[no subject]

Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.


Sadly, case studies of this strange dynamic are easy to come by, once
you realize what to look for.


        Israel-Palestine


The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a textbook case.  There is no
military benefit to a suicide bomber killing people at a cafe, a
wedding, or on a bus.  The benefit to Hamas comes from the massive
retaliation, killing the innocent along with the guilty, bulldozing
homes and farms, and creating major economic hardship for the large
masses of Palestinians who would gladly live in peace with Israel.
Israel pegs the price of peace to stopping the terrorists, which
ordinary Palestinians have no way of doing.  And the immediate impact
of the retaliation is to solidify hatred against the Israelis. (We're
long past the point of talking about "trust" here.)


So, Hamas has reached the successful point of being able to provoke
the Israeli Army to act to build up its strength among the
Palestinians.  The vicious cycle in that region is that hardliners in
Israel use precisely the same method.  When Israeli extremists create
new settlements in Palestinian territory, or commit terrorist acts
against ordinary Palestinians, they provoke the strongest retaliation
the Palestinians are capable of, which is more suicide bombers to
slaughter innocents among the ordinary people of Israel.  This
eliminates any trust in the Palestinian authorities (small "a"), and
solidifies hatred against Palestine.  This elegant pair of
mutually-reinforcing feedback cycles strengthens terrorism on both
sides, and makes the chances for peace remote.


        Iraq


Now let's think about Iraq.  Terrorists strike US troops, provoking
retaliation.  The retaliation almost certainly involves collatoral
damage, eroding trust in Americans and inflaming hatred.  By now this
cycle should look familiar.


But the terrorists' goal is the erosion of trust in the US authorities
and our attempt to rebuild Iraq, even more than physical destruction. 
It's hard to imagine Al Qaida coming up with something more effective
than the pictures from Abu Ghraib prison for destroying the trust of
the ordinary Iraqi people in the civil authority of the US troops.


Because this abuse does such direct strategic damage to our mission in
Iraq, the soldiers directly involved must be punished, of course, but
so should the entire chain of command.  Since our overall mission
explicitly requires winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people,
it is military professional malpractice to fail to anticipate the
pressures on the front-line troops and put discipline in place to
prevent such abuse.  This abuse is due to more than "a few bad
apples", but even if it were only that, a military commander is
responsible for knowing that a few soldiers may be "bad apples", and
having controls in place to prevent them from acting out.


The decapitation of Nick Berg was a miscalculation on the terrorists'
part.  (They aren't all geniuses either, of course!)  Ordinary Iraqis
were revolted and offended by having this crime done in the name of
their religion.  Furthermore, the decapitation took attention away
from the Abu Ghraib pictures, which were doing real damage to the US
cause.  We could still save their cookies by some sort of massive
retaliation, but the responsible authorities seem to be handling this
is a more controlled way.  Finding and prosecuting the specific
individuals involved and their accomplices would strengthen the US
position significantly.


There are signs that not all the news from Iraq is bad.  First, there
is measurable progress in restoring the Iraqi infrastructure,
providing water, sewers, electricity, oil pipelines, local government,
and eventually jobs.  [This is where the real war is fought.  The
soldiers are mostly there to keep the bad guys from interfering with
the engineers and their work.]  Second, the ordinary peole of Najf
have demonstrated against the religious extremists and in favor of the
moderates, and of course in favor of peace and quiet.


        9/11


This view of terrorists, retaliation, and trust also helps us
understand the terrible events of 9/11/01 and who has profited from
the aftermath.


The destruction of the World Trade Center and the murder of 3,000
people was a horrifying act that devastated the victims' families and
shook the economy for a while.  The symbolic impact on the US and its
effect on our national confidence was massive.  But from a military
perspective, the blow was not significant.  Compare it with the Pearl
Harbor attack in 1941, which crippled the Pacific fleet as we entered
a war with Japan.


Osama bin Laden's purpose for the 9/11 attack was (and is) to provoke
massive retaliation from the US against Islam.  He hoped that our
retaliation would finally unite Islam against the US as a common
enemy, and that his vision for a fundamentalist pan-Islamic state
would sweep away all the more moderate governments in the region, as
well as movements toward a pluralistic culture.


In the final chapter of his book "Against All Enemies", Richard Clarke
gives an excellent description of the conflict we should have pursued
after 9/11, and contrasts it with the wars we actually did pursue. 
The invasion of Iraq is not only a distraction from more important
goals, but a provocation that is making Osama bin Laden's dream come
true.


The purpose of the original attack was to provoke our retaliation,
which would affect primarily the ordinary Islamic people, destroying
what trust they had for the US, and making them more willing to give
aid and comfort to the terrorists among them.  To a surprising extent,
we have fallen right into Osama bin Laden's trap.  The future of the
world depends on finding our way out.


How to win the war on terrorism.


When terrorists are isolated criminals, viewed with suspicion by the
vast majority of the general public, and reported to the authorities
when they turn violent, then the war on terrorism has been won.


What weapons will it take to win this war?  Just as the Maginot Line
in France was impotent against Nazi blitzkrieg at the beginning of
World War II, purely military tactics and strategy will fail against
the terrorists, and will even be exploited to their advantage.  It
appears to me that our current professional military leaders generally
understand this point, while our hawkish civilian leaders without
military experience generally do not.


It's tempting to think that a war against terrorism can be won by
killing all the terrorists.  In the real world, this naive plan
doesn't work.  A serious attempt to find and kill all the terrorists
also sweeps up many ordinary people, and some of them and their
relatives become new terrorists, creating more terrorists than were
destroyed.  The harder the authorities pursue this strategy, the more
it looks like genocide, and the more effectively they recruit new
terrorists.


The "weapon" we need is the trust and cooperation of the general
population of the country where the terrorists are based.  As we have
seen, terrorists understand this, and use fiendishly clever strategies
for eroding this trust and fomenting resentment and hatred. 
(Incidentally, most terrorists are not clever enough to invent this. 
But they read about strategy and tactics in the writings of Mao Tze
Tung and Ho Chi Minh, who were.  Fortunately, these same sources are
required reading for our professional military leaders.)


The "simple" strategy for defeating terrorism is:

 (1)  avoid getting killed by them;  make clear that overwhelming power

      is available, but avoid using it;

 (2)  gain the trust and cooperation of the general population;

    (a)  refute their lies; demonstrate truth and openness to
criticism;

    (b)  create, publicize, enforce, and obey a simple "Bill of
Rights";

         demonstrate even-handedness in local disputes;

    (c)  demonstrate justice, even when treated unjustly;

         avoid massive retaliation, even when taking casualties;

    (d)  visibly work for economic justice for the oppressed;

    ...

 (3)  the people will turn the terrorists in for trial and prosecution.


Obviously, implementing this strategy is far from simple.  There are
trade-offs between the actions required to avoid getting killed and
the ones needed to gain trust.  But since gaining trust is building
the "weapon" that wins the war, it takes priority, and one can't be
absolutely safe.  Whether you call it nation-building or peace-making,
it's a dangerous line of work, actively opposed by unfriendly people.


        Avoid getting killed


Aside from the obvious personal motivation to stay alive, the
strategic reason to prevent terrorist attacks is to foil their attempt
to provoke massive retaliation.  Impotence is the worst-case outcome
for a terrorist, not death.  We need good enough intelligence to
detect and prevent terrorist acts, but this cannot take absolute
priority since it trades off against being a free and trustworthy
society.  Therefore, some attacks will occur, and there will be
casualties.


It is important for both the terrorists and the general population to
understand clearly that terrorist acts cannot possibly defeat our
forces militarily.  Failing to attend to this point led to disastrous
errors by Reagan in Beirut and Clinton in Somalia.  Currently in Iraq,
terrorists can reasonably conclude that the US will leave under
sufficient pressure.  They may or may not be correct, but their
ability to draw that conclusion is dangerous to us in itself.


The hardest part about a war on terrorism comes when a terrorist
attack succeeds.  The whole point of the attack is to do something
horrific to provoke massive retaliation.  The right response must be
measured, deliberate, and appropriate.  President Bush's speech on
September 20, 2001 was a brilliant example of the correct response to
a successful terrorist attack.  (Sadly, he did not stay that
particular course, as he and his administration demonstrated their
obsession with Iraq.)


        Gain trust and cooperation


A measured, deliberate, and appropriate response gains the trust and
the cooperation of the people.


To do this we must be trustworthy.  It also means that the training of
our troops for this kind of war must be very different from past wars. 
Our soldiers must be more than warriors who kill people and destroy
things.  They must also serve as community police, and even as social
workers and political advisors.  News reports from Iraq make it clear
that our soldiers are vividly aware of this dual role, and they are
vividly aware of the fact that they are well trained and equipped as
warriors, but not as community police.


Above, I've outlined some of the specific methods for building trust
and cooperation from the people.

 (a)  refute the terrorists' lies; demonstrate truth and openness to
criticism;

 (b)  create, publicize, enforce, and obey a simple "Bill of Rights";

      demonstrate even-handedness in local disputes;

 (c)  demonstrate justice, even when treated unjustly;

      avoid massive retaliation, even when taking casualties;

 (d)  visibly work for economic justice for the oppressed;

 ...

There are surely many other effective methods to be identified,
improved, evaluated, and applied.


        The People will turn in the terrorists


If the people trust the authorities, and respect the efforts taken to
make their lives secure and safe, they will turn in suspected
terrorists, knowing that they will receive fair trials.  The
Unabomber's brother turned him in because he was willing to trust the
government's pledge not to seek the death penalty.


Terrorists are not merely criminals.  Their extremist ideological
motivation makes them far more dangerous than even large organized
criminal gangs.  Even so, to win against terrorism, in the end they
must be treated as ordinary criminals.  They must be tried and
punished, with full legal rights and protections, not for their
extremist beliefs, but for their terrorist actions that disrupt the
safe conduct of society for ordinary citizens.


The Unabomber sits in federal prison for his bombs that killed and
maimed.  Timothy McVeigh was executed for murder many times over.
Their public trials and the public safeguarding of their rights were
not out of soft-heartedness or compassion for criminals.  They are
public ceremonies, reaffirming the value of law and order in our
society.  They both represent and cultivate the trust that the people
have in their government.


That trust is the weapon that defeats terrorism.  They cannot stand
against it.  We must not throw it away.


What should we do?


If we understand which weapons actually work against terrorists, and
if we understand how they try to destroy our weapons, we can see what
we need to do and what we need to avoid doing.  We can see why the Abu
Ghraib prison photos are so damaging to us.


Traditional war is not easy or certain.  And the new ways are not easy
or certain either.  The "simple" strategy above for defeating
terrorism requires great knowledge, cleverness, and wisdom to put into
action.


War requires discipline.  War requires sacrifice.  War requires
restraint at certain times, and carefully planned action at others. A
war against terrorism is unlike the major wars of the past.  If we try
to fight like we fought wars in the past, we will lose, and we won't
understand how or why.  We need to learn how to fight with new weapons.


The alternative is a world of perpetual conflict between opposing
groups of extremists, locked in a deadly embrace where each side
confirms the beliefs of the other and helps them recruit more
extremists.  The ordinary people in the middle, who just want peace
and law and order, are repeatedly savaged to cultivate more recruits
for one side or the other.


This is indeed a "clash of civilizations", but not between Islam and
the West.  The clash is between extremists of all kinds on the one
side, and the forces of pluralism, tolerance, peace, and law and order
on the other.


-- 


Benjamin Kuipers, Professor         email:  kuipers () cs utexas edu

Computer Sciences Department        tel:    1-512-471-9561

University of Texas at Austin       fax:    1-512-471-8885

Austin, Texas 78712 USA            
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kuipers


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