War against terrorism …

Christian Century, April 24, 2002 by Gordon G. Scoville

DAVID LITTLE has properly highlighted the unilateralist tilt of the president's fight against "terrorism" ("`The world's fight,'" Feb. 27-March 6). Also, aside from the prima facie absurdity of fighting a "war" to eliminate a military strategy that has existed at least since the time of the New Testament zealots (unless the aim is to fight ad infinitum), the Bush administration has embarked on a failing policy. References such as "axis of evil" presume that the adversary possesses ideological coherence paralleling an earlier communism or fascism. The opponent, however, is a fragmented, hydra-headed force that is transnational in scope and bound largely by primal energies of religion and tribe instead of political ideology.

Targeting the Taliban troops fed the illusion that the militant Hydra could be defeated with a conventional victory over an enemy nation state. In reality, in a trade-off that exchanges the destabilization of al-Qaeda for the renewed chaos of Afghan "war lordism," the administration has created a counterinsurgency pattern enabling tyrannical regimes to liken their actions to those of the U.S. against the Taliban.

Gordon G. Scoville
Croghan, N. Y.