A war, or un-war?

• Author: Pena, Charles
• Position: Winning the Un-War: A New Strategy for the War on Terrorism

In the spirit of constructive debate to advance American foreign policy to navigate "through the shoals of the coming years" and "safely steer the ship of state", I'd like to address some of the comments made in J. Peter Pham's review of my book Winning the Un-War: A New Strategy for the War on Terrorism in the September/October 2006 issue of The National Interest.

First, Pham writes that I fail "to address the reality with which policymakers have to deal: regardless of how it became that way, Iraq today is the central front in the War on Terror." What he's really saying is that he doesn't agree with my analysis that Iraq is not the central front in the un-war. Fair enough. But that's not the same thing as me not addressing the issue. In fact, Chapter 2, "A Dangerous Distraction", makes the case for why Iraq is not the central front. And the latter part of Chapter 3, "Clearing the Decks for War", addresses why I believe it is in our strategic interests for the un-war to exit Iraq sooner rather than later. He believes that we need to win in Iraq. I believe that, at best, we might achieve a tactical victory but that ultimately trying to prevail in Iraq is a recipe for strategic defeat visa-vis the real enemy: Al-Qaeda and radical Islam.

Second, he writes that my "proposition that 'moderating' U.S. support for both 'apostate' Muslim governments and Israel would remedy the hatred of Al-Qaeda and like-minded groups towards the United States is left disappointingly vague and facile (even were it not highly questionable)." Here again, I think this is more a case of him simply not agreeing with my analysis. The latter part of Chapter 5, "Yin and Yang of al Qaeda", goes into detail examining and documenting AI-Qaeda's stated reasons for attacking the United States, including support for apostate Muslim governments. I concede that changing U.S. support for these governments will not likely change Bin Laden's or other hard-core Islamic radicals' hatred towards the United States, but it will take a lot of the wind out of their sails in terms of support within the Muslim world. As I documented in Chapter 3, numerous polls show that negative Muslim attitudes toward the United States (which is the basis for being able to recruit to the terrorist ranks) stem largely from American foreign policy, in particular U.S. support for authoritarian, oppressive and corrupt regimes, which are many of the same ones cited by Bin Laden. My proposition would only be...