“There also exists an equally prevalent and equally false notion that terrorism represents an existential threat to the US. Taken together, these fantasies make terrorists seem more like zombies than like political actors, although more like the fast zombies from 28 Days Later than the traditional, Evil Dead–era models. As with zombies, the only way to resolve a conflict with terrorists is to kill them all.”
“One of the main effects of this consensus has been to forbid any discussion of terrorist organizations’ political goals, which really do exist, regardless of how grotesque, unrealistic, or unacceptable they may seem to the US.”
“ISIS is probably best described as an “anti-state” that wants to “demolish the state system created by nineteenth- and early-twentieth century Europeans who had reconfigured the Greater Middle East to suit their own imperial purposes.” Hamas, which is approaching its twentieth year as a US Department of State–designated terrorist organization, still refuses to recognize the state of Israel. But it has also repeatedly declared that it would agree to a truce with Israel in exchange for the creation of a referendum-approved independent Palestinian state along the borders of 1967.”
“Al Qaeda seeks the withdrawal of western forces and influence from the Middle East, as well as the toppling of the region’s pro-West autocrats. Al-Shabaab has fractured in significant ways since its emergence in 2006, but it is still accurate to say that it seeks the overthrow of the Somali Federal Government and its replacement with a government conducted according to fundamentalist Islamic law. For none of these groups is the murder of Americans and others the goal—the terrorism is the tactic by which the goal might be achieved.”
“US politicians insist on continuing to mistake the tactic for the goal.”
“When writers compare the US wars in Iraq and Vietnam, their focus has tended to be predominantly military, mulling over the internal contradictions of counterinsurgency tactics or the weird assumption that airstrikes and an invading army might succeed at winning the love and admiration of the people whose country is invaded.”
“But the Vietnam War was also prosecuted on the basis of a similar misapprehension of the political situation. It seems likely, in fact, that this misapprehension was one of the war’s prerequisites, that Vietnam simply could not have happened without it.”
“As Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon escalated the country’s commitments to South Vietnam, they all justified the fight by citing what they said was North Vietnam’s commitment to spreading Soviet influence in Southeast Asia. But while Ho Chi Minh was very much a communist, he didn’t want Vietnam to be a client state of Soviet Russia. He was first and foremost a nationalist seeking to get Vietnam out from under French or any other kind of colonial control.”
“What he wanted was a unified Vietnam.”
“Getting Ho’s motivations wrong went some way toward dooming the American military effort in Vietnam from the outset, as the US spent years trying to crush an authentic nationalist guerrilla uprising in the south that they mistook for a sham insurrection orchestrated by the north at Soviet instigation.”
“The fantasy of the Soviet puppeteer made the American war possible and unwinnable at the same time.”
“If terrorist aims can be boiled down to a desire to commit mass murder repeatedly, then of course you have to pursue them with military force until they’ve all been destroyed.”
“Sustaining this fiction has meant refusing to acknowledge the regional politics and goals of these groups, and this has muted public debate on the war. It’s not very hard to imagine why debate might have been muted in this way: considering the terrorists’ real goals would require politicians to ask whether America’s military still has any meaningful role to play in the Middle East.”
“The inability to imagine terrorists surrendering may be a relatively minor aspect of a political discussion that has been minimized and suppressed in so many ways, but it is a telling aspect. A political system that cannot imagine the enemy’s surrender is also a political system that cannot imagine the war’s end.”