Opinion/Mark Steyn: Among the instant cliches that sprang up after 9/11 was the notion that a "war on terror" is a meaningless concept. "It is misleading to talk of a 'war on terrorism', let alone a 'war on global terrorism'," sniffed the distinguished British historian Corelli Barnett in December.
" 'Terrorism' is a phenomenon, just as is war in the conventional sense. But you cannot in logic wage war against a phenomenon, only against a specific enemy." Most of us warmongers were inclined, if only in private, to agree with Mr Barnett. We assumed "war on terror" was a polite evasion, the compassionate conservative's preferred euphemism for what was really going on - a war against militant Islam, which, had you designated it as such, would have been harder to square with all those White House Ramadan photo-ops.
But here's the interesting thing. Pace the historian, it seems you can wage war against a phenomenon. If the "war on terror" is aimed primarily at al-Qaeda and those of similar ideological bent, it seems to have had the happy side-benefit of discombobulating various non-Islamic terrorists from Colombia to Sri Lanka. This isn't because these fellows are the administration's priority right now, but rather because it's amazing what a little light scrutiny of international wire transfers can do.
Pre-9/11, almost every country was openly indifferent to terrorism's global support network. In my own native land, Canada, financial contributions to terrorist groups were tax deductible.
Seriously. As part of the repulsive ethnic ward-heeling of the multiculti state, Liberal Party cabinet ministers attended fundraisers for the Tamil Tigers, the terrorist group that's plagued Sri Lanka for two decades. These guys are state-of-the-art terrorists: as the old song says, they were self-detonating before self-detonating was cool. Two decades back, they used a female suicide bomber to kill Rajiv Gandhi, the Indian Prime Minister, and, until the intifada, they were the market leader in "martyrdom operations". It's somehow sadly symbolic of the general bankruptcy of Palestinian "nationalism" that even its signature depravity should be second-hand.
But in an odd way Canada's indulgence of Sri Lankan terrorism became part of its defence against American accusations that the Great White North wasn't doing its bit in the new war. If you pointed out the huge sums of money raised in Canada for terrorism, Ottawa politicians would roll their eyes and patiently explain, ah yes, but most of that's for the Tamils or some such; nothing to do with Osama, nothing Washington needs to get its knickers in a twist about. As if destabilising our Commonwealth cousins in the Indian ocean had mysteriously become an urgent Canadian policy objective.
They were doing what most of the rest of us were doing - buying into the conventional wisdom that the "war on terror" was the war that dare not speak its name. But, funnily enough, intentionally or not, the Tamil Tigers wound up getting caught in the net. Their long campaign reached its apogee in a spectacular bloodbath at Sri Lanka's principal airport just over two years ago, a couple of months before 9/11, back when nobody was paying attention. By February of last year, they'd given up plans for an independent Tamil state and their chief negotiator in London was suing for peace on the basis of some sort of regional autonomy. It's an uneasy truce but tourists are returning to the island and the Tamil stronghold of Jaffna is being touted as "the new Phuket" (the Thai resort beloved of vacationing Brits).
You can find other examples of long-running local conflicts around the world from Burundi to Nepal that seem to have mysteriously wound down over the last two years. Might be just coincidence, as the media's bien pensants assure us is the case with Col Gadafy's about-face: nothing to do with Bush and his absurd war, old boy, don't you believe it. Or it might be that putting the bank transfers of certain groups on an international watch list has choked off the funding pump for a lot of terrorism. Even nickel'n'dime terrorists need nickels and dimes, and in your average war-torn basket-case state that usually means fundraising overseas.
Corelli Barnett was wrong when he wrote that "you cannot in logic wage war against a phenomenon, only against a specific enemy." For most of the last half-century, the activist left opposed not a specific enemy but a phenomenon - nuclear weapons.
Indeed, insofar as they wished our side to lead by example, they were more concerned by Anglo-American manifestations of the phenomenon rather than the specific enemy's. In those days, only the US, UK, France, China and the Soviet Union had nukes and the left was convinced Armageddon was just around the corner: fear of the phenomenon sold a gazillion posters, plays, books, films and LPs with big scary mushroom clouds on the cover. Now that nukes are no longer the preserve of an elite club of five relatively sane world powers but can be acquired by any ramshackle dictatorship or freelance nut group, the left is positively blasé on the subject.
But in their less decayed Cold War state the left was right to this extent: sometimes the phenomenon is the enemy. Germany's Baader-Meinhof Gang trained in Saddam's Iraq. The IRA has ties to Gadafy and to Colombian drug terrorists. Even the old line that "my enemy's enemy is my friend" doesn't quite cover these alliances: Saddam was pally with the Germans, and Gerry Adams and co have enough friends in high places in Washington who wouldn't take kindly to the IRA's Hispanic outreach. What drew these people together is the phenomenon: the mutual lack of squeamishness about blowing the legs off grannies in pizza houses. In that sense, they've more in common with the international piracy and slavery networks of two centuries ago.
President Bush implied as much in London a few weeks back, in his tip of the hat to the Royal Navy for stamping out the slave trade. As usual, the so-called idiot figured it out quicker than the smart guys: in the days after September 11th, he was shrewd enough to identify the real enemy and declare war on it. Two years on, in all kinds of tiny corners of the globe you never hear about on CNN, the bad guys are feeling the heat.