WAR ON TERROR: FORGOTTEN LESSONS FROM WORLD WAR II, THE

Middle East Policy, Summer 2007 by Van Evera, Stephen

President George W. Bush has likened the war on terror to the struggles Americans faced in World War II, explaining that today's terrorist enemies are "successors to Fascists, to Nazis ... and other totalitarions of the 20th century."1 Yet the Bush administration has left the lessons of World War II largely unheeded. Its conduct of the war on terror departs from the policies that brought the United States victory in World War II and success in the postwar years.2 The administration will have more success against the terrorists if it learns and applies the methods that won the Second World War.

SETTING PRIORITIES

During World War II, the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration believed that Nazi Germany was its most dangerous opponent. Administration officials reasoned that only Germany could possibly conquer Great Britain, and Britain's demise would open the whole Atlantic region to German dominion and leave the United States dangerously exposed. The Roosevelt administration therefore adopted a "Germany First" strategy, under which it focused first on defeating Germany while checking Japan in Asia, and then turned to defeat Japan once Germany was beaten.3

In contrast, the Bush administration has not put top priority on defeating America's most dangerous current enemy, al-Qaeda. Instead, it focused only briefly on al-Qaeda and then diverted itself toward other adventures. The administration launched the war on terror in October 2001 by invading Afghanistan and ousting the Taliban regime, which had sheltered alQaeda. This was clearly the right move. But soon the administration took a left turn into Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein, although Saddam was not involved in the 9/11 attack, was not cooperating with al-Qaeda in other ways, and was otherwise contained. The administration also pursued hostile policies toward Iran and Syria, talking of ousting both regimes, in another left turn away from combating al-Qaeda. Iran and Syria have nasty rulers, but they are not in league with al-Qaeda. Conflict with all three states - Iraq, Iran and Syria - is a diversion from fighting al-Qaeda, the main threat.

One Bush administration official, thenDeputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, even argued soon after the 9/11 attack that the United States should respond by attacking Iraq instead of Afghanistan.4 This would have left alQaeda free to launch more attacks on the United States from its safe haven in Afghanistan - hardly a good result. The administration rejected Wolfowitz's suggestion, but it did transfer resources away from Afghanistan and toward Iraq in early 2002, before it finished destroying the alQaeda leadership then hiding in Afghanistan, and before it finished consolidating the new Afghan government. This allowed important al-Qaeda elements to escape to Pakistan and fight another day.s They have now reconstituted a dangerous al-Qaeda command in Pakistan.6 It also allowed the Taliban to survive and later recover strength in Afghanistan. Today the Taliban poses a serious threat to the new Afghan government of Hamid Karzai.7

Despite these misadventures and alQaeda's continued strength, the Bush administration still fails to focus on alQaeda. The administration's latest National Strategy for Combatting Terrorism, issued in September 2006, never mentions Osama bin Laden. It frames all terrorist movements as American enemies, including those that have no evident intention of attacking the United States. States that sponsor terror but do not sponsor it against the United States and are not in league with al-Qaeda are also defined as American targets.8 As such, the report is a warrant for a wide American rampage in the Mideast and elsewhere that would not focus on the al-Qaeda threat and would actually benefit al-Qaeda by diverting American focus onto other terror groups. This seems unwise while alQaeda is coming for our throats, as it surely is.

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice mentioned Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas, but not al-Qaeda, when she defined America's adversaries in the Mideast in Congressional testimony in early 2007.9 Something is wrong with this picture. Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas are hardly benign, but they have never attacked the U.S. homeland or inflicted mass casualties on U.S. civilians. Nor do they indicate an intention to conduct such attacks. In contrast, al-Qaeda has massmurdered American civilians and will do so again when it can. A former al-Qaeda press spokesman, Suleiman Abu Ghaith, has claimed that al-Qaeda had a right to kill four million Americans, including two million children.10 Al-Qaeda operatives have tried to acquire ingredients for nuclear weapons so they can bring this horror to pass. Far from passing unmentioned, al-Qaeda should be defined as the prime global threat to the United States. It is by far the most dangerous enemy facing the United States in the Mideast or elsewhere.

MOBILIZING RESOURCES

President Franklin Roosevelt fully mobilized the American public and the U.S. economy to fight World War II. He asked for and was granted great sacrifices from the American people. He increased defense spending from 2 percent of national income in 1939 to 54 percent in 1944." He raised taxes and imposed rationing. In 1940, he reinstituted the draft, over strong opposition. Once war began, he called to arms all able-bodied men.12