A common criticism of the war on terror is that terror is a tactic and not an enemy. I disregard this criticism because the "war on terror" is obviously a discreet way of saying we are waging a war on Islamist terrorism. No need to offend Moslems we want to ultimately control the jihadis and reform their societies by rubbing their faces in it. Anyone with a functioning brain stem understands this polite fiction.
A more true criticism of the war is that drone strikes and special forces are tactics and not a strategy to defeat Islamist terrorism.
Drone strikes have been effective in terrorizing and weakening Islamist insurgent leadership. And the special forces raids in Libya and Somalia show some resolve that we sorely needed to demonstrate. But these tactics will not beat the threat of Islamist ideology that spawns jihadi terrorists.
At best, drone strikes and special forces hold the terrorists at bay. The same applies to US-led counter-insurgency missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obviously, we'd rather not engage in these missions. But if we don't, the terrorists thrive and have room to organize and plot against us rather than focusing on survival.
It's hard to argue with this:
Special Operations raids and drone strikes will not by themselves win the War on Terror.
That is why, even as these surgical strikes have proliferated in recent years, al Qaeda and its affiliates have spread their reach further than ever.
To counter the spread of violent extremism requires not simply one-off missions designed to eliminate senior leaders; what is required is steady, long-term engagement to build up indigenous institutions capable of keeping order on their own.
The US track record in this regard is mixed. Somalia, although still lawless, has been a success story of sorts ...
Libya has not been nearly as successful, because the United States and its allies haven’t provided enough support to the pro-Western government in Tripoli ...
The situation is even worse in Iraq, where al Qaeda in Iraq has managed to revive itself after the withdrawal of all US forces. ...
The picture in Afghanistan, meanwhile, is mixed: ... it is not clear if America will maintain any forces after 2014 to build on the gains that have been made.
So yes, we want to build up local forces so they can fight jihadis without our troops on the firing line. In a best case scenario, we do this without having to commit large numbers of troops. But if the situation is so bad in a critical area that we (America and/or our allies) must commit troops to directly fight abroad, we want to shift the job back to locals as quickly as we can.
But even this isn't enough. Even if we have friendly governments successfully using force to contain jihadis, jihadi ideology can flourish. After all, this is the situation we had for much of the last thirty years. The problem is that governments that fought jihadis still sought legitimacy by appealing to a tame version of Islamist ideology.
In the long run, we need Moslem governments--especially Arab Moslem governments--to reform Islam so Islam itself isn't so friendly to jihadi ideology. This is why I've been supportive of the Arab Spring changes. While I don't expect quick change, we must push for changes that deny autocrats the motivation to promote tame Islamism that always escapes its cages to go feral. This will take decades of effort to get rule of law to accompany elections with people who expect better lives and expect their governments to facilitate that progress--and governments that accept honest elections as checks on their ability to ignore voter wishes.
But it is worth the effort. We've had waves of jihadi fervor in the past that eventually burned itself out as casualties mounted. So this current jihad will burn out in time as we use military power to contain the jihadis as much as possible from attacking us at home.
What I worry is that this is the last jihad that will be fought with conventional weapons in jihadi hands. So far, jihadi use of WMD has been limited. There were some chlorine gas use in Iraq by Sunni Arab terrorists (and some accidental uses when old chemical shells were used in IEDs in the belief they were conventional explosive shells), but otherwise their WMD usage has been aspirational rather than operational.
If the current jihad just burns out and we go back to business as usual with Moslem tyrannies using tame Islamists to keep at-the-moment-exhausted jihadis checked, in a generation or two--or even more--the embers of Islamist terrorism will rekindle in a future where WMD may be within easy reach of sub-state actors. Maybe the technology that pushes these weapons to that level will be just as advanced on the defensive level, but can we count on that?
Remember, Iraqi military efforts did break Iranian morale in the Iran-Iraq War. But without further efforts to change Iran's mullah-run system, Iranian Islamism recovered and today Iran is a threat to the region once again, stoking instability and threatening to acquire nuclear weapons.
So reforming Islam must be the ultimate objective of the Long War. This reform must take place from within Islam--and there are Moslems who want to modernize Islam because they understand that the form that exists now is harming Moslems. But we have an incentive to help these still-weak reformers that goes beyond containing the jihadis with military action. As necessary as military action is, it will not by itself win the War on Terror.
