{"id":1410,"date":"2004-03-15T11:26:31","date_gmt":"2004-03-15T15:26:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2004\/03\/15\/the-new-front-in-the-war-on-terror\/"},"modified":"2004-03-15T11:26:31","modified_gmt":"2004-03-15T15:26:31","slug":"the-new-front-in-the-war-on-terror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2004\/03\/15\/the-new-front-in-the-war-on-terror\/","title":{"rendered":"The new front in the war on terror"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Yesterday, on one of the news programs (I think it was “Face the
\nNation”), Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld, in discussing links to Al
\nQaeda in the terrorist attacks in Spain, noted, “The–the one thing I
\nwould say is there seem to be growing connections between terrorist
\norganizations.”<\/p>\n

It’s one line in a one-hour program, but it was noteworthy enough to
\nput on the evening news broadcast in my market (Boston).  And
\nso,
\ngood political theorist and scientist that I am, I ask, “What does it
\nmean?”<\/p>\n

Well, we know that this is an administration scrupulous about its control
\nof message to the press (to the extent that it is now
\nproducing its own “news” segments for local news<\/a>).  So it’s
\nhard to believe that anything is a throw-away comment.<\/p>\n

The comment Rumsfeld made immediately struck me as the opening for
\nthe
\nnext phase of our national war on terror.  We’ve “dealt”
\nwith
\nIraq, we’re supposedly mounting a spring offensive against the
\nPashtun
\nregion of Pakistan-Afghanistan to find Osama, and we’ve aggressively
\nasserted the idea that we will root our terror wherever it
\nexists.<\/p>\n

If terror groups are building linkages to one another, then there are
\ntwo consequences for American foreign policy and the world. <\/p>\n

    \n
  1. We can further expand our presence around the world (at
    \nleast
    \ntheoretically, if not materially or militarily — even our military
    \nhas
    \nlimits).  If all fights are parts of the war on terror, then
    \nwe
    \nbecome part of all of them.
    \n  <\/li>\n
  2. Consequently, we can continue to not find Al Qaeda, because we
    \nwill fight a proxy war with people acting at his behest.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    What’s funny is that we’ve been to number one before — it greatly
    \nresembles our anti-Communist policy of the Cold War — with a couple
    \nof
    \nimportant exceptions.  First, we’re fighting a set of
    \nideologies,
    \ninstead of one.  Yeah, there’s Islamist totalitarianism, but if
    \nwe
    \nlink all the terrorist groups together, we’re lumping Islamists with
    \nnationalists with directionless rebels.  Second, unlike with
    \nCommunist states that we can arrive at some accommodation with after
    \nnegotiation, there’s no one to talk to in the case of
    \nterrorists. 
    \nSo we’re constantly in a state of playing reaction games, rather than
    \nbeing able to make initial moves of our own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Yesterday, on one of the news programs (I think it was “Face the Nation”), Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld, in discussing links to Al Qaeda in the terrorist attacks in Spain, noted, “The–the one thing I would say is there seem to be growing connections between terrorist organizations.” It’s one line in a one-hour program, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politicks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-mK","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}