OPINION: Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir once remarked that she might be able to forgive the Arabs for killing Israeli children, but she could not forgive them for forcing Israelis to kill Arab children, writes David Ignatius.
One does not hear similar talk about the moral ambiguities of war from the Bush administration, especially from its headstrong Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld. Nor does one often hear voices that evoke common humanitarian aims in Iraq and the wider war against terrorism. One hears instead self-righteous talk of good and evil.
I think that’s partly why the administration has lost much of the global support it had after September 11th, 2001, and why it has got itself into such diplomatic trouble in the run-up to war against Saddam Hussein.
The Iraq war is just and defensible: taking arms to depose a dictator who twice has attacked neighbouring countries, tortures his own people and lies to the United Nations is precisely what a responsible international community should do. But the administration’s efforts to rally support for war have been dangerously inept, and Rumsfeld has been a principal culprit.
The administration’s mistakes have now produced so much opposition that the United States will face serious political problems in the future, no matter how quick or decisive the victory in Iraq.
Rumsfeld increasingly reminds me of a previous secretary of defence, Robert S. McNamara. Both men came into office mistrusting the generals and admirals of the uniformed military as overly timid and cautious, a mistrust that was reciprocated by the military brass. Both men believed in rationalising and modernising a hidebound Pentagon bureaucracy. Both surrounded themselves with cadres of bright intellectuals who appeared to have contempt for less clever people who didn’t understand their grand strategic vision.
Rumsfeld and McNamara even look a bit alike, with their athletic physiques and slicked-back hair. They convey a kind of self-confidence that is invaluable to presidents but often makes them seem arrogant to lesser mortals. Because they were so confident in their grand designs, neither man really understood the need to build broad public support for war.
McNamara and Rumsfeld also share a fascination with special operations, and I want to focus on this subject, for it is potentially the most dangerous area of commonality.
In McNamara’s day, it was the Green Berets. Under the Kennedy administration’s pet general, the dashing Gen Maxwell Taylor, these elite troops were going to use the latest technology to fight a war of counter-insurgency in the jungles. What began as a bold military adventure ended in the tragedy of Vietnam, a war that destroyed McNamara’s reputation.
Rumsfeld has a similar passion for special operations forces. They were decisive in the Afghanistan war, when a handful of soldiers on the ground were able to co-ordinate devastatingly accurate fire from planes overhead.
And they are already on the ground in Iraq, conducting what the Pentagon likes to call “operational preparation of the battlefield”. What’s less known is the planned post-Iraq role of about 500 special operations forces that make up a super-secret unit created in the 1980s.
That unit has been known variously as “Intelligence Support Activity”, “Yellow Fruit” and most recently, according to an October article by William M. Arkin, “Gray Fox”. By now, it probably has a new name.
The mission of these “global scouts”, as they’re euphemistically described, will be to act as human versions of the Predator missilethat is, to hunt and, if necessary, kill terrorists and other enemies of the United States.
These shoot-to-kill forces will be “forward-deployed” around the world –ready to strike when a target is detected in their zone. Before, such elite units would be dispatched from their base in the United States for hostage rescue or other sensitive assignments. Now, under an order signed by Rumsfeld in early December, they will be on scene, under cover, ready to act the instant they receive intelligence. They won’t have to operate through embassies or the regional commanders in chief. They will be, essentially, a force unto themselves.
To a world that is already suspicious of unilateral American power, these American ninjas–licensed by the Pentagon to assassinate those who are deemed America’s enemies – will hardly be welcome. They are another sign of this administration’s decision to treat the world as a global battlefield, and to rewrite the rules with friends and allies accordingly.
We may indeed be living in such a global battlefield, especially if the Iraq war goes badly. But to operate effectively against its enemies, the United States will need friends, and strong political support at home and abroad. That’s the part that Rumsfeld, like McNamara before him, seems to have forgotten.