{"id":6949,"date":"2017-11-28T11:08:37","date_gmt":"2017-11-28T19:08:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=6949"},"modified":"2017-11-28T11:08:37","modified_gmt":"2017-11-28T19:08:37","slug":"alternative-strategy-sept-12-2001","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2017\/11\/28\/alternative-strategy-sept-12-2001\/","title":{"rendered":"What If? An Alternative Strategy for Sept. 12, 2001"},"content":{"rendered":"
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November 27, 2017\u00a0<\/span><\/span>by TomDispatch<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A generation born after 9\/11 will vote in the next presidential election.\u00a0 They\u2019ve never known peace.\u00a0 Will they even bother to demand it?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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by\u00a0Danny Sjursen<\/a>\u00a0(CommonDreams.org)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The attacks in New York City on September 11, 2001. “Just about every Bush-era policy that followed 9\/11 was an unqualified disaster,” writes Sjursen. What should we have done instead? (Photo:\u00a0Getty)<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cOf all manifestations of power, restraint impresses men most.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

— Thucydides<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

You\u2019ve heard the platitude that hindsight is 20\/20. It\u2019s true enough and, though I\u2019ve been a\u00a0regular<\/a>\u00a0skeptic about what policymakers used to call the Global War on Terror, it\u2019s always easier to poke holes in the past than to say what you would have done. My conservative father was the first to ask me what exactly I would have suggested on September 12, 2001, and he\u2019s pressed me to write this article for years. The supposed rub is this: under the pressure of that attack and the burden of presidential responsibility, even \u201cliberals\u201d — like me, I guess — would have made much the same decisions as George W. Bush and company.<\/p>\n

Many readers may cringe at the thought, but former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has to be taken seriously when she\u00a0suggests<\/a>\u00a0that anyone in the White House on 9\/11 would inevitably have seen the world through the lens of the Bush administration.\u00a0 I\u2019ve long\u00a0argued<\/a>\u00a0that just about every Bush-era policy that followed 9\/11 was an unqualified disaster.\u00a0 Nevertheless, it remains important to ponder the weight piled upon a president in the wake of unprecedented terror attacks.\u00a0 What would you have done?\u00a0 What follows is my best crack at that thorny question, 16 years after the fact, and with the accumulated experiences of combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

Taking It Personally<\/strong><\/p>\n

9\/11 was an intimate affront to me.\u00a0 It hit home hard.\u00a0 I watched those towers in my hometown burn on televisions I could glimpse from my plebe (freshman) boxing class at West Point.\u00a0 My father worked across Church Street from Manhattan\u2019s World Trade Center.\u00a0 Only hours later did I learn that he\u2019d safely escaped on the last ferryboat to Staten Island.\u00a0 Two uncles — both New York City firemen — hopelessly dug for comrades in the rubble for weeks.\u00a0 Stephen, the elder of the two, identified the body of his best friend, Captain\u00a0Marty Egan<\/a>, just days after the attacks.<\/p>\n

In blue-collar Staten Island neighborhoods like mine, everyone seemed to work for the city: cops, firemen, corrections officers, garbage men, transit workers. \u00a0I knew several of each.\u00a0 My mother spent months attending wakes and funerals.\u00a0 Suddenly, tons of streets on the Island were being renamed for dead police and firefighters, some of whom I knew personally.\u00a0 Me, I continued to plod along through the typically trying life of a new cadet at West Point.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s embarrassing now to look back at my own immaturity.\u00a0 I listened in as senior cadets broke the news of war to girlfriends and fianc\u00e9es, enviously hanging on every word.\u00a0 If only I, too, could live out the war drama I\u2019d always longed for.\u00a0 Less than two years later, I found myself drunk with another uncle — and firefighter — in a New York\u00a0pub<\/a>\u00a0on St. Patrick\u2019s Day.\u00a0 This was back when an Army T-shirt or a fireman\u2019s uniform meant a night of free drinks in that post-9\/11 city.\u00a0 I watched the television screen covetously as President Bush\u00a0delivered<\/a>\u00a0a final, 48-hour ultimatum to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.\u00a0 I inhaled, wished for a long war, and gazed at the young, attractive lead singer of the band performing in that pub.\u00a0 She was wearing a patron\u2019s tied-up New York Fire Department uniform blouse with a matching cap cocked to the side.\u00a0 It was meant to be sexy and oh-so-paramilitary.\u00a0 It might seem unbelievable now, but that was still my — and largely our — world on March 17, 2003.<\/p>\n

By the time I got my \u201cchance\u201d to join America\u2019s war on terror, in October 2006, Baghdad was collapsing into chaos as civil war raged and U.S. deaths were topping 100 per month.\u00a0 This second lieutenant still hoped for glory, even as the war\u2019s purpose was already slipping ever further away.\u00a0 I never found it (glory, that is). \u00a0Not in Iraq or, years later, in Afghanistan.\u00a0 Sixteen years and two months on from 9\/11, I\u2019m a changed man, inhabiting a forever altered reality.\u00a0 Two wars, two marriages, and so many experiences later, the tragedy and the mistakes seem so obvious.\u00a0 Perhaps we should have known all along.\u00a0 But\u00a0most<\/a>\u00a0didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

How to Lose A War (Hint: Fight It!)<\/strong><\/p>\n

From the beginning, the rhetoric, at least, was over the top.\u00a0 Three days after those towers tumbled, President George W. Bush framed the incredible scope of what he\u2019d instantly taken to calling a \u201cwar.\u201d\u00a0 As he\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0the crowd at a Washington national prayer service, \u201cOur responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.\u201d\u00a0 From the first, it seemed evident to the president: America\u2019s target wasn\u2019t anything as modest as the al-Qaeda terrorist network, but rather evil itself.\u00a0 Looking back, this was undoubtedly the original sin.\u00a0 Call something — in this case, the response to the acts of a small jihadist group — a \u201cwar\u201d and sooner or later everyone begins acting like warriors.<\/p>\n

Within 24 hours of the attacks, the potential target list was already expanding beyond Osama bin Laden and his modest set of followers.\u00a0 On September 12th, President Bush\u00a0commanded<\/a>\u00a0his national counterterror coordinator, Richard Clarke, to \u201csee if Saddam did this… look into Iraq, Saddam.\u201d\u00a0 That night, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0the president and the entire cabinet, \u201cYou know, we\u2019ve got to do Iraq… There just aren\u2019t enough targets in Afghanistan… We need to bomb something else to prove that we\u2019re, you know, big and strong…\u201d<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Afghanistan — and its Taliban rulers — became the first military target.\u00a0 Bombs were dropped and commandos infiltrated. CIA spooks\u00a0distributed<\/a>\u00a0briefcases of cash to allied warlords and eventually city after city fell.\u00a0 Sure, Osama bin Laden escaped and many of the Taliban\u2019s foot soldiers simply faded away, but it was still one hell of a lightning campaign.\u00a0 Expected to be brief, it was given the bold name Operation Enduring Freedom and, to listen to the rhetoric of the day, it\u00a0revolutionized<\/a>\u00a0warfare.\u00a0 Only it didn\u2019t, of course.\u00a0 Instead, the focus was soon lost, other priorities (Iraq!) sucked the resources away, venal warlords reigned, an insurgency developed, and… and 16 years later, American troop levels are once again\u00a0increasing<\/a>\u00a0there.<\/p>\n

Over the days, the months, and then the years that followed, the boundaries of the Global War on Terror both hardened and expanded.\u00a0 In his January 2002 State of the Union\u00a0address<\/a>, President Bush ominously included Iraq, along with Iran and North Korea (though he left out \u201cliberated\u201d Afghanistan), in what he called \u201can axis of evil.\u201d\u00a0 Who cared, by then, that none of those countries had had anything to do with the 9\/11 attacks?\u00a0 In a flash the president conflated all three in the public mind, ultimately constructing a self-fulfilling prophesy.\u00a0 Saddam would be toppled and Iraq occupied 15 months later and, had it not been for the ensuing chaos, Iran and North Korea might have been next.\u00a0 Unsurprisingly, both countries intensified their bellicosity and grew all the more interested in nuclear weapons programs.<\/p>\n

So much\u00a0followed<\/a>\u00a0the 9\/11 attacks that it\u2019s no small thing to sum up: the Patriot Act, warrantless domestic wiretapping, Guant\u00e1namo, Abu Ghraib, a Taliban resurgence, an Iraqi civil war, drones as global assassins, the Arab Spring, the overthrow of Libyan autocrat Muammar Gaddafi and the collapse of his country, the Syrian bloodbath, the\u00a0worst<\/a>\u00a0refugee crisis since World War II, and that\u2019s just to begin a list.<\/p>\n

In short, U.S. policies have left the Middle East in chaos: perhaps a\u00a0million<\/a>\u00a0dead, Iran empowered, and radical Islamists resurgent.\u00a0 Meanwhile, this country has become a garrison state, forever at war, its military budget\u00a0doubled<\/a>, its populace seemingly indifferent, and its warrior caste\u00a0shattered<\/a>\u00a0— physically and mentally.\u00a0 Sixteen years have passed and Washington is no closer to its goal (whatever that was).\u00a0 Retired general David Petraeus, our nation\u2019s\u00a0prodigal \u201chero,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0has now ominously labeled the Afghan War (and by implication the rest of the war on terror) a \u201cgenerational struggle<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Few, to be honest, even remember the purpose of it all.\u00a0 Keep in mind that Army recruits today were perhaps two years old on 9\/11.\u00a0 And so it goes.<\/p>\n

Lost Opportunities<\/strong><\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t have to be this way.\u00a0 Nothing about it was predetermined.\u00a0 Much of the necessary information — certainly the warning signs of what was going to happen that September 11th — were already there.\u00a0 If, that is, one cared to look.\u00a0 History is contingent, human beings have agency, and events result from innumerable individual decisions.\u00a0 The CIA, the FBI, and even the Bush administration knew (or should have known, anyway) that an attack of some sort was coming.<\/p>\n

As the 9\/11 commission\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0painfully detailed, none of those agencies collaborated in a meaningful way when it came to preventing that day\u2019s attacks.\u00a0 Still, there were warnings ignored and voices in the dark.\u00a0 When Richard Clarke, counterterror czar and a Clinton administration holdover,\u00a0requested<\/a>\u00a0through official channels to deliver an emergency briefing for Bush\u2019s key foreign policy officials, it took four months just to arrange an audience with their deputies.\u00a0 Four more months elapsed before President Bush received a briefing titled, \u201cBin Laden determined to strike the U.S.\u201d\u00a0 Unimpressed, Bush quickly\u00a0responded<\/a>\u00a0to the briefer: \u201cAll right… you\u2019ve covered your ass now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barely more than a month later, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were burning.<\/p>\n

Whatever else it did, 9\/11 presented the United States with an opportunity, a Robert Frost-like fork in a divergent path.\u00a0 And we Americans promptly took the road\u00a0most<\/em>\u00a0traveled: militarism, war, vengeance — the easy wrong path.\u00a0 A broad war, waged against a noun, \u201cterror,\u201d a \u201cglobal\u201d conflict that, from its first moments, looked suspiciously binary: Western versus Islamic (despite Bush\u2019s pleas to the contrary).\u00a0 In the process, al-Qaeda\u2019s (and then ISIS\u2019s) narratives were bolstered.<\/p>\n

There was — there always is — another path. Imagine if President Bush and his foreign policy team had paused, taken a breath, and demonstrated some humility and restraint before plunging the country into what would indeed become a war or set of wars.\u00a0 There were certainly questions begging to be asked and answered that never received a proper hearing.\u00a0 Why did al-Qaeda attack us? Was there any merit in their grievances?\u00a0 How did bin Laden want us to respond and how could we have avoided just such a path?\u00a0 Finally, which were the best tools and tactics to respond with?\u00a0 Let\u2019s consider these questions and imagine an alternative response.<\/p>\n

Why They (Really) Hated Us<\/strong><\/p>\n

Americans and their government were inclined to accept the most simplistic explanation for the terror attacks of 9\/11.\u00a0 As George W. Bush would assure us all, Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda just \u201chate us for our freedoms.\u201d\u00a0 The end.<\/p>\n

Something about the guilelessness of that explanation, which was the commonplace one of that moment, never quite seemed right.\u00a0 Human motivations and actions are almost always more complex, more multifaceted, less simpleminded than that.\u00a0 While Bush boiled it all down to \u201cIslamic\u201d fundamentalism, even a cursory look at bin Laden\u2019s written\u00a0declaration<\/a>of \u201cwar\u201d — or as he called it, jihad —\u00a0demonstrates<\/a>\u00a0that his actual focus was far more secular and less explicitly religious than was suggested at the time.\u00a0 Couched between Koranic verses, bin Laden listed three all-too-worldly grievances with America:<\/p>\n

* The U.S. military had occupied bases in the vicinity of Saudi Arabia\u2019s holy sites of Mecca and Medina.\u00a0 (Well… that had indeed been the case, at least\u00a0since<\/a>1990, if not earlier.)<\/p>\n

* U.S.-imposed sanctions on Iraq had caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children.\u00a0 (This was, in fact, a reality that even Secretary of State Madeleine Albright\u00a0awkwardly<\/a>\u00a0acknowledged.)<\/p>\n

* America\u2019s leaders had long favored Israeli interests to the detriment of Palestinian wellbeing or national aspirations.\u00a0 (A bit simplistic, but true enough.\u00a0 One could, in fact,\u00a0stock<\/a>\u00a0several bookshelves with respected works substantiating bin Laden\u2019s claim on this point.)<\/p>\n

To state the obvious, none of this faintly justified the mass murder of civilians in New York and Washington.\u00a0 Nonetheless, at that moment, an honest analysis of an adversary\u2019s motives would have been prudent.\u00a0 It might have warned us of the political landscape that bin Laden was beckoning us — in his own bloody, apocalyptic fashion — to enter.\u00a0 In addition, as journalist Stephen Glain astutely\u00a0observed<\/a>, \u201cBy obscuring the real motives behind the attacks, Bush relieved the U.S. government of any responsibility for them.\u201d\u00a0 This was a fatal error.\u00a0 While the\u00a0overwhelming<\/a>\u00a0majority of Arabs and Muslims worldwide did not approve of bin Laden\u2019s methods or his theology, much of his critique of Washington\u2019s Middle Eastern policies was widely shared in the region.<\/p>\n

Avoiding the Al-Qaeda Script<\/strong><\/p>\n

Al-Qaeda\u2019s leadership knew this perfectly well and they dangled it (and their suicidal acts) as a kind of bait, yearning for the sort of conventional U.S. military response that they knew would further inflame the Greater Middle East.\u00a0 Even in 1996, when journalist Abdul Bari Atwan interviewed bin Laden, the Saudi militant had\u00a0expressed<\/a>\u00a0the desire to \u201cbring the Americans into a fight on Muslim soil.\u201d\u00a0 Only then, bin Laden surmised, could al-Qaeda buttress its argument, win converts from the apathetic Muslim masses, and — hopefully —\u00a0bankrupt<\/a>\u00a0the United States in the bargain.<\/p>\n

Suppose, for a moment, that President Bush had taken the high road, a path of restraint focused on twin tracks.\u00a0 First, he might have addressed broadly-shared Arab grievances, pledging a more balanced approach to the question of Israel and Palestine in his still-fresh administration, tailoring Iraq\u2019s sanctions to target Saddam and his cronies rather than innocent citizens, and vowing to review the necessity of military bases so close to Mecca and Medina (or even the necessity of so many of the\u00a0American bases<\/a>\u00a0that littered the region).\u00a0 He could have followed that with lethal, precise, targeted action by America\u2019s intelligence, law enforcement, and Special Operations forces to hunt down and kill or capture the men actually responsible for 9\/11, al-Qaeda\u2019s leadership.<\/p>\n

This manhunt needed to be ferocious yet measured in order to avoid the very quagmires that, 16 years later, we all know so well.\u00a0 Allies and adversaries would have had to be consulted and cautioned.\u00a0 Remember that, although al-Qaeda was disciplined and effective, on September 12, 2001, it remained diminutive in size and utterly marginal in its regional support.\u00a0 Dismantling its networks and bringing the true criminals of that day to justice never required remaking distant societies or occupying fragile nation-states with conventional military forces.<\/p>\n

And keep in mind that such thinking about the situation isn\u2019t purely retrospective.\u00a0 Take the\u00a0Nation<\/em>\u00a0magazine\u2019s Jonathan Schell.\u00a0 That October, after the invasion of Afghanistan had begun, appearing on the\u00a0Charlie Rose<\/em>\u00a0show he\u00a0called for<\/a>\u00a0\u201cpolice work\u201d and \u201ccommando raids,\u201d but not war.\u00a0 He then prophetically observed:<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the question doesn\u2019t revolve so much around the justification for war but about its wisdom, and I know that\u2019s the question for me.\u00a0 I know that, from my point of view, terrorism is chiefly a political issue and secondarily a police issue and then, only in a very minor way, can it be addressed by military means and I think that, on the contrary, the war we\u2019re fighting now will tend to worsen our problems.\u00a0 The question I ask myself is, at the end of the day, do you have more terrorists or do you have fewer and I think… today, right now, it looks like there are going to be more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, at the time, just about no one in this country was listening to such voices.<\/p>\n

A prudent president might also have learned from his father.\u00a0 Just as George H.W. Bush had meticulously\u00a0constructed<\/a>\u00a0a broad international coalition, including all-important Arab states, to dislodge Saddam Hussein\u2019s military from Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War, George W. Bush could have harnessed widespread international\u00a0sympathy<\/a>\u00a0after the 9\/11 attacks to blaze a judicious path.\u00a0 A new, broad, U.N.-backed coalition, which ought to have included several Muslim-majority nations, could have shared intelligence, rooted out jihadis (who represented a serious threat to most secular Arab regimes), and ultimately discredited al-Qaeda, dismantling its networks and bringing bin Laden himself to justice.<\/p>\n

The Right Tools<\/strong><\/p>\n

Global sympathy — Russian President Vladimir Putin was the first world leader to\u00a0call<\/a>George Bush after the attacks — is as rare as it is fleeting.\u00a0 So that moment represented a singular and singularly squandered opportunity.\u00a0 The United States could have led a massive international effort, emphasizing law enforcement, not warfare, and including increased humanitarian aid, U.N.-sponsored peacekeeping operations, and a commitment to live America\u2019s purported values by scrupulously avoiding crimes liketorture<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0civilian casualties<\/a>.\u00a0 Of course, it wouldn\u2019t have been perfect — complex operations seldom are — but sober strategy demanded a rigorous effort.<\/p>\n

One more imperative for the new campaign against al-Qaeda would have been garnering broad support and a legal sanction from Congress and the American people.\u00a0 Two weeks after 9\/11, President Bush vapidly\u00a0suggested<\/a>instead that this country\u2019s citizens should respond by getting in airplanes again and \u201cenjoy[ing] America\u2019s great destination spots.\u00a0 Get down to Disney World in Florida.\u201d\u00a0 Instead, he might have steeled the population for a tough fight and inspired a new era of public service.\u00a0 Think: John F. Kennedy.\u00a0 Think: \u201cAsk not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.\u201d\u00a0 Bush might have requested from Congress a narrow, targeted authorization for the use of military force rather than the\u00a0rushed<\/a>, expansive, open-ended sanction he actually demanded and received and that is\u00a0still being used<\/a>\u00a0two administrations later to justify any acts against any group or country across the Greater Middle East and Africa.<\/p>\n

He could have followed this with the presentation of a new National Service Act, rallying the young and\u00a0incentivizing<\/a>\u00a0military or Peace Corps enlistment, infrastructure improvement, inner-city teaching, and various other kinds of public service. Imagine a new \u201cGreatest Generation,\u201d pulling together in a time of crisis.\u00a0 This, in retrospect, was a real opportunity.\u00a0 What a pity that it never came to pass.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to know, of course, how such an alternate path might have played out, but honestly it would have been difficult to do worse.\u00a0 The U.S. remains stuck, spinning its wheels in regional conflicts and feeling no safer.\u00a0 The number of worldwide terrorist incidents has\u00a0exploded<\/a>\u00a0since 2001.\u00a0 New Islamist groups were formed in response to U.S. actions and counteractions and they continue to spread without an end in sight.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if there will be a next time, a chance to do it right.\u00a0 But should new threats emerge, more devastating attacks be endured, there simply has to be a better way, though the odds that President Donald Trump and his generals will find it are, honestly, next to nil.<\/p>\n

Complex ideological threats sometimes demand counterintuitive responses.\u00a0 In such moments, hard as it may be to imagine, rational calculations should rise above the kneejerk emotional responses.\u00a0 True leaders step up and weather criticism in times of crisis. So next time, Americans would do well to set aside comforting illusions and take the world as it is, not as we imagine or wish it to be.\u00a0 The future may depend on it.<\/p>\n

That future may well include new \u201cterror\u201d attacks on (or at least in) America\u2019s cities.\u00a0 Expect this president to use those inevitable tragedies to stifle domestic dissent, escalate the ongoing wars, and — just maybe — fan the flames of nativism and white nationalism for petty political gain.\u00a0 The question is which institutions, which groups, will be prepared to fight back? I fear there\u2019ll be few left willing to defy the tide of war.\u00a0 A generation born after 9\/11 will vote in the next presidential election.\u00a0 They\u2019ve never known peace.\u00a0 Will they even bother to demand it?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n