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A Question of Coherence

By Erik Tarloff
Posted Thursday, Sept. 27, 2001, at 3:24 PM ET

Mickey's notion, along with much of the very intelligent discussion it has engendered, may presuppose a level of political coherence on the part of the terrorists that is, in reality, lacking. In an interview given, I believe, last year, Bin Laden described his program as "killing Jews, Zionists, and Christian crusaders"; it's difficult to imagine a fruitful negotiation over such a policy. And any conceivable Israeli-Palestinian settlement--not that one seems imminent in any case--would clearly be considered by these people to be a capitulation, a worse than Versailles-style humiliation, regardless of its contours. Perhaps the complete dismantling of Israel and the permanent withdrawal of all Western forces from the region would do the trick, at least temporarily, but that particular solution isn't in the cards.

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Mickey's other point, that such a settlement would be indirectly beneficial because it might reduce the number of terrorist volunteers, may have some merit, but it's unclear to me how important that ultimately would prove to be. We're not dealing with force majeure here, after all; we're dealing with a handful of crazies willing to give their lives in order to take many more lives. We're dealing, alas, with the allure, the glamour of violence. Which is why I suspect political agendas are irrelevant; the events of Sept. 11 may have had no more coherence than Timothy McVeigh's act of barbarity or the Unibomber's mad savagery. Hell, it may have no more coherence than the shooting spree of the teen-agers at Columbine High School.

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Meanwhile, it's worth noting how many coded and semicoded messages were contained in today's New York Times. I counted three on the front page and one, courtesy of the secretary of defense himself, on the op-ed page. And they all convey the same warning: After two weeks of bluster, the government doesn't actually know what to do next. And that's because, despite the military buildup, an effective answer to the outrage won't be a military operation, not primarily--there just aren't any appropriate targets to strike at--but a slow, sustained program of covert operations. Infiltration, disruption, and interdiction. It will take precise intelligence, knowledgeable volunteers, lots of money, considerable ingenuity, and a great deal of time. And in the end, it will provide no emotional satisfaction, no feeling of a fitting revenge gratifyingly exacted. If it succeeds, we'll know only after several years have elapsed, and even more frustrating, the evidence will all be negative: No more buildings will have been leveled, no sarin gas or anthrax will have been released into the water or air of an American city.

Which may add up to a serious political problem for the current administration, even though it's riding high right now. Sure, President Bush's approval ratings are in the 90s. This isn't surprising. Any president in this situation will benefit from the country's collective sense of horror, quite fittingly. (President Carter's numbers were very high after the hostages were captured by Iranian thugs back in 1979, for example.) In addition, the president delivered a beautifully crafted speech last week. But he has also set us up to expect some effective act of retribution, some explosive and violent emotional release, and it isn't clear to me that any is possible. Even if our forces succeed in finding and killing Osama Bin Laden--and I shall shed no tears should it happen--that won't begin to redress the immense atrocity done us and certainly won't forestall further threats. Quite the contrary, in fact. It could easily provoke a response. In the meantime, the whole country has been prepared for something decisive to happen. Now it's being eased down again, but the process may not be so smooth.

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