PRESIDENT Bush's speech announcing aggressive military action against Afghanistan skewed and manipulated the truth to justify war as the only logical possibility. He would have the American public and the world believe that this is a war of self-defense, one we regrettably must fight. In truth, war is an option, but it's not the only one. Whether or not each of us supports our nation's violent response, we should remain questioning of such one-sided propaganda.
In the most crucial - and also the most suspect - passage of his speech, Bush talked of peace. "We're a peaceful nation. Yet as we have learned so suddenly and so tragically, there can be no peace in a world of sudden terror. In the face of today's new threat the only way to pursue peace is to pursue those who threaten it. We did not ask for this mission. But we will fulfill it."
These words have disturbingly misleading implications. Bush would have us believe that America is a model of peaceful, non-violent behavior. Simply saying "we're peaceful" doesn't do much. Such a claim sounds fairly hollow to Afghani families whose husbands, fathers and sons will not come home from their jobs at electrical plants, defense buildings, or air fields. These deaths will be easier for most Americans to stomach because they likely will remain largely unreported because it'll seem too distant for many of us to care. But that doesn't make us peaceful.
Bush implies that this was an act of self-defense, particularly by asserting that "we did not ask for this mission." One could call it a justified or proportional counterattack, but not an act of self-defense. We didn't start this fight, but we also were not backed into a corner and left with no other option but to punch back. We waited patiently to plan a counterattack without any new immediate threat to our safety and without any deadline.
Counter-aggression is one way to respond to aggression, but it is certainly not the only way. Bush's statement that "the only way to pursue peace is to pursue those who threaten it" asks the world to believe that we have no real choices, that there is no question about whether or not to bomb Afghanistan, only questions of how and when. Of course there are choices. He can defend his choices, but he should at least recognize that he's making them.
But perhaps the most bothersome claim that Bush implicitly made in his speech is that the success of this military campaign in ridding the world of all threats to safety is unquestionable. Waging war on international terrorism is perhaps the most questionable military undertaking in American history.
Who are we fighting? So far, Bush has identified the al-Qaida terrorist organization. Even this classification is nebulous; who belongs to this group? Who gets to decide what qualifies as membership or what level of participation deserves a death sentence? Beyond this, we have done nothing to define our enemy. Bush has told us that "the battle is broader" than Afghanistan, but how much broader? If Bush has set any limits, he certainly isn't sharing them with us.
How will "success" in this war be defined? How will we know when we've won - or lost? If we admit that we probably won't rid the world of all possibility of terrorist activity, forever and ever, then what will we accept as victory? Entering into a war without a clear enemy or a clear definition of our objectives is a recipe for prolonged disaster, a la Vietnam.
Even if we knew exactly what our goals were, it's not clear that our efforts would work. The Bush administration asks us not to question the premise that bombing Afghanistan will deter terrorist activity. But why should we believe that it will? The deterrence argument supposes that we hadn't previously made it clear that we would respond with violence to anyone who attacks America. Once we make that clear, terrorists will be deterred from attacking the United States.
This rationalist argument doesn't make any sense. The terrorists behind the Sept. 11 attacks didn't act because they thought we wouldn't respond. Right now, they aren't saying, "Whoops, we really misjudged those Americans. They're actually going to do something. We probably shouldn't have attacked them." They acted because, for a number of reasons, they hate our country and the values for which it stands. Our attacks give them just one more reason to dislike us. It feeds their violent impulses.
Bush's airbrushing of the complexities and uncertainties that face our nation does a disservice to us all. As we continue to assess our national response to terrorism, we should cultivate a healthy skepticism and refuse to swallow just anything and everything the president tells us.
(Bryan Maxwell's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at bmaxwell@cavalierdaily.com.)
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