Deeper Threat Is Being Missed

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CAPITAL JOURNAL

By GERALD F. SEIB 

Deeper Threat

Is Being Missed

Amid Iraq Debate

September 8, 2004; Page A4

The presidential campaign's foreign-policy debate is coming into focus. Unfortunately, it is focused directly on the rear-view mirror.

The general-election campaign officially opened during the Labor Day weekend, and the debate went something like this:

John Kerry said George Bush never should have gone to war in Iraq. George Bush said it's funny John Kerry said that, because he voted to authorize for the war in the first place. George Bush said we're safer because of the Iraq war. John Kerry said we're not safer -- but we are more broke. And George Bush said...

Well, you get the idea. Debating whether the war in Iraq was wise is important, of course, and voters will base much of their verdict on President Bush on that issue. But the future of Iraq isn't the most important question facing the U.S., or even the most important one facing the U.S. in the Middle East.

The far bigger question is whether the U.S. is engaged in a historic clash of civilizations with the Islamic world. It is fair to say that while the U.S. has some strategies for pacifying and exiting from Iraq, and some plans for thwarting terrorist attacks, it has reached no consensus on a strategy for dealing with a clash of civilizations.

Certainly, this isn't what was discussed in the superheated, convention-centered political environment of the past month. President Bush came closest in his convention acceptance speech, reprising his argument that democracy in Iraq would defang Islamic militants. Would-be terrorists "know that a vibrant, successful democracy at the heart of the Middle East will discredit their radical ideology of hate," Mr. Bush said. "They know that men and women with hope, and purpose, and dignity do not strap bombs on their bodies and kill the innocent."

Yet even that formulation casts the struggle with Islamic militants essentially as a struggle to stop terrorists. It is much more.

What's needed here is some new thinking. The old way of analyzing "Islamic extremists" needs to be thrown out, probably along with much of the vocabulary Americans use to address the threat. A good starting point is a careful reading of the 9/11 Commission's final report, not for its discussion of how the terrorist attacks happened, but for its illuminating description of the motivation of Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants.

The bin Laden goal isn't simply to humiliate the U.S. Nor is it to overthrow the government of Saudi Arabia, or Egypt, or Jordan. The goal is to eliminate those governments -- in fact, to eliminate those nations.

Mr. bin Laden's dream is to remake the world order, uniting the world's billion-plus Muslims under a new caliph -- that is, a modern-day successor to the Prophet Mohammed who would rule the broad Islamic world spanning the continents. "For those yearning for a lost sense of order in an older, more tranquil world, he offers his 'Caliphate' as an imagined alternative to today's uncertainty," the 9/11 report explains. Thus, the extremists who target the U.S. aren't interested in changing nation-states, but in wiping them out. Because the U.S. supports those nation-states, the first step is to cripple America. In sum, the militants really are revolutionaries.

Americans who are used to thinking of terrorists mostly as Arabs out to cripple Israel and win statehood for the Palestinians have to snap out of it. For decades, in fact, those of us immersed in Middle East politics have been telling each other that "solving the Palestinian problem" would go a long way to ending extremism in the Middle East. As the 9/11 Commission report makes clear, most of the plotting for the Sept. 11 attacks took place precisely while President Clinton and Israeli and Palestinian negotiators were closer than ever before to creating a Palestinian state and "solving" the problem. There is no sign it made any difference.

The U.S. needs a long-term strategy for dealing with this movement, and nothing in the campaign's debate so far is moving the country in that direction. Important as Iraq may be, it is turning into a distraction, stealing attention from the much broader problem in the Islamic world.

There is no obvious American strategy. But one thing is clear: Whether the U.S. should or shouldn't have had more international cooperation in invading Iraq, it needs a broader meeting of the minds with allies in the Middle East and beyond on a common approach. For instance, to the extent the U.S. invasion of Iraq has angered Muslims, it probably is contributing to Islamic alienation -- but so is France when it prohibits Muslim girls from wearing head scarves to schools.

Obviously, it is tough to get a campaign debate to this level of discourse. Still, it would help if voters and candidates alike at least remembered this much: It isn't all about Iraq.

Write to Gerald F. Seib at jerry.seib@wsj.com

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[Bottomfeeder 244]

Personally, I believe the oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, and others, are not

adequately protected.

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Having worked on oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, I would have to agree with your statement. Mainly because there is no protection other than the men who work there. The only weapons they have are a few pocket knives. They do have communication, but no protection per se. The Coast Guard does patrol the Gulf of Mexico but they are stretched thin as far as protection.