[Retired Army Gen. Wayne A.] Downing, Bush's first counterterrorism adviser after Sept. 11, said in a 2002 interview that hunting down al Qaeda leaders could do no more than "buy time" for longer-term efforts to stem the jihadist tide. This month he said, "Time is not on our side."Now, I know enough to know how little I know about how something like this would work in practice, and it requires more than just American money thrown in the general direction of the Pakistani school system to begin correcting what are deep systemic and social problems; for example, if we fund a bunch of free, American-approved curriculum schools, is the attitude in Pakistan such that people will necessarily want to attend? Given the general lack of practical preparation for a life or career in the modern economy offered by the madrassas, you would think the draw would be apparent, but on the other hand Pakistan's modern economy is pretty badly struggling as it is, so there's a question of how much an American-supported education would be worth even once you've got it.
"This is not a war," he said. "What we're faced with is an Islamic insurgency that is spreading throughout the world, not just the Islamic world." Because it is "a political struggle," he said, "the military is not the key factor. The military has to be coordinated with the other elements of national power."
Many of Downing's peers -- and strong majorities of several dozen officers and officials who were interviewed -- agree. They cite a long list of proposals to address terrorism at its roots that have not been carried out. Among them was a plan by Wendy Chamberlin, then ambassador to Pakistan, to offer President Pervez Musharraf a substitute for Saudi funding of a radical network of Islamist schools known as madrasas. Downing backed Chamberlin in the interagency debate, describing education as "the root of many of the recruits for the Islamist movement." Bush promised such support to Musharraf in a meeting soon after Sept. 11, said an official who accompanied him, but the $300 million plan did not survive the White House budget request.
That said, some effort on our parts towards tackling these deeper systemic problems would be a nice start, and given their apparent lack of interest in pursuing a real broader strategy of engaging the threat represented by militant Islamic revivalism and these "cancerous" independent groups, as opposed to military campaigns against unrelated state sponsors and a hit list of Al Qaeda leaders circa 2001 on the CIA's walls, it appears to be a start the Bush administration is incapable of seriously attempting:
Bush emphasizes force of will -- determination to prosecute the enemy, and equally to stand up to allies who disapprove. Bush and his aides most often deflect questions about recent global polls that have found sharply rising anti-U.S. sentiment in Arab and Muslim countries and in Europe, but one of them addressed it in a recent interview. Speaking for the president by White House arrangement, but declining to be identified, a high-ranking national security official said of the hostility detected in surveys: "I don't think it matters. It's about keeping the country safe, and I don't think that matters."I'm sure that, deep down in his heart, George W. Bush is a well-meaning guy doing the best he can in a difficult time with the abilities God, family, and the Harvard Business School gave him. But as President of the United States he is in over his head, and America deserves -- and needs -- better, reality-based leadership right now.
That view is at odds with the view of many career military and intelligence officials, who spoke with increasing alarm about al Qaeda's success in winning recruits to its cause and defining its struggle with the United States. ...
Whatever its results, the manhunt remains at the center of Bush's war. He mentions little else, save the Taliban's expulsion from power, when describing progress against al Qaeda. According to people who have briefed him, Bush still marks changes by hand on a copy of the HVT list.
"This is a conversation he's been having every day, more or less, with his senior advisers since September 11th," Falkenrath said. It covers "the same people, over and over again." ...
The formal White House strategy for combating terrorism says that the United States will "use every instrument of national power -- diplomatic, economic, law enforcement, financial, information, intelligence, and military" to triumph. A central criticism in the Sept. 11 commission's report is that the efforts at nonmilitary suasion overseas lack funding, energy from top leaders and what the commission's executive director, Philip D. Zelikow, called "gravitas."
Most officials interviewed said Bush has not devised an answer to a problem then-CIA Director George J. Tenet identified publicly on Feb. 11, 2003 -- "the numbers of societies and peoples excluded from the benefits of an expanding global economy, where the daily lot is hunger, disease, and displacement -- and that produce large populations of disaffected youth who are prime recruits for our extremist foes."
The president and his most influential advisers, many officials said, do not see those factors -- or U.S. policy overseas -- as primary contributors to the terrorism threat. Bush's explanation, in private and public, is that terrorists hate America for its freedom.
Update: Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings is equally mystified by the the Bush administration's lack of concern for possibility that there might be more terrorists where that come from. And regrettably takes my post title as well. Curses.
Also, Yglesias at TAPPED: "One of the more curious lines I've heard trotted out in recent months is that while George W. Bush's policy implementation may be bad, he has a good understanding of so-called "grand strategy," the big-picture issues, and John Kerry does not. The Post, by adopting the novel expedient of relying on the grand strategy that exists in the orders given to the people operationally responsible for conducting the war on terrorism rather than the grand strategy that exists in the orders given to the White House speechwriting staff, reveals that this is entirely wrong."
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