{D-Q Feature}: Arguments Against the Post 9/11 Invasion of Afghanistan
The symbolism of a successful attack on two of the most potent and excessive expressions of the power of U.S. international business is hard to exaggerate[1]. Yet the victims were mostly innocents sharing what they could not avoid; i.e., a collective identity as citizens or residents in the U.S. Like many visitors to the U.S, l could have been one of them for I spent a lot of time in and around the towers during doctoral fieldwork visits to New York in 1988 and 1989. The human drama for the victims and their families was, and is, horrific.
This event will, of course, rank with the attack on Pearl Harbour as a crucial turning-point in U.S. history. Politically, its immediate effect was to re-orient the Bush administration’s foreign policy towards engagement with, and coalition-building in, the international community after an initial period of relative disengagement especially in the Middle East. It also saw a reversal in the downward trend in the rate of growth of the U.S. military budget for the first time since the end of the Cold War.
The political issues raised by the attacks of September 11, and the subsequent U.S. and Coalition responses are profound and wide-ranging. A few issues stand out. These include: whether a military response was, in principle, justifiable; whether a limited reprisal was appropriate coupled with a police process, or the full-scale armed intervention which ensued aimed at overthrowing the regime; whether diplomacy especially through the good offices of the Islamic world was allowed to work properly; and whether the long-term task of deterring terrorism[2] everywhere has really been advanced by the means adopted thus far.
In the first instance, the question arises whether a military response was, in principle, appropriate? In a statement issued by leading peace activists in the U.S, the preferred response was one of ‘patient justice’ not revenge[3]. It called for the convening of a special UN tribunal to seek out and arrest those responsible for the World Trade Centre atrocity, and to seek out those conspiring to commit similar crimes. The statement called for the establishment of an international force to achieve this objective. In short, the peace activists called for a police action for the purposes of applying the international rule of law.
I have strong sympathy for this view but it ignores the possibility that (assuming the evidence on Al-Qaeda’s complicity in events was as alleged) a relatively early military response was probably necessary to deter further atrocities, and that the proposed UN process would simply have been too slow and ineffectual in this respect. As such, to the extent there was a high likelihood of further attacks, some type of military response specifically targeting and disabling the offending party’s bases and operations might reasonably be deemed justifiable. But having launched an early and disabling attack or series of attacks, I believe that diplomacy should then have been resumed, perhaps using leading Islamic states including Pakistan and/or the Organisation of Islamic States, to dissuade the Taliban administration from supporting terrorism, and blocking access to those responsible. In asserting this proposition l note that the anecdotal evidence of Al-Qaeda complicity currently in the public domain is suggestive rather than conclusive, and the real detail remains to be disclosed to the public.
Having conceded that an early military response may have been necessary, the question then arises whether the scale of the subsequent intervention was justifiable? This analysis rests on a distinction between a limited military reprisal in the wake of terrorism, and an extensive military intervention in another society aimed at the overthrow of the regime. In advancing this distinction I am conscious of the injunctions of international law which deem a reprisal, broadly proportionate to the act perpetrated, and aimed at deterring further criminal acts, as justifiable at law[4]. I note also that the law of reprisals excludes incidental damage to innocents. The political philosopher, Michael Walzer, has also noted that reprisals ‘cannot rightly be used as a cover for invasions or interventions or assaults upon innocent life’[5]. In this context, the sustained campaign, and wider armed intervention, could only be justified if it could be shown that this was the only way to deter further attack. Such a case would probably rely on evidence that the Taliban administration was so politically and organisationally integrated with the Al Qaeda networks as to be effectively inseparable. As a matter of evidence, this case has also not been made out in the public domain.
For its part, the U.S.-led coalition immediately began rearming the regime’s opponents, and effectively declared war on the Taliban administration[6], thereby making a diplomatic solution using the good offices of leading Islamic politicians and states, or a more limited police action, impossible. The international coalition thus escalated to a full intervention too quickly with, in my view, unacceptable effects on the civilian population, and poisonous implications for relations with Islamic communities everywhere. In the absence of strong evidence as to the direct complicity of the Taliban administration, and because of the risk of killing civilians and non-combatants, as well as the risk of fuelling hatred and further terrorism in Muslim communities globally – thereby reducing, counter-productively, the channels of cross-cultural dialogue – I remain only able to endorse limited military action aimed at deterring further attacks, and disrupting the operations of the armed networks involved coupled with financial seizures and diplomatic measures.
My own preferred strategy would have been a lengthy negotiation aimed at the extradition of offenders and the destruction of their operational bases; a limited, disabling military reprisal if the relevant government was not committed or able to take this path, and a strong risk of further atrocities remained; the employment of extensive diplomatic sanctions and rewards aimed at making the case against terrorism in both Afghanistan and the Islamic world generally; and the formation of a UN or ICC-led force to investigate the September 11 attacks and lead a police action to seize the offenders for criminal trial[7].
Such a strategy for ‘patient justice’ does not sit well with the elites of a state enjoying overwhelming power in the international community, and a history of ready resort to military means at home and abroad to solve nettlesome issues. On the currently available evidence, it is at least arguable that the emphasis on a sustained armed intervention in Afghanistan exceeded what was required to deter further atrocities, and reflected a strong bias in U.S strategic culture for attacking unwelcome developments with fire-power rather than other means especially in relation to regimes for which it has little empathy[8].
More recently, the Bush administration has been under fire for refusing to extend ‘prisoner of war’ status to the prisoners now held in the U.S. Historically, terrorists have always been charged with murder, or conspiracy to murder, and not treated as military personnel[9]. Having said this, to the extent Taliban troops and officials were defending the extant Afghan state from a wider intervention by a coalition of domestic foes and foreign troops, an intervention not aimed simply at arresting those responsible for the September 11 atrocity, but also overthrowing the regime, then they must surely be considered prisoners of war.
This leads to the further question, namely, whether the international community has begun the important task of addressing why militants emerge in poorer states or regions, and why they resort to ‘random’ violence and terrorism? In many poorer states, Islamic doctrines offer a powerful language to articulate the distress and disorientation of many in the face of secularism, consumerism, poverty, oppressive elites and the like[10]. Sometimes the appeal of Islam has been in direct response to the aftermath of U.S. or allied policies, and too often the events that create that appeal receive little airing in the non-Islamic world. For instance, often the media of the non-Islamic world focusses merely on ‘bloody-minded Arab terrorists’ in Edward Said’s language, and fails to express the complex human dilemmas and horror of the ‘million-plus Iraqis who have perished under U.S.-led sanctions, the dead of Chechnya, Bosnia, Palestine or Somalia or the shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane’[11] More generally, many in wealthy states are not respectful of the Islamic tradition as one of the important civilisations, or of its internal diversity and great range of ethical stances and national permutations[12].
Further, we live in an era, where the international will to redistribute economic resources, and address international inequalities, is greatly reduced. Reconsideration of these two world-views is the starting point for addressing militancy and terrorism in the Islamic world in the long-term. This is not to say that terrorism, especially that focussed on the random killing of innocents, should be tolerated, but merely to point out that the desperation terrorists rely on for mass support becomes more likely in the presence of these world-views in the policies of dominant states.
[1] This comment was written in March 2002 and circulated privately among social and professional networks.
[2] By terrorism l mean ‘the random murder of innocent people’: see M. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, Pelican/Penguin, 1978 p197.
[3] ‘What Could Have Been Done’ Adbusters, #39, Jan/Feb 2002.
[4] M. Walzer, opcit, ch 13.
[5] Walzer, opcit p221.
[6] Recall Tony Blair’s astonishing proposition in a speech to the Labour Party conference 5 October 2001 where he declared that the Taliban administration must ‘surrender the terrorists, or surrender power’. This conflated a justifiable reprisal at international law with the wider act of intervention, and constricted the scope for diplomacy almost immediately: see G. Alcorn, ‘In a moment of quiet passion, Blair gives Bush a nudge’, Sydney Morning Herald, 5 October 2001.
[7] It is noteworthy that Nelson Mandela withdrew his support for the ‘war’ on the grounds that war was not the only way to flush out the terrorists, and that too many Afghan civilians were being affected by the campaign: see ABC News Online, Jan 3 2002.
[8] This proposition deserves a much longer treatment but it is sufficent to note the extensive historical literature making this argument in relation to earlier phases of U.S. foreign policy: e.g., C. Thorne, American Political Culture and the Asian Frontier, 1943-1973, British Academy, 1986 pps 23ff.
[9] Walzer, opcit, p201.
[10] The role of the Islamic tradition in contemporary international society is discussed excellently in the still relevant J. Piscatori, ‘Islam in the International Order’ in H. Bull & A. Watson, The Expansion of International Society, Oxford, 1984.
[11] The quotation is from Keyser Trad, a Vice-President of the Lebanese Moslem Association based in South-West Sydney published in a Community and Public Sector Union publication: see ‘In the Hot Seat’, The Works, Autumn, 2002 p6. For his part, Edward Said, who has lead the task in the U.S. of re-appraising the strengths and weaknesses of both the Islamic tradition, and the extant Islamic world, is criticised (along side others) as revealing a ‘hatred for the United States deeper than anything expressed during the darkest days of the Vietnam War’ when he denounces the U.S. media for focussing on bloody-minded Arab terrorists: see A. Wolfe, ‘It’s All Our Fault’, Newsweek Special Issue December 2001-February 2002, pps41-44.
[12] Which is not to say that atrocities carried out in the name of Islam are acceptable, or fundamentalism of any type attractive. Rather, the point is of the need to convey the variety of experience and stances that are described as ‘Islamic’ rather than employing the notion of ‘Islam’ as a coded cliché licensing a free-floating hostility: see E. Said, Covering Islam, Routledge Kegan Paul, 1981.
© Ian Bell
