AT THE Republican National Convention last week, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani explained President George W. Bush's policy on terror. "President Bush decided that we could no longer be just on defense against global terrorism, we must also be on offense," he said. In contrast to Sen. John Kerry, who would use the military on a smaller scale, Giuliani made clear that the president was willing to go on the "offense" by launching expansive wars like the one in Iraq and scattershooting the fight at the terrorists.
The world has long learned that terrorists were not in Iraq before the war, but only last week did it see the severe limits and horrible costs of this kind of policy. In 1999, follwing a spate of Chechen terrorist attacks, then-Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin reignited the war in Checnhya and went on the offensive against Chechen terrorism, launching Russia's second Chechen war. Despite Putin's continuing efforts to crush terrorism through brute force, however, his bombs have not been met with submission, but only with new terrorists and more bombs. A bloody and terrible past week in Russia saw suicide attackers blow themselves up in public, hijackers crash planes full of passengers and Chechen terrorists rip their bombs and bullets through hundreds of innocent children.
Though Putin thought his war would kill terrorists' spirits, it has only succeeded at killing innocent people. So while Bush asserts that his approach to terrorism is defeating terror, the likely results of his wars have become clear. A nation cannot defeat terrorism if its policies only inspire more people to terrorize it. Bush has seemingly failed to realize this. And as recent events prove, any leader who promotes such an overly aggressive policy is too dangerous to keep in office.
In his address at the convention, Bush forwarded the notion that he is, in fact, improving America's international standing, casting it as a force for good and stemming the tide of the anti-Americanism that inspires terrorism. "As the citizens of Afghanistan and Iraq seize the moment," the president said, "their example will send a message of hope throughout a vital region." Unfortunately, the president's idea that his "message of hope" is sweeping the world has no factual basis. Despite the war, life is still difficult and civil society still is struggling in invaded countries, and because of the war, anti-Americanism has seen a boon in the Middle East. In July 2003, immediately following the end of major combat in Iraq, no more than 30 percent of the population in any Middle Eastern country except Israel held a favorable view of the United States. Even in the unlikelihood that the people of Iraq and Afghanistan build stable democracies and ultimately benefit from them, the war's scars are unlikely to heal in other Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon -- the ones that provided the Sept. 11 hijackers. Even if the United States pacifies Iraq in the long term, it will have only stoked terrorist sentiment in other Middle Eastern countries that won't reap the benefits of Iraq's improvements and that, in the end, pose threats more real than Iraq's.
Under Bush, the United States has not projected any kind of "message of hope" across the world. War has brought no hope to Afghanistan, where citizens are struggling to stage a presidential election with a foregone conclusion and festering due to inadequate U.S. reconstruction funding. Bush's message of hope apparently doesn't even apply to places like Saudi Arabia, where citizens suffer under an incompetent and criminal monarchy, or to Sudan, where Bush has decided to meet wholesale ethnic cleansing with slaps on the wrist. It is an empty message of hope that Bush only fell back on as a crutch to defend his own hardheadedness on Iraq after the truth had gashed holes in his original justification for war -- the presence of weapons of mass destruction.
If Bush's message of hope had any sincerity or basis in reality -- if America's power made more people in the world more hopeful about their futures -- then the United States would be on the right track in meeting its moral obligations and quashing its greatest security threat. But the president's promises exist only in his rhetoric. While Bush tells us that his blunt aggression in Iraq is making the world safer, as far as the facts can tell, it's only creating more enemies -- which, as the grieving families of Beslan could attest to, is never good policy when fighting a war for hearts and minds.
As the world mourns the victims of Russia's terrorist attacks, we must be thinking about how endangered nations can avoid such future atrocities. If nothing else, these events show that using the kind of blunt force that inspires hatred and vengeance doesn't work in fighting violence.
If President Bush wants to make this election about his war on terror, then the issue for voters is simple: Can this country afford a president who was foolish enough to think that this kind of "offense" would work, and who is stubborn enough to still insist that it is? The answer is clear. Voters can't let their country find out the hard way.
Michael Slaven's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at mslaven@cavalierdaily.com.
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