I M P R E S S I O N S

Fuzzy Enemies
In time of war, it’s best to identify your foes

by Steven C. Day

3.20.02 |  In the movie The Godfather, Michael Corleone tells his brother-in-law, Carlo, just before having him killed: “Today I took care of the family business. Cuneo, Stracci, Phillip Tattaglia, Moe Green, Barzini … all the heads of the five families. All dead.”

It’s not that far-fetched to imagine George W. Bush dreaming of the day he can announce: “Today I took care of the country’s business. Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Somalia, Cuba … all those who have offended us. All defeated.” But, of course, it won’t be that easy.

We are at war — that much is clear. What isn’t so clear is who the enemy is: Al Qaeda? Rogue states? Terrorists everywhere? Nations trying to develop nuclear weapons? Dictators who got the better of dear old dad? Anyone fitting the description of evil? All of these have, at one time or another, been listed as possible targets. Haven’t we perhaps gotten a little ahead of ourselves?

Call me a left wing kook if you must, but it seems reasonable that we should first figure out who the enemy is before commencing military operations in a shooting war. In the case of the War On Terrorism, this clarity has been lacking from the beginning. Instead of specifically identifying the full list of nations and groups, the Bush administration has defined the enemy through references to mushy concepts like terrorism and evil. This was, no doubt, a calculated political decision, since it gives Bush maximum wiggle room.

And boy has he been wiggling. His all-but-announced intent to attack Iraq represents a masterpiece in the art of political contortion. An offensive war against a country like Iraq is clearly not what the American people signed on for in the days following Sept. 11. The national consensus at that time was to go after those who attacked us — something virtually everyone agrees is a just and moral cause. And while there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein is an evil man, there is no compelling evidence he was involved in the terrorist attacks.

Having been given almost unlimited discretion to wage war against “evil,” Bush has manipulated the nation’s indignation over Sept. 11 to gain broad public support for taking on Iraq. I know that many people will be offended by the suggestion that a war against a brute like Saddam Hussein would be unjust, but viewed from the perspective of American values, it would be. Killing the enemy in a “lawful” war is generally, though not universally, regarded as morally acceptable. Killing human beings simply because one doesn’t like them, on the other hand, is almost universally viewed as murder. Defining the enemy in wartime is how we tell the two apart.

Issues of morality aside, there are strong practical reasons why the United States needs to be crystal clear in identifying the bad guys when entering into a war. For one thing, if we don’t declare unambiguously up front who we are fighting, how can we later judge our success in achieving our objectives? We face this conundrum today in Afghanistan. If we judge the war based upon Bush’s early speeches, one would have to say that so far it’s been a bust: There is no evidence, after all, that we have succeeded in ’smoking out” and capturing Osama bin Laden (dead or alive), or for that matter most other senior Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders.

Bush is, of course, now frantically retreating from this early personification of bin Laden as "the enemy." We are now told that the fate of this one terrorist leader is a trivial matter and that his apparent escape is at most a minor irritation. Here again, the mushiness of our war objectives gives Bush some political cover. But political accountability really isn’t the important issue anyway: The big-ticket item is the future course of the War On Terrorism and how Congress and the public will respond to further escalations. The perception of our success up to this point will be a critical part of that equation.

The most predictable thing about war is its unpredictability. Wars started for a limited purpose inevitably grow and take on lives of their own. Great nations have often learned this lesson too late, and to their sorrow. Many Americans seem now to have forgotten it, seduced by the ease of our recent military operations. I am very frightened that fate may be getting ready to serve us a reminder. The administration’s hawkish members are not requiring that a nation be implicated in the events of Sept. 11 to justify adding them to the target list. It’s enough, it seems, that they’ve crossed the United States.

Right now, the United States is moving toward military action in a wide variety of hot spots across the planet; in many cases, we are acting with only a limited understanding of — and virtually no concern for — the local issues that gave rise to the conflicts. This is reckless. It’s a recipe for quagmire and for what some are calling a “war without end.”

There is, however, an alternate scenario: We can take the time, in Dickens’ words, to begin at the beginning, by defining our enemy clearly and with precision. Because if we do that, I will guarantee you that the answer will quickly become stunningly apparent: We are at war with only one enemy, the people who flew airplanes into our buildings and killed several thousand of our countrymen — the Al Qaeda terrorist network.

So let’s put those bastards out of business. Then let’s go home.

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Steven C. Day is an attorney practicing in Wichita, Kansas. His previous columns can be found here.

Related Sites
What exactly is terrorism? This interactive project by the Christian Science Monitor lets you decide (here’s a low bandwith version).
Scott Shuger argues in Slate that neither the Pentagon nor the press is doing a great job helping the public assess the morality of the U.S. anti-terror campaign.
"A unilateral decision to rid the world of Saddam and his cabal would set the United States on a course that some of Bush’s staunchest supporters fear and dread," writes Robert Novak. Britain’s military leaders are also wary, writes Kamal Ahmed and Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian.