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By Michael D. Roberts |
What Bush and his spin-doctors fail to analyze is the nature of terrorism and its penchant for survival as a network. Politically, terrorism, by its very essence, demands such concentrated energy for the "great moment" (the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks) and such an overestimation of the signifance of warped individual heroism, and finally, such a "hermetic" conspiracy, that if not logically, then psychologically its excludes completely any agitational and organizational work among the very people in whose name it purports to strike.
Thus, for terrorists in the field of politics there exist only two central focuses the government and its own organization. Using this narrow perception of political, social and economic life terrorism excludes any consultation or linkages with the mass of people that it seeks to "liberate." This arrogance and conceited approach suggests a lack of confidence in the people to achieve their political aims, and shamelessly exploits the weaknesses and disorganization of the people and community by minimizing their gains and exaggerating their defeats.
But Bush's characterization of Al Qaeda as a terrorist network is absolutely correct. However, he and his aides do not quite make the connection between terrorism as a network that is designed to survive because of their varied and secretive structures. By its very nature and design Al Qaeda is a modern network that is not the typical terrorist network of the 1960s and 70s where a controlling hub was surrounded by terrorist cells. Today, Al Qadea as the best example of a terrorist network, is a sprawling, decentralized arrangement that closely resembles the Internet.
The war in Afghanistan, says the Bush Administration, is but one facet and phase of the war to dismantle the terrorist network. Be that as it may, dismantling this network will demand a different set of strategies and tactics than those used to kill the Taliban and hunt bin Laden. That is because the design of a network will ultimately determine its resilience, its vulnerability, and its ability to adapt and reconfigure itself to survive threats against it. In this age of globalization notions of sovereignty and self-sufficiency have been weakened and the Internet has given terrorism a new and dangerous metamorphosis.
Consider that the Internet is a network of computers that are not controlled by anyone nation or person and is constantly and rapidly evolving and producing new facets each and every day. Indeed, this breaking up information into bits, or "packages," and routing them in pieces among different channels for military secrecy was precisely how the Internet was developed. Nobody had all the "pieces" and only when they reached their final common destination were all the pieces assembled into a finished product called information.
Today's terrorist network is no different. It is a series of far-flung bits and pieces of organization that change and adapt to attacks against it and conditions that exist in real time. Technological networks, like the Internet, help terrorist networks flourish. Al Qaeda sends information encrypted in photographs and secure e-mails over the Internet as part of this network. Booking hotel rooms, securing travel arrangements and sending money is as simple as clicking a mouse in the comfort of a room in Baghdad or a cave in Yemen. Ten years ago such coordination and network organization would not have been possible without the rapid rise of the Internet and the process of globalization.
But unlike the Internet that is used by the industrialized west for commercial and economic purposes and by private citizens as a means to communicate better, terror networks seek to interrupt and destabilize existing order for its own narrow ends. Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda seek to use a modern technological marvel to achieve archaic ends. The attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon were also symbolic attacks on the American Way of Life that is the best example of the demise of the controlling elements of pre-feudal systems of government.
Bin Laden and the Taliban represent a backward, reactionary clique of extremists who want to return the world to the era of ignorance and male elitist control where kings, priests, and scribes had a monopoly on learning; and where society was ruled by dictat. America stands in the way of all this because of its zealous pursuit of individual freedoms, an open society, and the right of the people to define and decide their own destiny through a system of national representation -however flawed.
The reason why an Al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden exists today is because of the flip side of these progressive rights and systems. Indeed, isolated terrorist explosions are inevitable whenever political oppression transgresses certain boundaries. Such acts, the WTC and Pentagon attacks included, are always symptomatic in character and reflect deeper underlying causes. The basic property of terror as a system is to destroy that organization to compensate for its own lack of political strength. Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden have no political organization and their support is based on the grasping straws of people who labor and struggle under the heavy yoke of national oppression.
Today's difficulty in combating such a nasty piece of work is based on the fact that military reaction to outrageous acts of terrorism must be limited lest it becomes equated with terrorism itself due to the collateral civilian damage and casualties that is bound to occur. Further, a network may not be designed around power and control centers, or worse yet dismantled when under pressure, and re-organized in such a way as to elude detection. Herein lies the chilling nature of Al Qaeda or any terrorist network for that matter. What will happen if the U.S. and its allies successfully get bin Laden dead or alive and the network remained intact and only reinvented itself as the Internet does?
And what about if Al Qaeda is not so hierarchical as analysts assume and that there is no one person with a complete overview of the entire network? The attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon suggests that this might have been the case since members of the "strike force" only knew what they were expected to do and no more. This compartmentalization is what makes Al Qaeda so potent as a network. So the big question is this: how will this kind of new network, a human version of the Internet, be undermined, fought, and dismantled given its suspected ties to other networks unique in their own design and structures?
These are serious questions and challenges for the western world to grapple with since the defeat of the Taliban, or the offing of bin Laden and his minions, will not destroy the network. It is like defeating a computer virus without catching the hacker. America's war on terrorism will not be fought or won with B52 bombers and the glowing exploits of our marines, but in simple rooms before 17-inch computer monitors by nerdy looking people with the ability to go after the spiders in the network so that they cannot spin any more webs.