Pakistan: The Real “Central Front” in Fighting Terrorists?
By Brian Katulis | bio
http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/tableforone/20...ting_terrorists

Nowadays it is standard for most Democrats and other opponents of President Bush’s Iraq strategy to highlight the fact that the Iraq war diverted resources from finishing the mission in Afghanistan and tracking down top Al Qaeda leaders like Usama Bin Laden. A press release issued today by Senate Democrats offers a meant-to-be punchy “tick tock” of the 2,283 days that Osama Bin Laden has been at large. One might debate the merits of this approach from a political communications standpoint, but the Democrats raise an important substantive issue here– the national security opportunity costs of Iraq. The standard Democratic criticisms, however, don’t address the fact that the “global war on terror” is a failure of conservative ideology, and not simply a massive misappropriation of precious U.S. national security assets. The hot spots where terror organizations thrive around the world – Gaza, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan– are places that have many of the same things conservatives want for America: there’s no government, everyone has a gun, and extremist religion dominates the politics.

How conservatives view the world and the role of government is at the core of America’s inability to tackle global terrorism in the six plus years since 9/11. Their push for ever smaller government at home, an obsession with tax cuts, and penchant for ignoring U.S. military commanders who argue that the threat posed by terrorist organizations has no conventional military solutions has had dangerous consequences. On President Bush’s watch, lawless zones of instability have grown. The threat posed by global terror groups morphed, mutated, and filled the spaces left in ungoverned corners of the world.

Nowhere is this more apparent than Pakistan. As the sun set on Karachi, I recalled the numerous terrorist incidents that took place here. Karachi is where Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and brutally murdered by Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists in 2002. Considered one of the most dangerous places in the world by the U.S. government, the supplemental danger pay for U.S. diplomats posted here is equivalent to the pay in Baghdad. Last year, a U.S. diplomat was killed in a suicide attack near the U.S. consulate. In October of this year, about 150 people were killed in one of the deadliest terror attacks in history during a homecoming parade for former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Karachi is only one of several places in Pakistan where government authorities effectively have no control and terrorist groups thrive – there’s also the rugged terrain along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border where many think Bin Laden and other top Al Qaeda leaders are, as well as the disputed territory of Kashmir between India and Pakistan. Does this mean that Pakistan is the “central front” in the war on terror as growing numbers of U.S. leaders assert – especially Democrats favoring a troop withdrawal from Iraq? No, for two main reasons – no central front exists in meeting this multifaceted, decentralized threat, and calling it a war leaves the impression that there is a singular conventional military solution to the problem.

The “war on terror” paradigm falls flat when one takes careful stock of the challenges posed by decentralized global terror networks and the conditions that allow them to thrive. Some members of the Bush administration recognized the rhetorical emptiness of their approach four years after 9/11, when they began searching for a new way to talk about the challenges. First the Bush administration road-tested “global struggle against violent extremism” in 2005, which went nowhere, and then it tried “Islamo-fascism,” which rankled many allies in Muslim-majority countries who thought they were fighting on the same side as the United States and expressed worries that the term implied a war against a major world religion. (Nevertheless, many conservatives, including leading Republican candidates for president, have continued to liberally use the term, and some conservative activists recently launched an “Islamo-fascism” awareness week.)

Bush administration critics did no better in articulating the challenge, providing vapid descriptors like the “war of ideas.” Even one of the better books addressing this challenge – The Good Fight: Why Liberals – and Only Liberals – Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again by Peter Beinart suffered from hollow sloganeering, as George Packer pointed out in his thoughtful review well worth re-reading. “Large ideas drawn from historical analogies can help as guiding frameworks, but the glamorous certainties they seem to offer are illusions; we still have to think for ourselves,” Packer wrote.

In Karachi, it is easy to become very cynical about the ideas offered up in America’s political debates and think tank white papers on how to tackle the challenge posed by terrorist groups. Even with the distance of more than six years since September 11th, Americans are still searching for the right approach to deal with those who attacked us. Pakistan may not be the central front in a war on terror because that’s not the most effective way of thinking about it, but the complicated issues in play here revolving around the terrorism issue provide some useful food for thought in examining how the United States can make a shift towards a more effective global strategy – the subject of tomorrow’s post.