, in part, have forced the terrorists to evolve and modify their ways of doing business. Our understanding of the enemy has evolved as well. Today, the principal terrorist enemy confronting the United States is a transnational movement of extremist organizations, networks, and individuals – and their state and non-state supporters – which have in common that they exploit Islam and use terrorism for ideological ends.
This transnational movement is not monolithic. Although al-Qaida functions as the movement’s vanguard and remains, along with its affiliate groups and those inspired by them, the most dangerous present manifestation of the enemy, the movement is not controlled by any single individual, group, or state. What unites the movement is a common vision, a common set of ideas about the nature and destiny of the world, and a common goal of ushering in totalitarian rule. What unites the movement is the ideology of oppression, violence, and hate.
Our terrorist enemies exploit Islam to serve a violent political vision. Fueled by a radical ideology and a false belief that the United States is the cause of most problems affecting Muslims today, our enemies seek to expel Western power and influence from the Muslim world and establish regimes that rule according to a violent and intolerant distortion of Islam. As illustrated by Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, such regimes would deny all political and religious freedoms and serve as sanctuaries for extremists to launch additional attacks against not only the United States, its allies and partners, but the Muslim world itself. Some among the enemy, particularly al-Qaida, harbor even greater territorial and geopolitical ambitions and aim to establish a single, pan-Islamic, totalitarian regime that stretches from Spain to Southeast Asia.
This enemy movement seeks to create and exploit a division between the Muslim and non-Muslim world and within the Muslim world itself. The terrorists distort the idea of jihad into a call for violence and murder against those they regard as apostates or unbelievers, including all those who disagree with them. Most of the terrorist attacks since September 11 have occurred in Muslim countries – and most of the victims have been Muslims.
In addition to this principal enemy, a host of other groups and individuals also use terror and violence against innocent civilians to pursue their political objectives. Though their motives and goals may be different, and often include secular and more narrow territorial aims, they threaten our interests and those of our partners as they attempt to overthrow civil order and replace freedom with conflict and intolerance. Their terrorist tactics ensure that they are enemies of humanity regardless of their goals and no matter where they operate.
For our terrorist enemies, violence is not only justified, it is necessary and even glorified – judged the only means to achieve a world vision darkened by hate, fear, and oppression. They use suicide bombings, beheadings, and other atrocities against innocent people as a means to promote their creed. Our enemy’s demonstrated indifference to human life and desire to inflict catastrophic damage on the United States and its friends and allies around the world have fueled their desire for weapons of mass destruction. We cannot permit the world’s most dangerous terrorists and their regime sponsors to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.
For the enemy, there is no peaceful coexistence with those who do not subscribe to their distorted and violent view of the world. They accept no dissent and tolerate no alternative points of view. Ultimately, the terrorist enemy we face threatens global peace, international security and prosperity, the rising tide of democracy, and the right of all people to live without fear of indiscriminate violence.
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1) The perceived enemy isn't a nation or a specific organization, but a seemingly vast assortment of people around the world who supposedly are thinking pretty much the same evil thoughts about the U.S. I think that's a dangerous, deeply flawed assumption.
2) There's no clear time frame or definition of victory in this war. The struggle sketched out in the document could continue for years, decades, maybe forever.
3) The Bush Administration apparently is feeling a bit sensitive about the fact that the Iraq war has led to widespread ill-feeling toward the U.S. in other countries, particularly in the Muslim world. The document explicitly states that "Terrorism is not simply a result of hostility to U.S. policy in Iraq." I've never seen or heard anyone make the argument that it is. Instead, the usual argument--and there's a pretty strong case for it--is that the Iraq war squandered a lot of the goodwill that people around the world felt toward America after 9-11.
4) There's no mention of how much this long war might cost.
From the written responses submitted by Secretary of Defense nominee Robert Gates to questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee:
Clearly, to win the Long War, the Department needs to strengthen key capabilities such as those for irregular warfare. We must work with and through partners across the globe to counter the threat of violent extremism.
I wish Gates had gone into more detail about what he considers to be the key capabilities needed to fight terrorism, but maybe we'll get more on that from his confirmation hearings this week.
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A small group of officers assembled by Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to draw up alternatives to the U.S. military strategy in Iraq is expected to conclude its work in December, according to defense sources. Some observers anticipate the recommendations will call for a dramatic change of course in the Persian Gulf nation and perhaps in the war on terrorism more broadly.
The political context of the ISG recommendations being almost sure to be implemented -- the defensive ones at least -- means that this JCS led review may a) be politically dead as mentioned, but also b) still be highly interesting as it will most probably offer a peak into the newest military thnking about the wider war on terror in general and counterinsurgency in particular. So for strategic and intellectual if probably not so much for policy reasons, this is worth following.
The current name for the various conflicts the military faces in the Middle East and Central Asia, and in its "war on terrorism" is "The Long War," a description that aptly captures just how aimless the current strategy of the U.S. military is in responding to these threats. Only a fool enters into a war intending it to be a long one.
Here's an insightful critique of the "Long War" concept by John Arquilla, a professor of defense analysis at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. He writes that The war on terror may require a long, long time, as the Bush administration insists, but time is not on our side. Continuing attempts by the administration to make a virtue of the prospect of a drawn-out conflict only encourage mistaken thinking. For if the war does last decades, our chances of losing it rise dramatically. Why? Because the illusion that we can take forever to win fosters a do-it-tomorrow mind-set in dealing with a wily, adaptive foe. It gives terrorists the time they need to acquire true weapons of mass destruction.
If this happens, they win. Terrorists who possess even a few small nuclear warheads, for example, will have huge coercive power over us, because their networks of fighters, distributed over the face of the Earth, have no cherished "homelands" of their own to make them vulnerable to our nuclear retaliatory threats. If they can ever credibly threaten to annihilate even one of our cities, we'll have to listen very carefully to their demands to, say, withdraw our troops from all Muslim countries.
Additionally, he adds that
Another big problem with thinking that the battle against terrorism will last decades is that the longer the war goes, the greater the world's opposition to us will grow. We see this already in public opinion polls that reflect declining levels of support for the United States. According to the latest Pew Institute study of global attitudes, even our staunchest allies -- the British -- now see us as a greater threat to world peace than Iran is.
So if our main contribution to the 21st century world is a drumbeat calling for an era of perpetual warfare, we can count on the rise of social, political and even military opposition. Even here at home, this notion of protracted conflict is increasingly unpopular, creating fissures. Here, once again, "thinking long" is just plain wrong.
He also notes that the "Long War" concept is at odds with the transformation of the armed forces pursued by soon-to-be-former SecDef Rumsfeld: Why risk making major changes if you have decades to play with? Instead, we can expect to see a lot of nibbling around the edges of innovation, but with little real change.
If it catches on, the long war concept may prove the best bureaucratic defense against having to reconsider the gargantuan expenditures that go with hanging on to increasingly ineffectual armaments such as aircraft carriers, main battle tanks and high-tech aircraft. Even though none of these weapons is handy to fight terror networks, and there are no traditional military adversaries that can pose grave challenges to us anytime soon, more than 90 percent of the $1.25 billion we spend each day on national defense goes to these ever more irrelevant systems.
For what President Dwight Eisenhower once called the "military-industrial complex" (and cautioned against), being in a long war is like winning the lottery every week. For years and years.
Another critic of the "Long War" concept is British journalist Tom Porteous, who wrote in a May 2006 column for the liberal political commentary web siteTomPaine.com,:
The recent revelations of the non-existent role of Al Qaeda in the London bombings and of the Pentagon's deliberate exaggeration of Al Qaeda's role in Iraq reinforce the argument that in their response to the threat of Al Qaeda (the so called "war on terror," or "Long War"), the United States and its allies are making strategic errors of monumental proportions.
First, this war, as it is being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, is not principally fighting "Al Qaeda" but is creating and fighting new enemies: people who don't like being invaded, occupied and kicked around by foreigners and who are prepared to stand up and resist. These people may eventually become terrorists. But it will have been U.S. policies that created them. If Iran is next on the Pentagon's list, the same thing will happen there. To the extent that Israel is seen by the United States as pursuing its own war on terror in the Palestinian territories it occupies, it is happening in Gaza and the West Bank too. Second, the Long War is a distraction from the real issues which need to be addressed as a matter of urgency in order to reduce conflict, violence and injustice in the region and thus to reduce the radicalization of a generation of angry and alienated Muslim youth at home and in the diasporas. These include: ending the Israeli occupation of occupied Palestinian territories through negotiation; pursuing peaceful nuclear reduction throughout the region; and engaging seriously with political Islam. Talk of "democratization" without engaging with political Islam is nonsense.
Third, on the grounds that it is fighting a "just war," the United States and its allies have justified using levels of violence, coercion and repression—including torture, collective punishment and the killing of large numbers of civilians—which are not only of questionable tactical efficacy, but have led to a collapse of U.S. prestige in a part of the world where it has long been seen as a necessary protector, stabilizer and arbiter.
Judging from this Washington Postarticle on Robert Gates' confirmation hearing for secretary of defense, his Senate questioners seem more interested in how he'll handle the war in Iraq than his thoughts on the "Long War" against terrorism:
Robert M. Gates, President Bush's nominee to be the next secretary of defense, told a Senate confirmation hearing today that "all options are on the table" in dealing with the situation in Iraq, and he said he does not believe that U.S. forces currently are winning the war there.
Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gates said in his opening remarks that he is "open to a wide range of ideas and proposals" in Iraq, and he pledged to consult urgently with military leaders, combat commanders in the field and members of Congress, among others, if confirmed.
Asked by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), the ranking Democrat on the committee, whether "you believe we're currently winning in Iraq," Gates answered, "No, sir." He later repeated that assessment when asked the same question by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). He agreed with McCain that the status quo in Iraq is "not acceptable."
Pat..I probably sound condensending to my own beliefs, but. Dialogue with all parties that can be brought to the table or the back room is important right now. Like I said before..we need to find out what is making them tick the way they are currently doing..WHAT DO THEY WANT!!!..Let them think that we are going to give them what they want, as inticement to dialogue. They are interested in B.S.'ing us also. Next announce a stratergy to leave the Mid East. The U.S. should pick a target date to leave..create an utimatum that violence must stop during the Evauation process. We must have Air Power and Air Cav. on standby with the ability to completely destroy a rather large section of the city of Bagdad,(Totally Demolish from air strikes). This section will be determined by who violates the cease fire during the evacuation. Leave them with something to think about. Leave a stern warning that the next time America is attacked..whole nations will burn..like the section of the city of Bagdad that was Destroyed & Burned. If no one breaks the cease fire.. then we stage it..so we can leave that message behind. We have to start looking at ways to cut that long war short..by getting rational Islamic leaders to begin the process digging out the Bad & evil among themselves and eliminate them..before all of Islam suffers irreversable damage. We need to make them a Deal they can't Refuse! Plane old politics will not work with these people,(Islamic). It's my radical view again. How do you deal with Barbaric Radicals ...in a civilized manner. .....You DON'T..,( no Common Ground ) If you have to fight..Attack Terror with Terror... Koonism
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In case you're interested, here's a link to the report of the Iraq Study Group, also known as the Baker-Hamilton commission.
Mixed in with the group's observations and recommendations about Iraq, I found this on page 4:
Al Qaeda is responsible for a small portion of the violence in Iraq, but that includes some of the more spectacular acts: suicide attacks, large truck bombs, and attacks on significant religious or political targets. Al Qaeda in Iraq is now largely Iraqi-run and composed of Sunni Arabs. Foreign fighters— numbering an estimated 1,300—play a supporting role or carry out suicide operations. Al Qaeda’s goals include instigating a wider sectarian war between Iraq’s Sunni and Shia, and driving the United States out of Iraq.
President Bush has been portraying Al Qaeda as the big problem in Iraq, as part of his attempt to convince Americans that Iraq is the frontline of the war on terrorism, and not a distraction from it. But as the ISG notes, Al Qaeda is only a small--though significant--part of the problem there. Additionally, at this point it's Iraqi extremists, not Osama bin Laden and his bunch, who really are running the show. As an Iraqi official told the ISG (page 34), “Al Qaeda is now a franchise in Iraq, like McDonald’s.” I think this really undercuts the (implicit) Bush argument that we're fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq so we don't have to fight them here. Instead, I would argue that when we went into Iraq, we simply gave bin Laden a convenient new venue in which his proxies could attack U.S. interests. Meanwhile, the Iraq war isn't going to keep Al Qaeda from attacking the U.S. again, whenever they choose to try.
I also found this on page 91:
The public interest is not well served by the government’s preparation, presentation, and review of the budget for the war in Iraq. First, most of the costs of the war show up not in the normal budget request but in requests for emergency supplemental appropriations. This means that funding requests are drawn up outside the normal budget process, are not offset by budgetary reductions elsewhere, and move quickly to the White House with minimal scrutiny. Bypassing the normal review erodes budget discipline and accountability. Second, the executive branch presents budget requests in a confusing manner, making it difficult for both the general public and members of Congress to understand the request or to differentiate it from counterterrorism operations around the world or operations in Afghanistan. Detailed analyses by budget experts are needed to answer what should be a simple question: “How much money is the President requesting for the war in Iraq?” Finally, circumvention of the budget process by the executive branch erodes oversight and review by Congress.
Maybe I'm trying to read too much between the lines, but this suggests to me that Baker, Hamilton and co. see the Iraq war as separate from the larger war on terror, rather than a part of it. Also, notice that they use the words "counterterrorism operations around the world," rather than the "long war" or the "global war on terror" terminology preferred by the administration and the Rumsfeld-led Pentagon. I'm wondering if this doesn't betray some skepticism about the notion that we're in a "long war" against terrorists, or even a war in the true sense at all.
