Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October/November 1998, pages 12-16

Three Views

The Bombings of U.S. Embassies and U.S. Rocket Attacks on Afghanistan and Sudan

An Arab-American Activist

Arab Americans Must Condemn All Purveyors of Hatred

By Dr. James J. Zogby

The U.S. response to the attacks on its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania was morally, politically and legally wrong. The U.S. cruise missile strikes on Sudan and Afghanistan have further enflamed segments of Arab and Muslim public opinion, only serving to exacerbate tensions, putting U.S. allies and interests in the Middle East at greater risk. I’ve said all this already. But having said this in no way lessens my clear condemnation of those who carried out the U.S. embassy bombings, those who ordered these attacks, organized and funded them and those who also continue to issue threats of more attacks in the name of religion or the Arab cause.

The groups who make these pronouncements and carry out these actions are not, and must not be allowed to present themselves as, the authentic carriers of the aspirations and true character of the Arab and Muslim peoples. Rather they are a small band of ideologues blinded by hatred and anger who have usurped the legitimate concerns of Arabs and Muslims and have attempted to exploit them in order to promote their own fanatic agendas.

The damage they have done in the process of carrying out their attacks and making their pronouncements is incalculable.

In the first place they have taken the lives of too many innocents on too many occasions. Their victims are mostly hapless men, women and children who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. There is no cause and no rhetoric that can be used to justify their crimes. Their claim to moral authority is infuriating, as is their use of religion to justify their actions.

What is the difference between their crimes and the crimes of those whom they decry? Are the cold-blooded murderers in Luxor more noble than the savage attacker in the Ibrahimi mosque? Or were the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania more high minded than the terror bombing in Qana?

In all these instances and so many more, the actions by all sides were immoral and brutish and the victims were innocents. Those fanatic groups about whom I am speaking have done more than just commit murder; they have also done grave damage to the causes they claim to espouse and to religion itself.

Just look at the fallout from one such incident—the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City.

In the aftermath of that tragic event I remember praying that its perpetrators were not Arabs or Muslims because I feared what would happen to my community if they were.

The bombers and plotters were caught, convicted and are now serving well-deserved prison sentences—but we, innocent Arab Americans and American Muslims, are still feeling the impact of their hideous crime against not only our fellow citizens but against our image and our standing in society.

The World Trade Center bombing was the first terrorist act ever committed by any Arab or Muslim groups in the United States and yet its repercussions are still felt every single day. Our enemies, who have for years sought to target Arab- Americans and American Muslims as supporters of terrorism, latched onto that bombing and have used it and some subsequent outrageous acts of terror to justify their defamation of our communities.

While FBI and U.S. State Department annual reports clearly establish that anti-U.S. violence originating from Arab or Muslim groups only accounts for a very small fraction of all such attacks both world-wide and domestically, the propaganda mills of our detractors have painted a very different picture. But more than just defaming us, our enemies have used the fear created by the World Trade Center bombing to push their negative stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims into legislation and public policies that threaten the civil liberties of our communities in the United States.

While we continue to condemn those purveyors of hatred against Arabs and Muslims who use each terrorist attack (whether or not they are committed by an Arab or Muslim) as another occasion to attack us, should we not also condemn the fanatic bands who have, by their terrorist actions and threats of terror, helped to fuel this dangerous anti-Arab and anti-Muslim campaign? They are, with their words and actions, not only harming or threatening to harm “the West,” they are also doing real damage to religion and to the image, causes and aspirations of the Arab and Muslim peoples.

While Arab-American and American-Muslim organizations have spoken out against them, I believe that the time has come for all Arabs and Muslims to declare zero tolerance for the actions and rhetoric of these groups who have done so much harm.

There can be no excuses for their actions and no apologies offered for their statements. They are not the spokespeople for Arab and Muslim causes. It is not they who will secure justice for those who suffer from injustice. By their actions, these groups have only brought on repression, hatred, fear and more injustice.

As Arabs or Muslims, we can not absolve ourselves of the need to speak out against these shadowy and cowardly murderers. They claim to act in our name—but they have distorted our image and hurt our good name. They claim to act on behalf of our causes, but they have done harm to all that we aspire to achieve. They must be politically isolated and condemned.

Having said that, let me make clear that I do not support the tactics that are too often used against these groups or against entire societies as a result of the actions of these groups. Intolerable repression, violations of rights and the condemnable retaliatory strikes that target the innocent as well as those suspected of wrong-doing are not the way to deal with extremists and fanatics.

In fact those responses have all too often played into the hands of extremist groups, creating more injustice, more alienation and more adherents and supporters on whom they can prey. What must replace this tit-for-tat, evil-for-evil, cycle of violence is a call to a higher standard.

It is imperative that America be challenged to end its double standard and translate its stated commitment to “democracy, freedom and rule of law” into a real working program that meets the needs of the Arabs and Muslims. Arab governments must assume some responsibility here. It is, in part, their surrender to the double standard that allows the injustices to continue. Passivity in the face of oppression creates the feelings of powerlessness and rage that are the breeding grounds of terror. Visionary Arab leadership that promotes an Arab political and economic agenda challenging the West’s double standard will give hope and direction to the legitimate yearnings of the Arab people, thereby reducing the appeal of extremist ideologies.

At the same time, Arab Americans and American Muslims must respond politically as well. It is not enough to complain. Our community must organize our resources and mobilize politically to fight for a change in U.S. foreign policy.

To a great extent, the “double standard” that exists is a function of the imbalance that exists in U.S. domestic politics. We will not see a just and balanced U.S. foreign policy until we create more balance in U.S. politics—and that will require hard work and commitment from Arab Americans and American Muslims.

Injustice cannot be tolerated, and we must demand and work for an end to policies that support the denial of basic rights to our people. But at the same time, with all this having been said, we can no longer turn a blind eye to those who resort to threats and terror in response to injustice. It is imperative that we speak out in a clear and consistent voice against them. They make our path toward justice all the more difficult by their evil deeds and words.

A Retired USIA Officer

Osama bin Laden Repeating George Habash’s Deadly Errors

By Richard H. Curtiss

“George Habash, a Palestinian leader who participated in planning major international terror operations, told me in 1987 that his group had abandoned its campaign only because it had not worked. Instead of winning U.S. sympathy or acquiescence, the attacks had turned Americans solidly against the Palestinian cause.”—Columnist Jim Hoagland, Washington Post, Aug. 4, 1998.

My magazine, the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, missed a scoop last month. Its September issue carried an interview with George Habash, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, conducted in Damascus this summer by veteran American author Grace Halsell.

In her article, Ms. Halsell cited a statement Habash had made to the German magazine Stern in 1970: “For decades world public opinion has been neither for nor against the Palestinians. It simply ignored us. At least the world is talking about us now.”

Unfortunately, the article didn’t go on to recall what, in fact, the world started saying about the Palestinians back in 1970 after Habash had done his deadly work, culminating in the hijacking to Jordan and Egypt and destruction of four commercial airliners. In the West, even the few people who knew that the Palestinians had a real—in fact unprecedented— grievance against the Israelis, who were methodically stealing their country, lost patience with all Palestinians because of the cruel and unpredictable actions of Habash’s group against innocent civilians of many nations who had nothing to do with either Israel or Palestine.

And, after listening to Habash proclaim that existing Arab regimes had to be overthrown as a prelude to the liberation of Palestine, many Arab governments that could and would have helped the Palestinian cause enormously began to regard Habash as an even greater danger to stability and development in the Arab world than Israeli expansionism.

Black September, in which hundreds or perhaps thousands of Palestinians were killed in Amman in 1970 because of the actions of the Habash group, followed, and all of the Palestinian resistance groups lost their base in Jordan. That led to further catastrophes for the Palestinians in Lebanon and Syria, leaving them so weakened that their principal leader, Yasser Arafat, finally signed the Oslo accords, throwing his people on the mercy of an Israeli government, which, it turned out, had no mercy.

In the Halsell interview, Habash roundly denounced the Oslo accords, as do virtually all Arabs today. However, he neglected to mention his own role, along with other Palestinian extremists like the infamous Abu Nidal, in so alienating potential friends and allies that Arafat felt forced to sign an ageement that has turned out to be a dead-end for Palestinian aspirations.

Nor did Habash seek to explain why Israel’s Mossad has joined Abu Nidal in successfully assassinating moderate figures within Arafat’s Al Fatah for years, but has left Habash and many other Palestinian extremists from both the right and left fringes of Palestinian resistance groups unscathed. In fact it has been documented that when right-wing religious opposition groups to Arafat were slow to get organized in Gaza and the West Bank, the Israeli government assisted them in many ways, while throwing every conceivable obstacle in the path of Arafat’s more middle-of-the-road Palestinian resistance movement.

Now, it seems, Osama bin Laden, the renegade son of a fabulously wealthy Saudi contractor, has appointed himself to play the Habash role for the entire Islamic world. While thoughtful Muslims in the Middle East and South Asia, and the few sensible Europeans and Americans who are paying attention, strive to avoid the “clash of civilizations” so ardently desired by Israelis of nearly all political stripes, Bin Laden has appointed himself the financier of a self-proclaimed “World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders.”

On a June 10 ABC “Nightline” program in the United States he explicitly said that “we do not differentiate between those [Americans] dressed in military uniforms and civilians. They’re all targets...You will leave when the bodies of Americans soldiers and civilians are sent in the wooden boxes and coffins.”

George Habash couldn’t have said it better almost 30 years ago, and he would have been just as mistaken then as Bin Laden is today. Fortunately for the world’s Muslims, Habash was a Christian, so at the time only his Palestinian compatriots suffered for his stupendous miscalculation.

Bin Laden’s current methods can only weaken Islam’s friends and strengthen its enemies. Just as it was able to make “terrorist” a synonym for “Palestinian” 30 years ago in the Western media, the Israeli government is doing the same thing now with “Muslim,” although informed people know that no religion is stronger than Islam in its injunctions against the killing of innocents.

In Kenya, some of the 12 Americans killed in the bombed U.S. Embassy were African-Americans, who traditionally have been friends of and a large reservoir of potential converts to Islam in America. And of some 250 non-Americans killed and 5,000 wounded in Kenya and Tanzania, many actually were Muslims who, like all of the African victims, certainly had no role in or sympathy for Israel’s theft of Palestinian lands.

For years I, as an ardent supporter of Palestinian human rights, felt sure that if Habash himself was not a paid agent of the Israelis, someone very close to him must be. Everything he did seemed to strengthen Israeli hard-liners and weaken or lose people who should have been friends and allies of the Palestinians.

Then Ramzi Ahmad Yousef began his war against the human race, bombing the World Trade Center in New York and managing to include Hispanic Americans among the six killed, while wounding perhaps 1,000 American victims of every creed and color. Then the same terrorist, rehearsing a planned attack on American airliners in Asia that would have killed hundreds of innocent civilians, placed a bomb in an aircraft flying out of the Philippines that killed a Japanese husband and father.

I suspected then that if anyone ever caught Yousef and found out who had financed his globe-trotting, the trail eventually would lead to Israel’s Mossad, or perhaps even to the Jewish and Christian fundamentalist lunatics in the U.S. who support Israeli settlers in the Palestinian West Bank.

But Ramzi Ahmad Yousef has been found, tried and convicted and the trail, instead, seems much more likely to lead to Osama bin Laden, operating then out of Sudan and now out of his mountain redoubts in Afghanistan. And the timing of the U.S. embassy bombs in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, on the seventh anniversary, to the day, of the 1991 arrival of American forces in Saudi Arabia as part of the Desert Shield buildup that followed the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, seems also to lead to Bin Laden.

Who is this new George Habash, who kills civilian men, women and children in the name of Islam instead of Habash’s Arab socialism? And what does Bin Laden think he is accomplishing by killing Americans, Africans, Asians, and Europeans—everyone but the Israelis he professes to be fighting?

Osama bin Laden is one of 20 children of the late Mohammad bin Laden, a billionaire Saudi contractor whose origins trace back to Yemen. When his father was killed in the crash of his private plane, an elder brother, Bakr, took over the company and Osama came into control of a fortune now estimated at wildly varying numbers from $20 million to $400 million. He was 22 years old when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. Within days the economics and business administration student left school to join the fight, eventually bringing with him workers and construction equipment.

He helped create a network of roads and storage caves for the Afghan mujahedeen. At that time the entire Muslim world supported the mujahedeen, as did the Saudi, Pakistani and U.S. governments, and Osama was a hero to his relatives and his countrymen.

But 10 years later, after the expulsion of Soviet forces, Bin Laden moved in 1991 to Sudan where, among other things, he helped its Islamist regime, which was working to undermine the Saudi and other governments, build a strategic road. His family disowned him and his Saudi passport was canceled.

While in Sudan, Bin Laden also was said to have acquired a 53 percent stake in Sudan’s principal export, gum arabic, a charge the Sudanese government emphatically denies. Ironically, because this natural gum is a key ingredient in some fruit-based soft drinks, the U.S. has granted an exemption for gum arabic in its embargo of Sudanese products.

It is reminiscent of Lenin’s prediction that the communists would hang the last capitalist with a rope he had sold them. However, after Sudan came under pressure to deport him, Bin Laden returned in 1996 to Afghanistan with many of his supporters.

There he receives journalists in what are said to be “showpiece” tent encampments in three locations near the Pakistani border, and he has allowed a select few foreign journalists to visit him in an underground headquarters carved out of a hillside at the end of a winding dirt road that leads down into the city of Jalalabad.

Western journalists have given widely varying descriptions of this headquarters, from a three-room “bat cave” to an elaborate system of underground installations, reminiscent of Adolf Hitler’s several-story underground bunker on the grounds of the Reich’s Chancery.

It is from such hideouts that he has built a reputation for funding, and perhaps personally planning, a variety of terrorist operations. Some of these may originate with individuals or groups who bring the plan to Bin Laden and receive financial help and perhaps logistical support from the dozens or hundreds or perhaps thousands (depending upon which account you read) of persons in his employ. Many of these employees are the “Afghans” who came from all over the Islamic world to fight the Soviets, and then reappeared in Bosnia to help the beleaguered Muslims there—both just and popular causes.

When some of these “Afghans” turned their military skills against their own governments, however, they became wanted men. Some also have seemed to stop waging legitimate armed struggle against military targets and turned instead to relatively safe strikes in which most or all of the victims turn out to be innocent men, women and children—true “terrorism” by any religious or moral standards.

London’s Sunday Times has printed a statement that Bin Laden allegedly made by satellite telephone to an unnamed contact in Pakistan who had asked him whether he was involved in the two African explosions. “You should go through my track record,” Bin Laden reportedly replied. “When we attack Americans we don’t harm other people.”

This seems to be having it both ways. The implication is that if an armed action goes well and kills only Americans, Bin Laden accepts credit. If most of the victims are unarmed non-Americans as in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, someone else must have done it.

By targeting cruise missiles at alleged training camps in Afghanistan, at one of which Bin Laden supposedly was scheduled to speak to trainees, the U.S. showed it didn’t buy his explanation. Far more important to the good name of Islam, however, is that Muslims not buy it either.

To the world’s nearly six billion people it makes no difference whether Osama bin Laden or someone else acting in the name of Islam blows up an airplane in which they might have been traveling or, as in Nairobi, a building full of office workers and students whose only connection with the United States is that it was next door to an American embassy.

Islam, everywhere, takes the rap. Millions of Muslims living as minorities in Europe, Asia and the United States become objects of suspicion. And the billions of non-Muslims who already support or could be educated to support just Islamic causes in Palestine, Kashmir, Bosnia and Kosovo, instead become indifferent or actively opposed.

There’s still much to lose. In the case of the Palestinians, most Europeans support them already. Even in the United States, since Binyamin Netanyahu took power in Israel, some 30 percent of Americans tell pollsters they have an unfavorable opinion of Israel. That’s a negative rating far, far higher than Americans assign to any traditional ally or even to such former “enemies” as Germany or Japan. Also, there now are Arab Americans in the U.S. Congress, and their numbers are growing.

In 1996 an American-led NATO operation halted the slaughter of Bosnian Muslims by Serbs and may yet have to do the same thing in Kosovo. Despite tiny Israel’s iron grip on much of America’s mainstream media, most of Congress, and key parts of the U.S. government’s foreign policymaking establishment, it would be ridiculous for more than 50 Muslim nations to simply give up the struggle for American hearts and minds by nonviolent means ranging from establishing Islamic schools to conducting economic boycotts.

Even more important, in the long run, is the fact that Islam not only is the fastest growing religion in the world, but also in the United States. But Osama bin Laden, and like-minded extremists who don’t distinguish between legitimate armed actions against military enemies and bloody acts of terror against civilians, by their example put all this at grave risk.

George Habash’s grievous errors have helped set back the eventual attainment of justice by his six million compatriots by one or perhaps even two generations. He now admits his mistake.

Osama bin Laden now is making exactly the same mistake—gravely imperiling the just causes of his one billion co-religionists. It is said that those who learn nothing from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them. In an age of weapons of mass destruction, it is necessary to add that those who have learned nothing from the human tragedies of the past are likely to exceed them.

A Retired CIA Officer

The Only Effective Defense Against Terrorism is To Rebuild America’s Reputation For Fairness

By Raymond H. Close

Despite U.S. government claims to the contrary, there is, in my opinion, a serious question whether our action in bombing alleged terrorist sites in Afghanistan and Sudan was a justifiable violation of the accepted and respected norms of international law. The attacks were on the sovereign territory of another legally recognized state with which we are technically at peace. We can attempt to justify this action by quoting Osama bin Laden’s “declaration of war” on the American government and the American people, without distinction between them. But that is to claim, is it not, that the government of Afghanistan and the government of the Sudan abetted, and therefore share complicity in, acts of war against the United States? In fact, all that Afghanistan seems to have done was to provide Bin Laden with the sanctuary where the acts against us were planned. (Not the location where they were carried out.) We must now be ready to accept the full implications of this interpretation of our international rights. This means, it seems to me, that we are declaring one of two conditions to be true:

A. That the United States makes the rules by which it acts in the world community. We are a law unto ourselves. Do we really want to say that?

B. Or, that if one state believes it has enemies who are being granted refuge in another country, it is permissible to launch bombing attacks against those elements without the knowledge or permission of the legitimate host government. Is setting that precedent always going to redound to our benefit? Have we thought about that carefully?

Most of us accept the premise that terrorism is a phenomenon that cannot be defeated by brute force, but only by ideas, by persuasion, by the amelioration of its causes—whether real or imagined. Terrorism has only one real asset, in the final analysis—the passion and commitment of its adherents. Are human passions capable of being altered by cruise missiles? Having accepted that premise intellectually as reasonable and civilized, we now have to live with the fact that in other international situations in the future, others may emulate our resort to violence, taking the law into their own hands to launch attacks against other members of the international community if they feel their national interests are similarly threatened. This is how world wars start.

Suppose the British should launch cruise missiles against suspected training camps of the IRA in the Irish Republic? What if India were to launch a similar missile attack on facilities in Pakistan that they allege to be training camps for mujahedeen preparing to infiltrate Indian-occupied Kashmir? Suppose the Russians were to launch missiles against camps in northern Iraq where the CIA was alleged to be training anti-Saddam rebels? What if Iraqi agents exploded a bomb on the streets of Prague, in the Czech Republic, outside the offices where the United States is (in fact) broadcasting anti-Saddam propaganda into Iraq on behalf of the external opposition?

How are distinctions to be made when there are different interpretations put on who are good guys and who are bad? Is the United States setting itself up as the only judge? When will that chicken come home to roost? In terms of the final impact that American civilization hopes to make on world history, is this upholding the Rule of Law? Is this what the U.S. really stands for as “the leader of the Free World”?

President Clinton stated that U.S. policy is not aimed at Islam, but only at those outlaws who distort that religion and use it for their own political purposes. The fact is, however, that this act of ours will be interpreted throughout the Muslim world (more than one billion people) as another gross example of the American “double standard.” They see (correctly, without doubt) that the U.S. responds much more negatively against Muslim states than against Christian states (or Israel).

We all know countless examples in which the U.S. or its allies have reacted with extreme violence to hostile or illegal acts by non-Western states while the U.S. has condoned or completely ignored actions which—in the perspective of the non-Western individual or society—were equally condemnable. Our actions this time take us one more big step toward confrontation on a global scale between Christianity and Islam, between the white race and people of color, between the haves and the have-nots, between North and South.

I have preserved the text of a private and secret message from Secretary of State Kissinger that I delivered on 25 October 1973 to Fahd bin Abd-al-Aziz, now King of Saudi Arabia, but then only a deputy prime minister, just after the imposition of the Arab oil embargo on the United States. In his message, Henry Kissinger said this to Fahd: “We recognize that conditions that produced the current [1973] war were intolerable to the Arab side, and must be eliminated.” Now it is 25 years later, and the United States has still never publicly acknowledged that Israeli seizure of Arab land is an intolerable state of affairs that deserves to be “eliminated.”

Double standard? Of course, without question. How do we expect an Arab to feel? And yet we wonder why deep bitterness and disillusion are still breeding terrorism.

On a more practical level, we know from recent experience that, given the opportunity to participate legally and freely in an open political system, and given the assurance that their grievances are recognized as legitimate, even the most extreme terrorists have a tendency to become more disciplined and law-abiding. Witness the PLO, the Sinn Fein—even Hamas and Hezbollah—who now seem to be turning toward use of “the ballot instead of the bullet” to achieve their political objectives. (A trend that could be reversed by acts such as our attacks this week.)

Certainly there are extremist minorities in all such groups, but these, I maintain, are exceptions that prove the rule. Take the recent example in Northern Ireland—the savage bombing in Omagh, where all legitimate leaders of the IRA and Sinn Fein have condemned, with obvious sincerity, the outrage perpetrated by a small splinter faction. In an atmosphere of legitimacy and hope, even these extremist aberrations tend to modify their objectives and their tactics in time. But deprive the aggrieved parties of the positive elements of legitimacy and hope, and you turn them back into terrorists in a flash.

For example, our recent failure to sustain clearly expressed objections to Netanyahu’s obstructionist policies will, almost certainly, reintroduce that element of despair that can only manifest itself in renewed terrorism against the Israelis. But the Israelis themselves will be the last to learn the lesson of all this.

They have practiced the policy of “10 eyes for an eye” since the creation of their country. However, they are still more beset with terrorism than any other place in the world. Meanwhile, they encourage us to emulate their failed policies, and we follow along as if we had no brains of our own.

By utilizing nothing but unmanned cruise missiles launched from hundreds of miles away, the U.S. again has signaled strong reluctance to risk its own military personnel, even in a conflict situation that we have defined as a “war.” And we have shown that we will go to extreme lengths, even at the expense of the effectiveness of the military mission itself, to avoid causing so-called “collateral” damage.

This again severely limits the breadth of our military options, just as it has already put dangerous constraints on the versatility—and thus the deterrent value—of our whole defense system. As the utility of our conventional arms is simultaneously being threatened by technological change (cheap, do-it-yourself weapons of mass destruction), we are contributing to the leveling of the playing field by demonstrating again our diminishing potency against those whom we identify as our greatest threat.

The worst nightmare of our strategic military and security planners is the potential for a small and weak enemy, with little or no conventional military power and minimal economic resources, to hold the world’s greatest superpower hostage because it possesses a monstrous weapon so insignificant in size and appearance that we cannot see it, cannot locate it, and therefore cannot attack and destroy it.

I wonder if our actions this week did not just send the message again, loud and clear, to all who would count themselves as our enemies: accelerate your efforts to acquire new and deadly high-technology weapons and the means to deliver them—and manufacture and store those weapons in hard shelters in the midst of as many civilians as you can gather. Because the credibility of that scenario has been accepted as doctrine in the Pentagon and in every war college and national security think tank in the country, American policymakers and military planners today owe us a solemn obligation to judge every proposed action by whether or not it moves us toward, or away from, the day when that nightmare comes true.

It seems to me distinctly possible that this recent action weakens the only effective defenses we will ever have against that threat. Those defenses, admittedly, are not easy to build, but they are essential to our effectiveness as a world power. They include these steps: rebuilding our reputation for fairness and evenhandedness in international disputes, strengthening the world community’s commitment to the Rule of Law, and attempting to restore America’s lost reputation as the most humanitarian society in the world.

Over several years, the U.S. has tried vainly to alter Iraq’s international behavior by launching similar kinds of strikes against targets within Iraq every time Saddam Hussain acted unlawfully or provocatively. We knew all along that this kind of action alone would never accomplish our ultimate objectives in Iraq, because we knew we would never send in ground forces to compel compliance with our demands.

Throwing stones at the problem from a distance was the only thing we could think of doing, other than choking Saddam’s economic bloodstream as much as possible. So we were satisfied to do something that just made us “feel good,” and we justified it by protesting that “we had to do something!” Very recently, our policymakers got together and decided that this wasn’t working. It was costing us hundreds of millions of dollars each time, severely weakening the overall combat readiness of our armed forces, straining our relations with allies, abetting the interests of our antagonists and economic competitors, and probably only strengthening the grip that Saddam Hussain has on his own country.

So a strategic change was made in U.S. policy—from now on we were going to rely on economic sanctions, while we transformed the Iraq issue from one of “America vs. Saddam” into one of “Saddam vs. the United Nations Security Council”—knowing perfectly well that this was going to gravely weaken our efforts to constrain Saddam in the future. But we never publicly withdrew our public commitment to punish Saddam with more cruise missile attacks if he violated his February 1998 agreement with Kofi Annan.

Two weeks ago, Saddam completely ruptured that agreement, but the United States did nothing. We just mumbled some weak excuses and pretended we hadn’t noticed. Our prestige and credibility suffered seriously as a result.

This week, we started down the same dead-end road again in launching cruise missiles against alleged terrorist targets in Afghanistan and Sudan. We have resorted again to comparatively ineffective long-range bombardment, at huge expense, with little practical effect—to provide a temporary palliative to the American public, but in effect only providing new incentive to our adversaries.

Predictably, the people who were most vociferous in criticizing the Clinton administration for “wimping out” in Iraq last month are the same ones who are cheering most loudly now that we have headed down the same road again. Those people seem to thrive on instant gratification, but their shallow appreciation of reality tells me that they lack historical perspective, and of course that they have had no practical experience in dealing with the emotions and thought processes of a real terrorist.

Another cause of concern to me is the way President Clinton and everyone else has now begun to refer to all Islamic terrorists as members or “affiliates” of the “Osama bin Ladin Network of Terrorism.” This is, of course, the typical American habit of demonizing one individual as the root of all evil. In fact, elevating Bin Ladin to that status is a misinterpretation of our own intelligence. But it will create of him the all-powerful symbol of defiance to Uncle Sam that gives terrorist followers inspiration. Most importantly, it sets him up for martyrdom if we ever kill him.

This only creates monsters of little men who would not be half so potent if they were not given the benefit of our promotion. Also, I am amazed at how Bin Laden’s supposed wealth has grown. I can remember when the best intelligence estimates were that he had perhaps $40 million in personal assets. In the past few days I have heard from reputable newscasters that he commands a personal treasure of between $360 and $400 million, and this morning he was referred to on a morning news show as “the Saudi billionaire.” Of such myths are heroes and supermen made!

The Washington intelligence community (as well as the best strategic think tanks in Britain) were unanimous only a year ago in their assessment that although the various militant Islamist movements obviously shared many common ideological convictions, they were NOT parts of a single international conspiratorial network. We’re talking here about the most extreme elements in Algeria, Egypt, Sudan, Palestine and Lebanon, but also including those newly emerging militant movements in places like Pakistan, Indonesia, Bosnia, Albania, Turkey and other states with major Muslim populations. Specifically included in that analysis was the Taliban movement in Afghanistan, which was regarded as a comparatively rustic, unsophisticated, village-rooted religious fundamentalist movement with no significant resemblance to, or relations with, the urbanized and sophisticated Islamist movements in places like Algeria, Egypt or Palestine. Our action this week, and particularly the often uninformed and simplistic commentary in the American media, may have the effect of hastening the unification and centralization of the Islamist militants. Perhaps we are rolling up a large snowball.

The defenders of this week’s action say that we had no choice but to act, because of intelligence to the effect other attacks were scheduled to be made on other American installations in the near future. Let’s assume for a moment that those reports are true. How likely is it that these terrorists will cancel that plan simply because we bombed a factory in Khartoum and a training camp in Afghanistan?

Or, imagine that you are sitting in a meeting of Islamist fanatics in a small room in a Middle Eastern slum. The leader is talking about the American bombings in Sudan and Afghanistan. Does one suppose that he is advising his fellow conspirators that, because the Americans have struck back with cruise missiles, they should all go home and give up their careers as mujahedeen? Isn’t it much more plausible that our action will only inspire more zeal, more hatred, more passion—and bring in more recruits—for their cause?

Our policymakers have told us that although the raids will not end terrorism, they will, at least, “send the right message” to Osama bin Laden and his kind. Bill Clinton may think it sends the right message. General Shelton may think it sends the right message. Newt Gingrich may think it sends the right message. But I believe they’re wrong—and I believe that those in America who know and understand the psychology of the terrorist have an obligation to speak out in protest. Meanwhile, the swift retaliatory action portrayed as being a desperate necessity to forestall additional terrorist acts has produced a level of public alarm in the United States that is precisely what the terrorists hoped would happen. The ludicrous image of four-star American generals emptying their pockets of coins and keys before passing through the metal detectors at the front door of the Pentagon has been starkly symbolic to me of the futility of retaliatory violence.

And, of course, we forget that if a terrorist has any outstanding quality, it is patience. He may strike back next week, next month, or next year. How long are we going to put up with having extra policemen by the dozen around the Lincoln Memorial and other Washington tourist sites?

Finally, what our government has done in Afghanistan and Sudan, I maintain, is analogous to what we call “vigilante justice” in American folklore. Some call this the “Rambo syndrome.” I believe that the kind of action we took this week feeds on that lowest common denominator in American culture, and thereby deepens its negative impact on rational decision-making and will undermine our leadership position in the world.

Robert Gates, the former CIA director, published a thoughtful article in The New York Times opinion columns last week, after the bombings in Nairobi and Dar es-Salaam. His subject was “What War Looks Like Now,” and his focus was on terrorism in today’s new world. He made three strong points that I leave with you to reflect on, summarized in his words:

a. Violent reprisals: They are a useless exercise. Don’t listen to those who advocate retaliation in kind. Contrary to popular myth, Reagan’s raid on Tripoli in 1986 did not stop Libyan terrorism—it inspired Pan Am 103;

b. Reducing terrorism: Work on eliminating its causes; in the case of the Palestinians, do not kowtow to Netanyahu’s obstructionism and betrayal of Rabin’s legacy; in Iran, pursue the dialogue with President Khatami (with appropriate caution) and do not play into the hands of his militant domestic adversaries;

c. National attitudes: Be patient and realistic about what can and cannot be done; find some real leadership in Washington that will speak honestly to the American people, without spin or partisanship, about the realities of the world we dominate, but do not control.