Mark Phillips: The American Question

2/11/03: Who's winning?

FBI Director Robert Mueller III today said, "Despite the progress the U.S. has made in disrupting the al Qaeda network overseas and within our own country, the organization maintains the ability and the intent to inflict significant casualties in the U.S. with little warning."

Could there be a more straightforward acknowledgement of the failure of the War on Islam?

3,000 dead Afghani civilians. Bin Laden free. Mullah Omar uncaptured. Much of Afghanistan is Indian Country. Open-ended occupation of Iraq by large-scale American forces looming. War with Iran inevitable. War with North Korea probable. War with Sudan, and Lebanon likely. Domestic terrorism alerts permanent. No end visible to a war which can never be won, will inevitably be lost. Welcome to Israel.

It doesn't have to be this way.

An intelligent American policy would target the causes of terrorism, instead of the symptoms. Poverty; antidemocratic regimes throughout much of the Islamic world; dependency on fossil fuels; Israeli repression. These are real-world problems with real-world causes. With intelligence and commitment and good will they can be solved. They're in large part the outcomes of prior American policy. If that policy were changed, the outcomes would change with it.

Instead America's rulers have chosen to emulate the Israeli strategy: repression, repression, and more repression. That approach has failed for Israel, and will fail for America. How many will die before it's abandoned?

This failing strategy is not inevitable. It's a choice, made by an arrogant and short-sighted ruling elite unable to learn the lessons of past failures. Driven in large measure by technological hubris: the vainglorious conceit that smart weapons can defeat whole peoples. The same arrogance that drove our country deeper and deeper into defeat in Vietnam.

The former chief of Israeli military intelligence, Yehoshaphat Harkabi, said from experience, "To offer an honourable solution to the Palestinians respecting their right to self-determination: that is the solution of the problem of terrorism. When the swamp disappears, there will be no more mosquitoes." America's rulers have chosen to swat mosquitoes, turning their backs on a swamp which grows more dangerous, not less, the more mosquitoes they kill.

How long? How many will die?

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