The Forever War on Terror: Dilemmas and Choices
Charles B. Strozier, Ph.D., Professor of History, John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Director, John Jay Center on Terrorism, New York; and a training and supervising analyst, TRISP.
Summary of paper delivered at the meetings of the APsaA in Atlanta, June 20, 2008
In my talk I described the apocalyptic mindset that underlies the current global “war on terror” (GWOT). The GWOT emerged out of a radical shift in America’s relation to the world after 9/11. The GWOT, as a self-proclaimed fight against evil, has served as the ideological basis for the actual wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The GWOT also reverses centuries of our cautious posture to the world, projecting power in ways not seen since the Roman Empire. This new stance alters the principles established by the framers of the constitution, and early presidents, particularly George Washington, John Quincy Adams, James Monroe, and Abraham Lincoln.
Four perspectives underlie the GWOT of the Bush Administration’s policies to “eliminate evil itself” since 9-11:
epistemological: The naming of terrorism includes the profound effect of the media according to a political Heisenberg Principle, in which the reality of subatomic particles are altered when observed; 24/7 television changes the reality of the war itself. The militarization of counter-terrorism also turns terrorists into warriors which ethically legitimates their brutality;
phenomenological : The actual experiences of war stir ambition, avarice, vanity and the love of fame which conspire against peace, something James Madison cautioned against, as did all the founders, whose wisdom is essentially scorned by the GWOT;
historical: We now have an ideological shift that allows for preemptive strikes in a vast and unending war to eliminate evil in the world, an impractical and foolish project;
eschatological: The psychological and apocalyptic theology of last things evokes a magnitude of fear, confusion, and fragmentation that produce rage which is the affect most easily manipulated by an authoritarian leader and regime with a set agenda.
To understand better this eschatological perspective of the GWOT, I described the sense of time that shapes the mindset of fundamentalists from George W. Bush to Osama bin Laden. In a distinction first drawn by Phillip Rieff in a profound book about Freud in 1964 (Freud: The Mind of the Moralist), the Greeks talked of chronos time (rational, chronological, and predictable), as opposed to kairos time (qualitative, uneven, weighted for value, and unpredictable). The latter is crucial for understanding trauma in general and its totalized form moves into apocalyptic time. Such a sense of time has almost nothing to do with an actual past or history. Kairotic time reverses past and future and produces a terrible sense of urgency with the notion of redemptive violence and punishment for sinners and a goal to achieve unconditional surrender of all terrorists anywhere, anytime, as though that were possible.
And yet there is hope. Police in many places but especially in New York City have been very creative in dealing with the real threats terrorism represents. The new (since 9/11) Counter Terrorism Bureau (CTB) is a model for the country and the world. There is also an intelligent program of deradicalization going on in place like Indonesia and throughout the Middle East. Both of these options move policy dealing with terrorism from absurd and dangerous wars against evil to pragmatic, cautious, moderate, and wise approaches. At all costs we must avoid apocalyptic armies marching to the tune of endist drummers. Needless to say, such a policy shift in dealing with terrorism represents a logical choice for Barack Obama, something, alas, he has not taken up as yet. Whatever we do, we must embrace ambiguity, abandon apocalyptic dramas, and learn again to be cautious, fair, just, and wise. We have a long way to go.