"It sort of bothers me a little bit when I hear the comment made--and it has been made over and over, not only here on the floor but by many pundits--about we have more important things to do. I cannot think of anything more important to America than family and marriage."

--Sen. Rick Santorum


"Mr. President, I thank the chairman for yielding. I rise to discuss probably the most important issue this body or I have ever debated on the floor of the Senate since I have been a member, 6 years. Our nation faces a potential disaster."

--Sen. Jim Bunning.

We're at war not with a state but an armed ideology

Gene Healy

September 12, 2004

Last October, in an internal Pentagon memo leaked to the press, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld hit on the key question in assessing U.S. progress in the war on Al-Qaida:"Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?"

Three years after the destruction of the Twin Towers, that question is as vital as ever.

Rumsfeld's question is key because it recognizes the nature of the enemy: We're not at war with a state, but with an armed ideology with murderous adherents in more than 60 countries. Responses appropriate to a state-based threat will only rarely be effective against a private, self-organizing, adaptable enemy that can operate without state support or central direction. Indeed, such responses may exacerbate the problem, drawing new recruits to jihad.

Sept. 11, 2001, should have concentrated the mind wonderfully as to the type of enemy we're fighting. Too often, however, the administration has insisted on"fighting the last war." Having rightfully removed the one state that was directly related to the terror threat, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the administration continued on to Iraq, as if the war against terror was a war against states. But it's hard to understand how regime change in Iraq aided the war against anti-American terrorism. Iraq appears to have had few, if any, genuine Al-Qaida links and no WMD stockpiles to speak of, much less a plan to pass off weapons of mass destruction to anti-American terrorists.

"Anonymous," the author of"Imperial Hubris," a 22-year CIA veteran who ran the Counterterrorist Center's Bin Laden station from 1996 to 1999, is nobody's peacenik. But he says that"there is nothing Bin Laden could have hoped for more than the invasion and occupation of Iraq."

His assessment is echoed by former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, who says that the war on Iraq"delivered to Al-Qaida the greatest recruitment propaganda imaginable."

Are they right? It's difficult to tell. As Rumsfeld put it in the October memo,"we lack metrics" to know whether the pool of anti-American jihadis is growing or shrinking.

But there are some indications that we are losing that battle of numbers.

On April 1, J. Cofer Black, the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism, testified before Congress that there are"growing indications that Al-Qaida's ideology is spreading well beyond the Middle East, particularly its virulent anti-American rhetoric. This has been picked up by a number of Islamic extremist movements which exist around the globe. This greatly complicates our task in stamping out Al-Qaida, and poses a threat in its own right for the foreseeable future."

A year after the start of the Iraq war, a Pew Research Center Poll revealed that"large majorities in Jordan (70%) and Morocco (66%) believe suicide bombings carried out against Americans and other Westerners in Iraq are justifiable. Nearly half of those in Pakistan agree (46%)." Sixty-five percent of Pakistanis and 55 percent of Jordanians have a positive view of Bin Laden.

More recently, polls conducted by Zogby International show that the Iraq war has contributed to near-universal hostility toward the United States in the Arab world, with, for example, 98 percent of Egyptians holding negative views toward America. The"radical clerics" that Rumsfeld worries about now have an even more receptive audience.

That's not to suggest that the war on Al-Qaida should be run as a global popularity contest. Far from it: We need to kill or capture those who mean us harm, and should make no apologies about it. But anti-American sentiment is the lifeblood of jihad. Needlessly increasing it through unnecessary wars in the Middle East nourishes the enemy and swells its ranks.

With the wisdom of hindsight, does the Bush administration fully appreciate this? Perhaps not.

Time magazine has reported that during"a private Aug. 19 conference call with Capitol Hill aides from both parties ... senior Pentagon policy official William Luti said there are at least five or six foreign countries with traits that 'no responsible leader can allow.'" There may be more Iraqs in our future.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, the periodic standoffs in Najaf, Sadr City, Fallujah and elsewhere put American servicemen in the untenable position of either having their hands tied in the face of aggression, or responding with overwhelming force, generating civilian casualties and film footage that will surely make its way into jihadist recruitment videos.

In the Defense Department memorandum leaked last October, Secretary Rumsfeld wondered,"Is our current situation such that 'the harder we work, the behinder we get'?"

Rumsfeld wasn't talking about Iraq specifically, but his words perfectly describe our current dilemma.

Williams’ notion has two major flaws. In his piece he voices concern over the number of people who no longer have any federal income tax liability. Worry over this growing phenomenon prompts the above suggestion. Perhaps, Professor Williams would sleep better a night if he took into consideration that most of the people who would fall into the only one vote category support the federal government through substantial Social Security payroll taxes. Since the money collected by the payroll tax is immediately either spent outright or turned into government bonds and then spent, this federal tax differs in no substantial way from the federal income tax.

The people in the multiple vote category have a cap on how much payroll tax they pay. Why should they have more say about that tax than those who are paying a much larger percentage of their income to satisfy it? Also, demographics will demand frightening increases in the payroll tax without a change in the system. Someone who gets fifty votes under Williams’ plan is not going to feel a fifty percent cut in benefits too much. For another person, who has only one vote yet has still been paying into the system for years, it could be catastrophic. That person should have less of a voice?

Secondly, Walter Williams’ plan seems to ignore the fact that what government does with the money is much more important than how much it takes in. Let us take two groups of people, one in the single vote category and one in the multiple vote class to illustrate this point. Representing the owners of only one vote will be a platoon of soldiers, commanded by a sergeant, stationed in Iraq. None of these people are earning enough to qualify for extra votes. The Board of Directors of the Halliburton Corporation will stand for those with multiple ballots.

In the same instant of time the single voters are traveling down a road near Fallujah thinking about the very real possibility that any second they may be blown to bits by a roadside bomb. Meanwhile, the board members, many of them with double figured numbers of votes and all of them in full support of the war, are in a meeting being served absolutely exquisite pastry by two very beautiful administrative assistants. Some of them are worried that the meeting could last too long, thus making them miss their tee time. Does anyone really believe that the board members have more of a stake in what our government decides to do than the soldiers.

Now, Williams in his column expresses a fear that the wealthy do not have enough influence over the actions of government. If he asked himself the following question it might calm him somewhat. How many times has a member of the Board of Directors of the Halliburton Corporation attended a thousand dollar a plate fundraising dinner for some politician and how many times has a member of a platoon of soldiers in Iraq been present at such an event?

I watched last night's HBO showing of"Nine Innings from Ground Zero." It's got some problems as a documentary, but for this Yankee fan, it had many moments of poignancy. It told the story of how baseball helped to heal many of the gaping wounds in the souls of New Yorkers in the days after the 9/11 attack.

The film mentioned that a Yankee game had been rained out the night before the tragedy. I remember it well. As I reminisce here:

I was scheduled to go to Yankee Stadium on Monday, September 10th 2001, to see the Yanks play their long-time rivals: the Boston Red Sox. But the game was rained out. I would have driven past the WTC that night. So, when I awoke on the morning of September 11th, I was convinced that Murphy's Law was second only to the Law of Identity in significance."Sure, it's a beautiful day today," I said."Why wasn't the sun shining yesterday?"

That sun quickly lost its shine. But those New Yorkers who found solace in sports were treated to some remarkable games when Major League Baseball resumed play some time after the attack.

The film recounts how President Bush came to Yankee Stadium to throw out the first pitch. Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter told him to throw the ball from the mound, and"don't bounce it," he warned,"they'll boo ya." Bush didn't disappoint. Nor did the Yanks, who eventually took their three home games in a World Series face-off with the Arizona Diamondbacks. Arizona may have won the series, but those three"miracle" wins at The Stadium lifted the hearts of many. This Yankee fan included. (Heck, even Boston Red Sox fans were singing"New York, New York" in tribute ... that, perhaps, was among the greatest post-9/11 miracles...)

It's a worthwhile film.