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Hammers, Nails, and Afghanistan
by Tom Flynn
The following article is from Free
Inquiry magazine, Volume 22, Number 2.
 I
confess. I'm one of the eleven Americans who think warfare was not the best
response to the September 11 attacks. (Actually, there are probably a few
million of us.) If you think it's lonely being an atheist, just try opposing
this "war"! I believe the September 11 attacks, hideous as they were,
should have been treated as monstrous crimes rather than as acts of war.
Acknowledging that mine is a minority viewpoint even within our own minority
community, I'd like to set forth why I think the war was a bad idea—and why I
think events have largely vindicated my misgivings.
First, take the Bush
administration. Before combat adrenaline blurred our vision, many Americans saw
George W. Bush (accurately, I think) as an underachiever who never quite
amounted to the sum of his handlers. Some of those handlers were open
"fascist wannabes" whose social and ideological visions secular
humanists justifiably found chilling. Moreover, the administration came to power
under a cloud of electoral illegitimacy.1 Before September 11, I hoped nothing
much would happen in the world until 2004, when a proper presidential election
might pluck the national foot from the banana peel. Such was not to be.
Second, take the nature of
war. By most definitions, war is a conflict between sovereign states. The
September 11 attacks were not the work of a sovereign state. That is no pedantic
distinction; throughout history warfare has proven an effective tool by which
one sovereign state can unseat another's government. Its utility for other
tasks—say, neutralizing a multinational private paramilitary network or
apprehending a six-foot-five-inch former Saudi playboy—is less well
established. Catching Usama bin Laden is a police function, so we shouldn't be
surprised by unintended consequences when we send soldiers to do a cop's job.2
Let's inventory those
unintended consequences. By some standards—certainly, by those the commercial
media emphasize—American military action in Afghanistan was astoundingly
successful. We toppled the Taliban government, a likely boon to millions of
Afghans. But that was never our primary objective. Surely few considered Taliban
perfidy sufficient cause for war before September 11. No, our core missions were
to capture or kill bin Laden and to neutralize his Al Qaeda network. America
signally failed in those missions. As I write, bin Laden remains unaccounted for
and presumably at large. Al Qaeda took a body blow in Afghanistan, but as
Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet admitted to Congress on
February 6, the terror network remains active in many other countries. All
we accomplished fully was to topple the Afghan government.
To reduce it to a box score,
we didn't apprehend our principal target (police work). We didn't neutralize Al
Qaeda (counterterrorism). We did manage to knock down the sovereign
government that happened to be standing closest to our real quarries. This
should surprise no one; we chose to wage (undeclared) war, and toppling
governments is what warfare does best. That old saying, "When all you have
is a hammer, everything looks like a nail," seems terrifyingly germane
here.
Why should we worry? Because
a war that doesn't—indeed, probably can't—achieve its stated goals can
nonetheless be rich in unintended consequences.
- It remains to be seen
whether the future Afghan government will mark a genuine improvement over
the Taliban. In any event, since the welfare of the Afghan people was not
America's principal objective, we should not judge our success by whether we
achieve it.
- Speaking of the welfare
of the Afghan people, University of New Hampshire economics professor Marc
Herold has been tabulating civilian casualties, a pursuit that has
unsurprisingly attracted more attention in European than domestic media.3
Despite allegedly precise U.S. air strikes, Herold pegs the toll at more
than four thousand innocent dead, exceeding the roughly 3,100 Americans now
believed killed in the September 11 attacks. You don't do ethics by counting
bodies, but surely this does nothing to buttress American claims to the
moral high ground.
- Since war bore
spectacular fruit in Afghanistan despite failing in its main objectives—and
since new fighting might distract public attention from the Enron
fiasco—further military adventuring seems inevitable. If we continue
chasing a fugitive with armies, bin Laden will probably continue
escaping—and the American Right may finally get its chance to shoot up
every country on Earth that it disapproves of. There's no reason to think
that many of these escapades will result in a better world.
- Domestic dangers, too,
abound. War licenses government to expand its power. Each American war left
its scars on civil liberties. Given Bush's popularity, today "the
government" largely means Bush's handlers, many of whom lusted to
curtail personal liberties long before September 11. To me, the most
frightening part of life after September 11 is not the threat of terrorism,
but rather the prospect of John Ashcroft et al. arrogating more power
because of war fever. From its push for military tribunals—fortunately
blunted by concerted opposition—to cavalier disregard for Geneva protocols
in its handling of Taliban (later only Al Qaeda) prisoners, this
administration has exploited September 11 in ways that place the American
dream at greater risk than foreign terrorists could ever manage on their
own. I can't help wondering whether Bush's handlers feel more
desperate—perhaps, desperate enough to cashier big chunks of the
Constitution—precisely because the administration's legitimacy is dubious.
The world is a complicated
place. To strain a metaphor, it's as rich with screws and lag bolts and
swage-lock fasteners as it ever was with nails. Yet America strides the globe
proudly swinging its military hammer, seemingly unable to imagine why it might
need any other tool. As secular humanists and Americans, we need to exercise
extraordinary vigilance.
Notes
1. No, I'm
not a frustrated Gore supporter. For the record, in 2000 I voted Libertarian,
believing with Jefferson that "that government is best which governs
least."
2.
Admittedly, collaring Usama bin Laden is no job for Barney Fife. Had it been
attempted, doubtless it would have been a police action with a substantial
military component. The Israelis have shown great skill in equipping and
training elite military units to conduct paramilitary "police work" of
this sort. It's a much different undertaking from war.
3. Herold's
work is available online (http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mwherold). For an evenhanded
analysis, see Michael Massing, "Grief Without Portraits," The Nation,
February 4, 2002, pp. 6-8.
Tom Flynn is the editor of Free Inquiry.
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