9/11: three years later we take the war to the heart of the enemy

Everybody knows this: In order to win a war you have to strike at the heart of your enemy. You've got to hit your enemy at its center again and again until it is destroyed. If you are distracted by other targets or goals you will waste resources and precious lives and you will not prevail.



Military planners around the world have studied the writings of Prussian military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz. For more than a century his ideas have guided every war the U.S. has engaged in. (BTW: Clausewitz is also the one who said, "War is merely a continuation of politics.")



The problem, as should be obvious by now, is that this approach is not working anymore. In fact, the "strike at the heart" strategy hasn't really been very effective since the end of World War II.



Three years now into George W. Bush's "War on Terror" the results are not at all what the largest military force in the history of the world had hoped for:

The most obvious failure, of course, is that Osama Bin Laden is still on the loose. Worse than just evading capture however is the fact that he retains an unfettered ability to recruit, inspire, and motivate his warriors. In short, we haven't laid a glove on him.



And, even though we've killed or captured more than two-thirds of those who were the leadership of al Qaeda on September 11, 2001 (as George W. Bush on the campaign trail never ceases to remind nervous American voters), terrorism experts have been amazed at how quickly the group has reconstituted itself, mostly by associating with new "franchises" that have grown like mushrooms, particularly since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003.



"The leadership (of al Qaeda) is still intact and over 18,000 potential terrorists are at large with recruitment accelerating on account of Iraq," the respected International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London said last May in its latest assessment, one that is widely accepted among counterterrorist experts.

Clearly George W. Bush's "War on Terrorism" is not going well. So what went wrong? There have been three fundamental mis-steps:

1) In his desperation to do something proactive and to give the appearance of bold action, George W. Bush declared war on a noun rather than naming a real enemy. It's easier to rally uncritical support for a war on a noun. Think of the "War on Poverty" or the "War on Drugs." Surely there would be little criticism of a "War on Terror." But the problem is you can never tell when you've won a war on a noun. Like poverty and drugs, terrorism will always be with us, and so we can never win this war.



2) Then, a full month after the attacks of September 11, 2001, in the first campaign of the new War on Terror, Bush invaded Afghanistan because, he said, that was where we would find Osama Bin Laden and the headquarters of Al Qaeda. But it turns out that Al Qaeda didn't just sit and wait for us to react. No, instead they took full advantage of the four weeks between September 11 and our invasion of Afghanistan to move their leadership, their troops, and most of their materials elsewhere. But we were stuck in von Clausewitz paradigm, fighting the last war when "moving an Army" was much more difficult than it is now and the enemy could be expected to stay put while we got ready to strike at the heart. We were astonished when Al Qaeda wasn't standing right where they had been, waiting for us to come after them.



3) A year later, being frustrated in his war on a noun, and unable to lay a finger on Osama Bin Laden, Bush shifted the focus from a "War on Terror" to a "War on the Terrible." In Saddam Hussein he found the perfect target for a von Clausewitz "strike at the heart." Except that Hussein didn't have anything to do with the attack of September 11, and posed no threat what-so-ever to the United States. And so, while we were distracted by striking this new imagined enemy, this terrible man (who at least could provide us a heart at which to strike), Al Qaeda grew by leaps and bounds.

And so today, three years after the War on Terror began we have most of our military might bogged down in Iraq, surrounded by a resentful, if not actively hostile, population that can be counted on not to inform on a growing insurgency that mounts an average of more than 80 attacks on U.S. targets a day (four times more than one year ago). And the terrorists are busy capitalizing on a windfall created by the U.S. presence.



The old von Clausewitz tactics no longer work because we've given Al Qaeda opportunity to place the heart of the enemy right here at home.



Inter Press news Service: Three Years On, War on Terrorism Looks Like a Loser