Is Questioning War Naïve?

To hear those who support the current air assault on Afghanistan tell it, those of us who doubt the likely efficacy of such a campaign, and who question its fundamental morality are not only insufficiently patriotic but dangerously naïve. Lampooning the left for adhering to such ostensibly simplistic slogans as "violence begets violence," these self-proclaimed pragmatists insist that sometimes massive force is necessary and that in the case of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, little else could possibly serve to diminish the threat of terrorist attack.

It takes me back, all this self-assured confidence in the value of preemptive assault. To 1986 in particular, when a co-worker of mine insisted that although our bombing of Libya had failed to kill Colonel Quadafi, that by killing his daughter we had nonetheless served the cause of peace. After all, said my co-worker, she was destined to become a terrorist someday, so better to kill her before she grew. That others might be able to apply the same logic to Americans -- who, after all, could grow up to be Elliot Abrams -- was lost on her, as she was convinced the world had been made safer that day.

Of course, come to find out that Libya had not been involved in the terrorist incident for which we claimed to be attacking them, but why bother with details? And of course, just two years after my colleague insisted that our assault on Libya had made us safer, 259 people in a plane over Lockerbie, Scotland -- and eleven more on the ground there -- learned how dangerously ignorant such faith really was. They as it turned out became the victims of actual Libyan terrorists enraged by the previous U.S. attack on their country.

All this talk of what's naïve and what is realistic has seemed to be nothing if not bizarre. It's as if words no longer have their original meanings, or perhaps mean the opposite of what one might otherwise think.

So to be realistic means to believe that bombing one of the poorest nations on Earth will not only reduce terrorism, but also fail to ignite a new round of anti-American fanaticism. To be naïve, on the other hand, is to pay attention to modern history, which tells us in no uncertain terms that bombing people is rather likely to fuel their anger, resentment, and desire for revenge.

To be realistic is to think that pummeling one nation -- in this case Afghanistan -- will have some appreciable effect on the thugs in al-Qaeda, despite the fact that the group operates in sixty-four countries including many allies whom we have no intention of bombing. To be naïve is to point out that terrorists aren't reliant on one, or even several countries to operate, and as such, we could eradicate every member of the Taliban tomorrow without delaying by so much as a day any future attacks on our shores.

To be realistic is to believe our government officials when they insist they have proof of bin Laden's involvement in the 9/11 attacks. To be naïve is to wonder how an intelligence community that completely missed the signs of impending disaster, could be so sure, so soon, of who did this thing that they had no idea was coming in the first place.

To be really naïve, I guess, would be to think that perhaps they might be lying. Forget that that's exactly what they did so as to justify bombing Quadafi, and what they did when the CIA announced that armed Libyans were roaming the streets of America, planning to assassinate Ronald Reagan. And it's what they did when they claimed the Soviets were building a military base in Grenada, or that the Sandinistas in Nicaragua were running drugs (actually it was our guys, the contras, who were doing that). And apropos of today's headlines, it's what they did when they decided to dub a certain band of fanatics known as the Mujahadeen, "freedom fighters."