[Column]S. Korea-U.S. alliance should no longer be global

Posted on : 2007-08-23 10:39 KST Modified on : 2007-08-23 10:39 KST

 

By Selig S. Harrison, Director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy
Next month, Americans will mark the sixth anniversary of September 11, 2001, with television replays from morning until night of the World Trade Center attack. Once again, as in each of the past five years, there will be somber discussions in the media about how to contain the continuing terrorist threat. But few of the commentators warning of the dangers ahead are likely to confront one central question: Did the nature of the U.S. response to September 11 inadvertently magnify the challenge of terrorism?

The provisional answer to this question is clearly yes. The Bush Administration’s concept of a “war on terror” has focused narrowly on developing an operational response to identifiable terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda. No effort has been made to assess the motivations and mind-sets of the September 11 hijackers or the suicide bombers and hostage takers of today, and to modify U.S. foreign and defense policies on the basis of this assessment.

On the contrary, until recently, to suggest that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are motivated in part by opposition to the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, and to the unconditional U.S. support given to Israel on the issue of a Palestinian state, has been treated as heresy, at best, and treason at worst.

Six years after 9/11, some critics of the Bush Administration are at last beginning to discuss the conceptual flaws in the “war on terror” concept and the self-defeating impact of U.S. policies, based on this concept, which have strengthened the indigenous forces in many countries sympathetic to Islamic terrorist groups like the Taliban.

The first significant overt challenge to “war on terror” orthodoxy came in a September 2006 Foreign Affairs article declaring that the entire U.S. response to 9/11 has been “overblown,” that it was “probably a one-time event that cannot be repeated, and that the threat from terrorist groups within the United States itself is almost non-existent.”

Soon afterward, a New York Review of Books article concluded that the “mental construct that framed the Administration’s reaction to September 11 as a ‘war’ is beginning to fall apart.” This was followed by a Wall Street Journal commentary and a book in which the influential billionaire financier, George Soros, wrote that “the war on terror is a false metaphor that has led to counterproductive and self-defeating policies. Five years after 9/11, a misleading figure of speech applied literally has unleashed a real war fought on several fronts - Iraq, Gaza, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Somalia - a war that has killed thousands of innocent civilians and enraged millions around the world. Yet Al Qaeda has not been subdued.” Then on December 11, 2006, the British Foreign Office said that it would no longer use the term “war on terror” because “Islamist extremists find it easier to recruit followers when Western governments speak of a war on terrorists, by suggesting that it is actually a war against Islam.”

That there is a widespread Muslim perception of the “war on terror” as a war on Islam was emphasized by Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi of Malaysia, chairman of the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference, who told the Financial Times that Muslims throughout the world have been “radicalized by Western policies in the Middle East, including the failure to resolve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, and the invasion of Iraq. Trying to resolve terrorism without examining its root causes is like trying to fertilize the fruits and not the roots.”

The most important factors that drive the growth of terrorism are the pro-Israel U.S. posture on the terms for an independent Palestinian state and the wholesale slaughter of Muslims that has resulted from the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Above all, the large-scale civilian casualties in both Iraq and Afghanistan have bred growing hatred not only of the United States but also of those U.S. allies and client states that are helping Washington.

South Koreans seeking to understand the mind-set of the despicable Taliban guerrillas who seized the 23 Saemmul hostages should consider the careful study of civilian casualties in Afghanistan by a respected economist, Professor Marc W. Herold of the University of New Hampshire Business School. The Herold study shows that 4,643 Afghan civilians had been killed by U.S. bombing attacks on suspected Taliban hideouts up to October 2006. This staggering number, which has since grown, is partly explained by the remote-controlled, computerized targeting of many air strikes from U.S. command centers thousands of miles from Afghanistan. Based on intelligence tips pinpointing a suspected hideout, high-altitude bombers far from the action on the ground, or pilotless Predator drone aircraft, have rained destruction on targets that turned out to be weddings or funerals.

The U.S.-installed Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has repeatedly pleaded for the reduced use of air strikes. On one occasion, he criticized the U.S.-N.A.T.O. commanders in a speech for treating Afghan lives as “cheap” and broke down in tears. So far, the only response to his pleas has been a N.A.T.O. statement two weeks ago that it would use smaller bombs.

Sadly, South Korea has been caught up in Afghan anger directed primarily at the United States. This was a predictable danger when Seoul sent troops to Afghanistan. Similarly the Korean missionaries seized in Iraq in 2004 were a target because Roh Moo Hyun made the mistake of identifying Seoul with the disastrous U.S. invasion.

The lesson of the hostage crisis for internationally-minded South Korean humanitarian aid organizations is not to stay at home but, rather, to stay away from places where they will become scapegoats for the sins of the United States.

For the Roh government and its successor, the lesson is that the R.O.K.-U.S. alliance should no longer be global in scope. During the cold war Seoul could not escape being dragged into the Vietnam War, linked as the Vietnamese Communists were to Russia and China. But now the alliance is rapidly losing its relevance even on the Korean peninsula, and it should never again become a pretext for Korean involvement in any new U.S. imperial adventures.

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