A dodo of a national security policy

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-brooks24mar24,0,6111335.column
From the Los Angeles Times
ROSA BROOKS
A dodo of a national security policy
Rosa Brooks

March 24, 2006


......On Sept. 7, 2003, George W. Bush insisted, "Terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength; they are invited by the perception of weakness." A few days later, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld picked up the line, and by the following year, it was an established administration mantra, hauled out each time anyone suggested that the war in Iraq has worsened the threat of terrorism. Vice President Dick Cheney seemed particularly attached to the phrase, offering it up in 2004 to audiences of high school kids and firefighters alike.

For much of 2005, the phrase seemed to be on the verge of extinction, driven there by dwindling public support for the administration's manifestly delusional Iraq policies. But confounding evolutionary logic, it now seems to be enjoying a comeback, if only within the administration. Cheney has used it in several speeches this year, dusting it off most recently for an appearance Tuesday at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois.

The claim that "terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength; they are invited by the perception of weakness" has a pleasing structural symmetry, which is presumably why administration speechwriters like it so much. But as a prescription for U.S. policy, the phrase ought to join the dodo and the woolly mammoth. It's dangerously misleading, and if high-ranking members of the administration really believe it, they have no business setting U.S. national security policy.

Here's the basic problem. In a sense, the "use of strength" does cause terrorist attacks. This is not an argument for weakness, but a simple statement of fact. The United States possesses the most powerful conventional military in the world, and no state or nonstate actor can go up against the U.S. in a traditional war and face anything other than crushing defeat. But as a direct result of our military strength, those who don't like us (an ever-expanding group, thanks to the Bush administration) will employ the classic weapons of the weak: unconventional tactics such as guerrilla warfare, infrastructure sabotage, suicide bombings and terrorism......

If one does not have the overt strength to fight a conventional war against an overwhelming enemy, one uses the tactics and weapons that work...or one simply fails.