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A War Won’t End Terrorism
Saturday, October 19, 2002
The San Francisco Chronicle

Tamim Ansary.
Image Credit: Kurt Rogers -- The Chronicle.

We must note the correlation between what we call terrorism and the very modern phenomenon of failed states and unraveled societies, from Sudan to Afghanistan to Lebanon. The United States will undoubtedly defeat Iraq, but the victory will as likely add another muddy patch of stateless anarchy to the globe as herald a new era of democracy and freedom there.

Tamim Ansary is the author of a memoir, "West of Kabul, East of New York." Ansary, who lives in San Francisco, writes a regular online "humanities" column for Encarta, MSN's learning and research site. He gained national attention when an e-mail he sent to friends on Sept. 12 explaining why he felt bombing Afghanistan - his homeland - in response to the terrorist attacks was futile, was forwarded via the Internet to millions of people around the world.

With the issue of Iraq moving from Congress - which has authorized President Bush to take military action - to the U.N. Security Council, many in the Bay Area continue to voice concern over what they perceive as a lack of adequate public discussion on the subject. The Chronicle is featuring voices from a variety of perspectives, seeking to highlight some of the key questions and issues involved.

Directly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the war talk began, as if war were the obvious remedy for terrorism. The president vowed to "destroy the infrastructure of terrorism" and defeat "states that sponsor terrorism." By January, our quarrel was shifting from Osama bin Laden to what President Bush labeled an "axis of evil," comprising Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Now, apparently, the first of these states, Iraq, is in the crosshairs. But every time I hear about "destroying the infrastructure of terrorism" - the supposed justification for this war - I am troubled by the fact that terrorism doesn't need an infrastructure to succeed. Indeed, lack of infrastructure is the hallmark of terrorism and its key advantage. Historically, it is groups without state power who have resorted to terrorism, groups without trains and factories and government buildings, and without the capacity to field armies.

In this respect, terrorism is like crime, a parallel that ought to give us pause. Our military might, money and technology can certainly defeat Iraq but it couldn't stop one man man from killing 168 men, women and children with a fertilizer bomb in Oklahoma City; or a sniper from shooting dead 9 people (so far) just outside the nation's capital; or two high school students from slaughtering 13 of their classmates at Columbine High School in a Colorado suburb. None of these criminals who terrorized and slaughtered others needed their own infrastructure. They used the infrastructure of the society they were attacking. So did the men who destroyed the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. They didn't have their own flight schools. They used ours. They didn't have their own airplanes. They used ours. They didn't even make box-cutters. They bought the ones we made. If we had obliterated Iraq before 9/11, would we have weakened their ability to carry out their terrorist project? Of course not.
(More: SFGate.com News Source)
2002 © The San Francisco Chronicle.

Dan