Republicans and the War on Terror

Yesterday Salon came out with an article, by Steven Holmes, entitled "Why the Republicans Can't Fight Terror." I think it's well worth reading, with a few caveats. First of all parties are always in fluctuation; right now the Bush Administration is operating under a set of beliefs that may hamper their ability to fight terrorism, but the Republican party probably won't stay married to those beliefs forever. I think the article would be strengthened if it was more tightly directed at those running our anti terrorism policies.

I also disagree with Mr. Holmes' assessment of the effect of religion on President Bush's waging of the war. It's just a little too convenient.

Still, it is a good article that presents a lot to think about. In particularly Mr. Holmes says too things that are nearly self-evidently true, but that are often denied in practice by Republicans.

The Republicans are ideologically and dogmatically opposed to nonmarket distributions of community resources from rich to poor, even when it is self-evident that such distributions are politically stabilizing. Underlying this hostility to nonmarket distributions is a tacit conviction that there can never be too much economic inequality in a society. This set of beliefs, like those discussed above, would probably prevent any Republican administration, and certainly an ideologically rigid administration such as the one we now have, from waging an effective war against transnational terrorism. The point is not that poverty "causes" terrorism, but rather that lack of economic opportunity increases the pool from which terrorist organizations can recruit. The Marshall Plan was a nonmarket distribution, designed to stabilize an unstable part of the world and to weaken support for anti-American ideas and political movements. An equivalent today would be massive American support to the Pakistani government, earmarked to wrest control of elementary education from private religious charities. Strategically, this makes perfect sense. Unfortunately, it conflicts violently with a Republican mind-set that compulsively denigrates all government spending and nonmarket redistributions of assets from rich to poor.

This just makes sense to me. Americans may not like the idea of taking money from their taxes and giving to other nations. I can understand that myself. But taking money and investing making other societies safer and less likely to kill Americans; that strikes me as an investment and not a giveaway.

One reason that the Bush counterterrorism strategy has gone so disastrously awry is that the Republicans are ideologically and dogmatically committed to the proposition that military means are invariably the most effective means for dealing with threats to U.S. security. The Republicans cannot be trusted to wage an effective war on terrorism, because the principal means for combating nonstate terrorism is not military force but international police cooperation and the principal means for combating proliferation is not military force but tightening up the existing international nonproliferation regime. Although military force and the threat of military force can be useful in these efforts, it cannot be the principal tool.

Again, this is self evidently true. I don't mean to disparage the military; on the contrary I have enormous respect for the efforts of those men to protect us. But the military is just one tool in the war on terror. It is no insult to the hammer to suggest that at times a pair of pliers is more effective.

Anyway something to think about.