By conflating jihadists with militant, religiously oriented national liberation movements like Hamas, Bush has not only undercut the support we might otherwise have received from Arab populations for police operations against genuine jihadists, he has helped to create toxic new forms of anti-Western extremism. Indeed, the most damaging result of Bush's crudely undifferentiated "war on terror" may be that he has succeeded in creating the dangerous, mixed-up jihadist-nationalist boogeyman that he set out to destroy. If al-Qaida-like groups manage to get a foothold in Lebanon or Gaza -- and there are ominous signs that they are -- the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, the world's most dangerous and intractable problem, may become completely unsolvable.
The irony is that without our help, the jihadists would be struggling to survive. As Gilles Kepel, a French expert on radical Islam, argues in "The War for Muslim Minds," very few Muslims, no matter how radical, support al-Qaida. "Beyond the circle of Bin Laden and Zawahiri and their supporters and admirers ... the majority of Islamists and salafists, let alone most of the world's Muslims, no longer see the commando action carried out by 'the umma's blessed vanguard' against the twin towers and the Pentagon as fulfilling the promise of jihad," Kepel writes. "On the contrary, after the first few seconds of enthusiasm for this blow to America's 'arrogance,' most Muslims saw the massacre of innocents on Sept. 11 as opening the door to disorder and devastation within the house of Islam."
The suggestion that we now leave a bunch of fanatical mass murderers alone may strike most Americans as cowardly and morally contemptible. But what we want are results, not self-righteous campaigns that make matters worse. Bush's righteous war has failed. To leave jihadists alone is not to appease them. It is to plan their isolation and eventual extinction more precisely.
In response, hawks argue that the jihadists will hate us and try to destroy us no matter what we do. "We weren't bothering them before 9/11, and they killed 3,000 Americans!" they shout angrily. "The war is on, and we have to win!" Leaving aside the historical myopia involved in the claim that America's foreign policies had nothing to do with 9/11, and the inconvenient fact that Bush's crusade has greatly strengthened the jihadists, this argument still runs up against the painful reality that it has now become clear that this is one war we can't win.
To be sure, there are rare cases when military action against radical Islamists may be necessary and effective. The U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, for example, was both justifiable according to just war doctrine (on the grounds that the Taliban regime, which was harboring al-Qaida, constituted an imminent threat) and could turn out to be successful, although there are increasingly ominous signs. But Afghanistan is a unique case. Every other country in the region is far more problematic.
Similarly, I'm not saying that if a group of high-ranking al-Qaida operatives suddenly decided to tell the CIA that they were going to pose for a group photo in a field in the Northwest Territories of Pakistan, we shouldn't blast them all to heaven with a Hellfire missile. But in the real world, these kind of golden opportunities almost never present themselves.
After we leave Iraq, as we inevitably will, we need to do three things to fight the "war on terror" effectively. First, we need to ratchet down our apocalyptic and moralistic rhetoric and recognize the jihadist enemy's true, relatively modest dimensions. This ain't no Soviet Union we're fighting here -- it's a bunch of guys in caves. Second, we need to use military force as a last resort. As Iraq has shown, occupation and war create more jihadis than they capture or kill. Instead, we need to use intelligence and police forces to break up jihadist terror networks. Finally, we need to address both the Arab/Muslim world's self-created pathologies and its legitimate grievances, both of which contribute to jihadism. War supporters make much of the pathologies, but have almost nothing to say about the grievances -- chief among them the festering Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the greatest source of Arab/Muslim rage against America.
There's nothing radical about any of these ideas. They are essentially the ones proposed by the Iraq Study Group, whose long-range policy recommendations would set America's Mideast policies on a rational course.
Ironically, the Bush administration has begun to embrace some of these ideas -- alas, too late. By partnering with Sunni insurgents who are sick of the violent nihilism of al-Qaida radicals, U.S. forces in Iraq have had some success in isolating hardcore jihadists from Iraqi nationalists. This kind of hardheaded realism, with its tacit acknowledgment that moralistic labels are counterproductive (today's Sunni allies were yesterday's terrorists), points toward the more rational and pragmatic policy we need to embrace in the region as a whole.
It is very hard for Americans to admit that there are some enemies that are best left alone. Our tendency to moralistic self-righteousness, our refusal to admit defeat and our belief in our invincible military all conspire against such an admission. But until we realize this, we are likely to be tempted to engage in future adventures -- like a war against Iran -- that are likely to prove even more disastrous than Iraq.
Even a superpower has areas where it cannot impose its will. The limits of American power have been shown in the Middle East. It's time to get out, protect our own borders, do some diplomacy and police work, and let things cool down. And they will cool down. The jihadist moment is too insane and self-destructive to last. Like a wildfire, the best thing to do is starve it of oxygen.
In short, it's time for a tactical retreat. Tactical retreats don't look good on a president's legacy sheet, and they don't inspire stirring patriotic songs. But they can save armies -- and nations.
About the writer
Gary Kamiya is a writer at large for Salon.
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