Who are we fighting and why?

The "war on terror" is increasingly being linked to Sam Huntington's Clash of Civilizations. This was the case right after 9/11, and now the book isn't mentioned but a certain Islam vs. the West, or as Daniel Benjamin put it, Jihad vs. McWorld, dynamic is increasingly being touted. The calls today are that World War III is upon us. A war fought between Western powers and terror groups. Trouble is, that though most of the Western world has suffered terrorist attacks (most recently Mumbai, India), the West is not united in its fight.

The fact is that though the bin-Ladens, Ahmadinejads, and Nasrallahs of the world may see this as an apocalyptic battle between good and evil few on the other side--outside of the US and Israel--agree with that assessment. Europe and the rest of the world still are operating under the perspective that terrorism is a regional phenomena rooted in occupation.

Now that wrath of the occupied narrative is a hard one to shake. It's been around for so long that it's part of my common sense framework for looking at these phenomena. For a long time too it was understood that suicide terror emanating from Palestine was the outcome of individuals being fed up with their daily conditions and deciding to kill in response. It wasn't until Arafat's archives were confiscated by the IDF that Israel's left learned what the right had been telling them all along: terrorism was simply a means of the PA fighting Israel. The pop-psychology explanations ceased once the documents authorizing terror with Arafat's signature were found. But, the narrative of occupied peoples struggle persists. It does so b/c it makes a lot of sense: most terrorist groups claim lands and inhabit "occupied" (whatever that means) lands.

Yet, now Israel has left Gaza and Lebanon--well, they're back now--and yet the fighting persists. The general explanation from the Israeli side is that this is an existential conflict. That is one of the new explanations that came out of the second intifada. It holds that this isn't just about territory or occupation or what have you, it's about an us-versus-them struggle wherein only one people can inhabit this land (meaning Israel and Palestine). The conflict won't end until either the Arabs recognize Israel, the Jews leave or are killed, the Arabs leave or are killed, or the Arabs or Jews are able to conquer and hold all the land.

This existential narrative--just like the Islam v. the West one--explains broad sweeps of activity and is intellectually attractive for that reason, but it doesn't explain day-to-day activity. Hamas and Hezbollah may claim that they want to destroy the West, but for now they aren't capable and, like the Arab socialists before them, market themselves with over-inflated rhetoric (see Ajami's The Arab Predicament).

The strategy may be an existential one, but what is happening strategically looks more like the Cold War than anything else. Replace Vietnam with Iraq and then look at all the proxy wars in the Phillipines, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Palestine and you see that the war on terror is a war between great powers. The powers that the US are fighting are North Korea, Iran, and the Islamists. But, since these powers are far less powerful than the USSR, they use guerilla and terrorist tactics: tactics which have proven incredibly effective against large armies.

A few broad theories are now on the table: 1) it's all about occupation; 2) it's Islam vs. the West; 3) a variant of 2: it's a Cold War; 4) there's the US part of the fight, then there's the existential battle between Arabs and Jews.

I don't think it's all about occupation. Ending the occupation of Palestine would help assuage some of the issues, but groups interested in destabilizing the region and harming Israel would still remain. These groups may or may not have been formed due to occupation, but like the military-industrial complex in the West, they remain on the scene looking for fights well after their initial goals have been achieved.

Further, occupation may simply be an excuse. After all, when Israel left Lebanon and Gaza (or when US left Lebanon for that matter), Hamas and Hezbollah didn't say, "good, now time for peace." They said, "See, violence works against these oppressors. Let's keep committing violence against them and see where that goes. With violence, we can control an ever-increasing amount of land." Israel and the US were slow to realize this logic. It took them a while to understand that they couldn't cave in the face of terrorism. But, you either cave (negotiate) or you commit atrocities (fight). The terrorists know how to spin it to their advantage either way.

A sidebar: that's what I love about terrorists. When you fight them, they cry about proportionality and fighting fair. When it's peace time, they kill your people and label you Occupiers so it's all legit. I think if people wanna have a more fair fight in the Mideast, they should donate some F16s to Hezbollah and Hamas, and let's throw in an A-bomb for Iran and some biological weapons for bin-Laden. I think that's the fair, proportional thing to do, and I'm confident that they'll all use their weapons responsibly--ie, destroy Israel.

So, is that what it's all about? Destroying Israel. Arab rhetoric seems to say so. A pan-Arab utopia will be ushered in once the Jews are all dead. I was just in Europe and, let me tell you, the Jews are dead and no Utopia. They found new people to hate: each other. Oh yeah, they hated each other all along.

Occupation describes a lot of the story especially if you add the fact that the mercenary/revolutionary/terrorist/militia forces that formed to fight occupation stick around and require military goals to justify their existence after the fight. That said, al-Qaeda's "lands" are not occupied, unless you're willing to grant that Islam deserves all the land from Indonesia to Spain. The extremists may want it to become an existential conflict, but that doesn't ring 100% true to me. Islam vs. the West works only to a certain level too. After all, the terrorists are fighting to destabilize Turkey, Morocco, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia and all for different reasons ranging from religious fanaticism to fighting dictatorship to regime support of the West to nationalist independence.

Terrorist tactics unite all of these groups, but not all of the groups are united. Nor is it correct to bag all of Islam into one sack--whatever that means. I think that there are two phenomena.

1) Israel vs. Arabs/Palestine. That issue is one mainly of occupation, though you have more extremist forces (Jihad Islami, Hamas) that desire it to be an existential conflict.

2) Islamists v. the West. Hezbollah and al-Qaeda with support from Taliban and Iran and Syria fighting for power in the region, to destabilize regimes, and to knock down the US.

This distinction explains why Hamas is fucking terrified of being grouped with Hezbollah. It also explains why Hezbollah isn't afraid to make it a regional/global conflict, but Hamas wants to keep it quaint and nationalist. Now, these two conflicts intersect over Israel and, thus, you have two fronts. Of course, Israel and the West will want to link them, but there's actually two different fights--one nationalist, one religious--going on. These fights overlap.

So, who are "we" fighting? A messy group of people in Palestine and a more organized group in Lebanon. A messy group of people in Iraq and a more organized group in Afghanistan. The Taliban/al-Qaeda fighters are both religious and nationalist, but mainly the former. The Iraqi groups are all over the map, just as the Palestinian groups are. And, Hezbollah is a religious group seeking to rid the Mideast of Israel, its a proxy army of Iran and Syria (witness their Asad posters during the "Cedar Revolution"), it has roots in anti-occupation fighting, and it may have some pan-Arab elements.

I'll leave with one other aspect of this fight that is extremely interesting. The Shi'a v. Sunni conflict. This conflict played out in previous decades as Iraq v. Iran, now the main stage is within Iraq. But, with Iran now pulling the strings in Iraq and southern Lebanon, the Saudis, Egyptians and Jordanians actually came out against an anti-Israel terror group (Hezbollah) even in the face of Israel's most drastic reaction in decades. The Shi'a v. Sunni aspect of this conflict could become a pro-Western v. anti-Western dynamic, wherein Jordan and Egypt team with Israel and Turkey v. Syria, Iran, and the terror groups. I don't think a war could play out along those lines, but it is along these axes that power is being jockeyed for.

Now, if this is a Cold War, can the US win? I think so. We saw in the first Cold War that the US had the economic might to both fight a war and still innovate and be strong at home. I don't think that Iran or Palestine or Hezbollah have that fall back. All they can do is fight. Further, Iran and Palestine have a strong chance of being deterred through waiting it out--ie, there govts could change through democratic processes. The only big problem is that, unlike the USSR, terror groups have no population to answer to, nothing to live for other than fighting.

I think, however, that the Cold War dynamic is one that is either nascent or only present at this time due to Iran's power play in Lebanon. Either Iran is playing all its cards before it starts getting its balls twisted on the nuclear issue, or Iran and North Korea and Syria have major destabilization goals for the region/world. I think that it's more likely that the Iranian govt is playing a game of brinksmanship. The possibility of a US-Syria and/or US-Iran war is getting higher by the second. It will happen in the next decade if all trends continue in their current direction. I say the next decade b/c domestically, the US cannot get into another conflict now and probably not in the foreseeable future due to Iraq.

So, who are we fighting?

1) Nationalist fighters who see us as Occupiers.
2) Religious fanatics who desire a new Islamic caliphate, or at least an Islamist Middle East.
3) Iran, North Korea, and Syria. That's the IR/realpolitik dimension here, and it could mean that a Cold War is in the offing.