Fareed Zakaria and Terrorism

Fareed Zakaria had a great column last week about the London bombings, Iraq, the Muslim world, and terrorism in general. Some of the highlights include his analysis of the reaction to terrorism from the Muslim world:

Now things are changing. The day before the London bombs, a conference of 180 top Muslim sheiks and imams, brought together under the auspices of Jordan's King Abdullah, issued a statement forbidding that any Muslim be declared takfir‹an apostate. This is a frontal attack on Al Qaeda's theological methods. Declaring someone takfir—and thus sanctioning his or her death—is a favorite tactic of bin Laden and his ally in Iraq, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi. The conference's statement was endorsed by 10 fatwas from such big conservative scholars as Tantawi; Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani; Egypt's mufti, Ali Jumaa, and the influential Al-Jazeera TV-sheik, Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Signed by adherents of all schools of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), it also allows only qualified Muslim scholars to issue edicts. The Islamic Conference's statement, the first of its kind, is a rare show of unity among the religious establishment against terrorists and their scholarly allies.

This is interesting because so often the right has cast the Muslim establishment in much of the Middle East as tacitly accepting terrorism. Bill O'Reilly calls Al Jazeera a "terrorist network." Of course Zakaria's observation contradicts much of what we thought was the case in the Middle East. As much as Bill O'Reilly and others have been ripping into Al Jazeera for every time that it shows an Al Qaeda tape (which FOXNews then airs), they ought to be congratulating Al Jazeera for this.

At any rate, the most interesting aspect of Zakaria's column comes at the end:

The broader shift that needs to take place, however, is a better definition of victory. America's political leaders continue to give their citizens the impression that victory means ensuring that there will be no other attack on American soil—as long as we go on the offense abroad, get perfect intelligence, buy fancy new technologies at home, screen visas and lock some people up. But all these tough tactics and all the intelligence in the world will not change the fact that in today's open societies, terrorism is easy to carry out. The British authorities, perhaps the world's best at combating terror, admit they had no warning about last week's attack. The American response to the London bombs has been a perfect example of U.S. grandstanding. We immediately raised the alert level, scaring Americans, with no specific information about terror attacks in America. Why? Because were something to happen here, politicians and bureaucrats want to be able to say, "Don't blame us, we told you."

Real victory is not about preventing all attacks everywhere. No one can guarantee that. It's really about preventing the worst kinds of attacks, and responding well to others. And on this score, America remains woefully unprepared. "The British attacks failed because Britain has excellent response systems and its people are well prepared on how to respond. America has neither advantage today," says Stephen Flynn, a homeland-security expert and author of "America the Vulnerable: How Our Government Is Failing to Protect Us From Terrorism." "We need good education and training for transit workers and citizens, good communication mechanisms among government agencies and the people, and most important, a good public-health infrastructure." We have little of this today. In the years after 9/11 we have wasted much time, effort and money on other priorities rather than engaging in the massive investment in the systems of response that we need. Our leaders remain unwilling to speak honestly about the world we live in and to help people develop the mentality of response that is essential to prevailing.

The bombs were meant to show that the terrorists were strong and we were weak. In fact they have shown the opposite. But to realize victory fully, we must know what victory means.

This highlights what seems to be the chief difference between American and British response. In the US we had politicians assuring us of victory and media scaring the shit out of all of us. Then politicians would get into the business of using scare tactics. We had John Ashcroft announcing:

Now, a radioactive "dirty bomb" involves exploding a conventional bomb that not only kills victims in the immediate vicinity but also spreads radioactive material that is highly toxic to humans and can cause mass death and injury.

From information available to the United States government, we know that Abdullah Al Muhajir is an Al Qaeda operative and was exploring a plan to build and explode a radioactive "dirty bomb."

Let me be clear: We know from multiple independent and corroborating sources that Abdullah Al Muhajir was closely associated with al Qaeda and that as an al Qaeda operative he was involved in planning future terrorist attacks on innocent American civilians in the United States.

Much of what Ashcroft said here ended up being ridiculous. Although "dirty bombs" are dangerous, all it is, is a pipe bomb, that will slightly raise someone's chances of getting cancer (something that will happen to almost everybody anyways). Those who would get the highest brunt of the radioactive material would just die from the pipe bomb, making a "dirty bomb" not much worse than an ordinary pipe bomb and extended sun exposure.

This type of act was followed up by Bush making comments like this, "We meet today in a time of war for our country, a war we did not start yet one that we will win," to the American Legion. This of course was preceded by Bush making entirely correct comments about the War on Terror, namely that, "I don’t think you can win [the war on terror]. But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world."

The issue here is one where politicians (not just Republicans, Democrats are guilty for giving Bush grief for his comments on terrorism) are attempting to scare people into action against terrorism, with the promise that, in the end, it will go back to 2000. Contrast this with the British sentiment, namely that when authorities warn people of more attacks, it does not seem political, it seems honest, that the Brits don't have delusions of the world going back to 2000 (though they dealt with the IRA's terrorism years before 2000).

We, as a country, ought to take a cue from the British on this.

-Mr. Alec