Foreign Affairs; World War III, by Thomas L Friedman
This is a menu of the topics on this page (click on any):
I don't mean to criticize Mr. Mineta. He is doing what he can. And I have
absolutely no doubt that the Bush team, when it identifies the perpetrators,
will make them pay dearly. Yet there was something so absurdly futile and
American about the curbside ban that I couldn't help but wonder: Does my country
really understand that this is World War III? And if this attack was the Pearl
Harbor of World War III, it means there is a long, long war ahead.
And this Third World War does not pit us against another superpower. It pits
us -- the world's only superpower and quintessential symbol of liberal,
free-market, Western values -- against all the super-empowered angry men and
women out there. Many of these super-empowered angry people hail from failing
states in the Muslim and third world. They do not share our values, they resent
America's influence over their lives, politics and children, not to mention our
support for Israel, and they often blame America for the failure of their
societies to master modernity.
What makes them super-empowered, though, is their genius at using the
networked world, the Internet and the very high technology they hate, to attack
us. Think about it: They turned our most advanced civilian planes into
human-directed, precision-guided cruise missiles -- a diabolical melding of
their fanaticism and our technology. Jihad Online. And think of what they hit:
The World Trade Center -- the beacon of American-led capitalism that both tempts
and repels them, and the Pentagon, the embodiment of American military
superiority.
And think about what places in Israel the Palestinian suicide bombers have
targeted most. ''They never hit synagogues or settlements or Israeli religious
zealots,'' said the Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit. ''They hit the Sbarro pizza
parlor, the Netanya shopping mall. The Dolphinarium disco. They hit the yuppie
Israel, not the yeshiva Israel.''
So what is required to fight a war against such people in such a world? To
start with, we as Americans will never be able to penetrate such small groups,
often based on family ties, who live in places such as Afghanistan, Pakistan or
Lebanon's wild Bekaa Valley. The only people who can penetrate these shadowy and
ever-mutating groups, and deter them, are their own societies. And even they
can't do it consistently. So give the C.I.A. a break.
Israeli officials will tell you that the only time they have had real quiet
and real control over the suicide bombers and radical Palestinian groups, such
as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, is when Yasir Arafat and his Palestinian Authority
tracked them, jailed them or deterred them.
So then the question becomes, What does it take for us to get the societies
that host terrorist groups to truly act against them?
First we have to prove that we are serious, and that we understand that many
of these terrorists hate our existence, not just our policies. In June I wrote a
column about the fact that a few cell-phone threats from Osama bin Laden had
prompted President Bush to withdraw the F.B.I. from Yemen, a U.S. Marine
contingent from Jordan and the U.S. Fifth Fleet from its home base in the
Persian Gulf. This U.S. retreat was noticed all over the region, but it did not
merit a headline in any major U.S. paper. That must have encouraged the
terrorists. Forget about our civilians, we didn't even want to risk our soldiers
to face their threats.
The people who planned Tuesday's bombings combined world-class evil with
world-class genius to devastating effect. And unless we are ready to put our
best minds to work combating them -- the World War III Manhattan Project -- in
an equally daring, unconventional and unremitting fashion, we're in trouble.
Because while this may have been the first major battle of World War III, it may
be the last one that involves only conventional, non-nuclear weapons.
Second, we have been allowing a double game to go on with our Middle East
allies for years, and that has to stop. A country like Syria has to decide: Does
it want a Hezbollah embassy in Damascus or an American one? If it wants a U.S.
embassy, then it cannot play host to a rogue's gallery of terrorist groups.
Does that mean the U.S. must ignore Palestinian concerns and Muslim economic
grievances? No. Many in this part of the world crave the best of America, and we
cannot forget that we are their ray of hope. But apropos of the Palestinians,
the U.S. put on the table at Camp David a plan that would have gotten Yasir
Arafat much of what he now claims to be fighting for. That U.S. plan may not be
sufficient for Palestinians, but to say that the justifiable response to it is
suicide terrorism is utterly sick.
Third, we need to have a serious and respectful dialogue with the Muslim
world and its political leaders about why many of its people are falling behind.
The fact is, no region in the world, including sub-Saharan Africa, has fewer
freely elected governments than the Arab-Muslim world, which has none. Why?
Egypt went through a whole period of self-criticism after the 1967 war, which
produced a stronger country. Why is such self-criticism not tolerated today by
any Arab leader?
Where are the Muslim leaders who will tell their sons to resist the Israelis
-- but not to kill themselves or innocent non-combatants? No matter how bad,
your life is sacred. Surely Islam, a grand religion that never perpetrated the
sort of Holocaust against the Jews in its midst that Europe did, is being
distorted when it is treated as a guidebook for suicide bombing. How is it that
not a single Muslim leader will say that?
These are some of the issues we will have to address as we fight World War
III. It will be a long war against a brilliant and motivated foe. When I
remarked to an Israeli military official what an amazing technological feat it
was for the terrorists to hijack the planes and then fly them directly into the
most vulnerable spot in each building, he pooh-poohed me.
''It's not that difficult to learn how to fly a plane once it's up in the
air,'' he said. ''And remember, they never had to learn how to land.''
No, they didn't. They only had to destroy. We, by contrast, have to fight in
a way that is effective without destroying the very open society we are trying
to protect. We have to fight hard and land safely. We have to fight the
terrorists as if there were no rules, and preserve our open society as if there
were no terrorists. It won't be easy. It will require our best strategists, our
most creative diplomats and our bravest soldiers. Semper Fi.
Organizations mentioned in this article:
Related Terms:
You may print this article now, or save it on your computer for future reference. Instructions for saving this article on your computer are also available.
Page Top