From: Carlos Gonzalia (gonzalia@cs.chalmers.se)
Date: Fri Aug 16 2002 - 17:30:32 MDT
>From: "Lee Corbin" <lcorbin@tsoft.com>
>[...]
>P.S. Personally, I'm more interested in this scenario: all
>that is known is that the Al Qaeda organization intends to
>destroy some American city on a certain date, and on that
>date---despite the West's best efforts---Manhattan goes up.
>What (from one's limited knowledge and experience) would
>one recommend that the U.S. government do?
I was just right now reading a very interesting article, in the last
issue of Policy Review Online: Al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology.
http://www.policyreview.org/AUG02/harris_print.html
I'm sure some of you folks smarter or more knowledgeable than I am
must have considered similar ideas to those analized there. For me
it was a nice revelation of a new perspective. This is a very
central quote, I think:
"The fact that we are involved with an enemy who is not engaged in
Clausewitzian warfare has serious repercussions on our policy. For we are
fighting an enemy who has no strategic purpose in anything he does,
whose actions have significance only in terms of his own fantasy
ideology. It means, in a strange sense, that while we are at war with
them, they are not at war with us - and, indeed, it would be an enormous
improvement if they were. If they were at war with us, they would be
compelled to start thinking realistically, in terms of objective factors
such as overall strategic goals, war aims, and so forth. They would have
to make a realistic, and not a fantasy-induced, assessment of the
relative strength of us versus them. But because they are operating in
terms of their fantasy ideology, such a realistic assessment is
impossible for them. It matters not how much stronger or more powerful we
are than they - what matters is that God will bring them victory.
This must be emphasized, for if the fantasy ideology of Italian fascism
was a form of political make-believe, the fantasy ideology of radical
Islam goes even one step further: It is, in a sense, more akin to a form
of magical thinking. While the Sorelian myth does aim, finally, at
transforming the real world, it is almost as if the "real" world no
longer matters in terms of the fantasy ideology of radical Islam. Our
"real" world, after all, is utterly secular, a concatenation of an
endless series of cause and effect, with all events occurring on a single
ontological plane. But the "real" world of radical Islam is different -
its fantasy ideology reflects the same philosophical occasionalism that
pervades so much of Islamic theology: That is to say, event b does not
happen because it is caused by a previous event a. Instead, event a is
simply the occasion for God to cause event b, so that the genuine cause
of all events occurring on our ontological plane of existence is nothing
else but God. But if this is so, then the "real" world that we take for
granted simply vanishes, and all becomes determined by the will of God;
and in this manner the line between realist and magical thinking
dissolves. This is why the mere fact that there is no "realistic" hope of
al Qaeda destroying the United States - and indeed the West as a whole -
is not of the slightest consequence. After all, if God is willing, the
United States and the West could collapse at any moment.
This element of magical thinking does not make al Qaeda any less
dangerous, however. For it is likely that in al Qaeda's collective
fantasy there may exist the notion of an ultimate terror act, a magic
bullet capable of bringing down the United States at a single stroke -
and, paradoxically, nothing comes closer to fulfilling this magical role
than the detonation of a very unmagical nuclear device. That this would
not destroy our society in one fell swoop is obvious to us; but it is not
to our enemies, in whose eyes an act of this nature assumes a fantasy
significance in addition to its sufficiently terrifying reality - the
fantasy significance of providing al Qaeda with a vision of ultimate and
decisive victory over the West."
(end quote)
So to answer the question partially. I don't know for sure, but whatever
the US government does should, if the view provided in that article is
correct and important, take into account that the opponent is
non-Clausewitzian in action and purpose. A retribution consisting in
say, nuking a few major cities in the Arab world looks to me like a
Clausewitzian answer, and hence I think an improper one in this
situation. It would not stop Al Qaida, or discourage them in any
significant way, while on the other side would cause Clausewitzian
reactions on many other governments, not only local or only Arab. If at
all possible, which might not be considering inertia of the political and
military establishemnts involved, the US should probably try to find some
non-Cl. way of retributing. Preferably one that does cause a lot of
discouragement and memetic reversals in both the general population and
these radical Islam ideologues, besides the more obvious small armed
engaments that would be needed to physically destroy the hardcore members
of Al Qaida. What I can't even begin to imagine is what the rest of the
world would do if the US puts all its weight behind such non-standard
kind of engagement. Probably getting shocked to death, for starters?
Carlos
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:16:10 MST