Logic and War

There is a well known fallacy in argumentation that the coincidence of two events does not imply correlation between them. It is with this background that one must regard the rush by authors of various backgrounds to claim whether we “won” or are “winning” the war against terrorism because we are in Iraq.  In the final week of May, we saw three op-eds in The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and one controversial book on this matter.

One article was by Donald Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, July 2001 to August 2005.  In a piece entitled “How Bush Sold the War” (WSJ, 27 May 2008), Feith makes the argument that after weapons of mass destruction were not found in Iraq the administration was forced to change the justification of the war to “promoting democracy” in the region. Such a shift, Feith argues, deflected attention from the strategic objective of removing an immediate threat (Saddam) as a stepping stone to defeating terrorism globally, which was the original impetus for the administration’s call to arms. Suddenly, we were in a different business, and the American public was asked recalibrate their thinking.

To counterbalance this view, Thane Rosenbaum, a law professor, wrote a piece “The President is Keeping Us Safe” (WSJ, 30 May 2008).  He uses as his argument the absence of attack on US soil for seven years, although he concedes that “Madrid, Glasgow, London and Bali; the entire nation of Denmark; and of course, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv” became targets during this time.  One wonders, then, what became of the principle of NATO wherein an attack on one member is viewed as an attack on all. Using that principle, “our”—the West’s—safety was breeched.  (For those asking where was NATO in our struggle against terrorism, the answer is they are in Afghanistan, from where the 9/11 attack originated, but they took issue with the US with respect to the connection of terrorism with the war in Iraq … precisely the connection that is being questioned in the present debate.)

During that last week in May too, former White House Press secretary’s Scott McClellan’s memoire of his witnessing of the President’s conduct of the war was released.  The book and its publication date might arguably be viewed as indiscrete or motivated by a quick buck.  But Peggy Noonan, who cannot be accused of being an apologist for the President’s detractors, finds that such books are important to feed history, irrespective of their timing. In her analysis (Noonan: Declarations, WSJ, 31 May 2008), she views McClellan as “believable” when he describes the administration’s obsessive focus on shaping public opinion about the war, “spin”, rather than addressing the overriding concern of the nation.  She considers this volume with Feith’s book on which his article was based (Feith, Douglas.  War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism. New York: HarperCollins, 2008) as contribution to healthy debate, and calls for more such documentation.  To have two former White House officials independently corroborating the administration’s approach to opinion management is not coincidence.

So how does all this tie together?  On the one hand, we have those who, like Rosenbaum, defend the current strategy and offer as evidence our relative safety.  The Vice President often uses this argument. Putting aside for a moment the implied criterion that only seven years is an acceptable timeframe during which we can judge success, the logic behind such a proclamation is questionable given that no correlation between the war and the absence of attacks has been established. The villages of the Middle Ages felt safe behind the walls they built, until their enemy discovered the trebuchet.

There are conflicting estimates regarding Al Qaeda’s relative strength and their ability to strike the West again.   Which begs the question: as long as Al Qaeda exists, is it premature to declare victory? And the corollary: what must we do now to redirect our strategic objective so that victory may be declared?  If Al Qaeda’s main base of operation is not in Iraq, does that answer lie in Iraq?  The Presidential campaign will afford us the opportunity to examine these questions, if we use the history that is being written by those close to current policy to redirect our future efforts.