ABSTRACT
No one-in any country, big or small-has figured out how to successfully respond to terrorism. This is due in part to the elusive nature of “terrorism” as enemy. What does one attack and how does one know when victory (or defeat) happens? Those who launch a “war on terror” promptly encounter such difficulties. Conventional military strategists might argue that if this is a war, let’s kill
those we need to kill and the remainder will give up; the war will be won. That has a certain appeal, and for a while it might appear to work. America’s post-9/11 foray into Afghanistan took that approach, with a nice Hollywood touch added to it: CIA operatives rode on horseback with the Northern Alliance while B-52s bombed Al Qaeda and the Taliban from invisible altitudes. Stirring stuff, but successful in only a limited way. By “winning,” the United States found itself with Afghanistan on its hands-a prize of dubious value-and despite killing a reasonable number of Al Qaeda (mostly in the lower ranks), the big prize, Osama bin Laden and his command structure, slipped away. And even if bin Laden had been killed (or martyred, depending on your
point of view), the victory would have been an illusion. Bin Laden is not terrorism; he is one player on a vast field and his significance has been overrated partly because governments, the news media, and the general public desperately want to fit terrorism into the template of traditional conflict in which there are good guys and bad guys, and specific results determine victory and defeat. If bin Laden is Hitler and terrorism is Nazi Germany, the war can be understood and winning it seems both feasible and probable. But the analogy doesn’t work. The bin Laden-Hitler comparison is silly on
the basis of scale, among other reasons, and more importantly the concept of conquerable “enemy territory” is inapplicable to terrorism except in the most limited way: scattered headquarters and training camps that if obliterated will be reconstituted elsewhere almost immediately. Victory remains elusive. So, what is to be done?
