1115.org

In a first-season episode of The Wire, HBO’s bleak look at the perpetual inner-city drugs cat-and-mouse game, two police officers drive past a series of their problem corners only to find the ghetto equivalent of tumbleweeds rolling in the breeze. Clueless as to why streets that just a day earlier had been infested with fiends, whores, dealers and thugs were now empty, one of the cops said:

“Maybe the whole thing is over…Maybe we won.”

He was, of course, kidding. Even a meathead rookie knows that the idea of hustlers giving up their street corners and the massive profits they bring is silly. After weighing the risks that include violence, jail and even death, drug dealers decide that cash is king and they will do whatever to get it. This calculation certainly isn’t restricted to drugs. It’s common to all criminals, which is why there will always be crime; no matter how many you put away, there is always someone with the same mentality waiting for a shot. But when radical ideology is substituted for riches, things get exponentially more dangerous and the players more replaceable.

So it was with a combination of bemusement and dismay that I read this story that makes it sound like Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf is running his own version of The Wire’s irony. But Musharraf sounds a lot more certain, and a lot less in on the joke:

Gen Musharraf was adamant there was no connection. “Is it possible in this situation that an al-Qaeda man sitting here, no matter who he is, may control things [terror attacks] in London, Sharm el Sheikh, Istanbul or Africa?” he said. “This is absolutely wrong.”

Considering that Osama bin Laden has long been thought to be hiding in western Pakistan and that late last year (as in after the U.S. elections) Pakistan stopped looking for him, Musharraf’s comment seems lees than forthright. And looking back at how many of bin Laden’s “number threes” have been captured or killed (Mohammed Atef, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Faraj al-Libbi, Saif al-Adel, a man identified in court documents as “C-2″, and Mohammed Sheikh Mohammed), it is readily apparent that al-Qaeda can replace their leadership as fast as the situation demands.

Musharraf can’t say that terrorists are unable to operate in Pakistan with any more veracity than any American police chief can say that drugs have ceased to be a major problem in his city. The utter futility in both cases stems from the tactic employed to address the problem: war. Throughout history, war has been used to effectively accomplish a variety of goals, including enlarging empires, ending humanitarian disasters, removing threatening regimes and others. But as we have all learned over the last 20 years of the drug war, and even more dramatically in the 4 years of the war on terror, war doesn’t work when used against something that can’t be killed or captured and doesn’t know when it has been beaten. The war on drugs has resulted in an exploding prison population, billions of dollars wasted each year, a generation of professional addicts who have adapted to the system, and still almost half of all Americans over the age of 12 have have used illicit drugs. Fighting a war against drugs is futile because drugs can’t be totally eradicated (and partial eradication only makes the problem worse through market forces) and someone will always decide that the risks are outweighed by the reward.

The war on terror has been suffering from similar problems. Toppling the Taliban in Afghanistan (who were ironically much better at the drug war than we are), and Saddam Hussein in Iraq was relatively easy, the international equivalent of rounding up a few gang kingpins in Los Angeles. While the religious component of terrorism sets it apart from the drug trade, many of the other reasons (poverty, oppression, and hopelessness) are shared. And as long as conditions across the middle east and south Asia remain as dire as they are now, and exacerbated by displays of superpower military strength, terrorism will not only endure but thrive. The dealers in The Wire could afford to take a day off; their corners would still be there, just as the terrorists in Pakistan can lull Musharraf into a false sense of security because they have 1000 Years for Revenge.

The same reasons that led Ronald Reagan to declare war on drugs led George W. Bush to declare war on terror. Both faced a public demanding action, and rather than appear weak by taking a long view of problems that defy quick fixes, they took the (politically) easy way out by unleashing the dogs of war. Like the drug war before it, the war on terror has hemorrhaged money and lives, and made a bad situation much worse.

Smart policy would be to begin addressing the real causes of terrorism rather than throwing out idiotic phrases like “they hate us for our freedom.” But snappy phrases are all the Bush administration can really do.

U.S. Officials Retool Slogan for Terror War (NYT):

In recent speeches and news conferences, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the nation’s senior military officer have spoken of “a global struggle against violent extremism” rather than “the global war on terror,” which had been the catchphrase of choice.

For four years, voices from across the political spectrum have been calling for a more comprehensive strategy, including economic aid, enduring alliances, an end to support for corrupt and brutal dictators, integrated law enforcement and trade. Yet these voices have been savaged for being “weak on terror,” an echo of “weak on crime” that was used against anyone offering different ideas to counter the drug problem.

Of course, the gullible could read the Times article and expect that the administration is serious about using other means to solve the problem, but it’s all a bit too convenient after four years of the same. Remember, it was just a month ago that Bush advisor Karl Rove took this shot at liberals:

“Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers.”

Whatsa matta, Karl? London bombing? Egypt bombing? Polls not looking so good? And are we best served in reversing our negative perception in the world with partisan hacks like Karen Hughes and John Bolton representing us, or should that effort have been undertaken from the beginning when capable professionals like Colin Powell and Richard Armitage still had some credibility left?

New slogan or not, no one knows what victory looks like. It’s not a bunch of empty corners, or a military dictator spouting self-serving nonsense. Above all, it’s not our elected leaders moving the goal posts every time their hopeless policies are proven useless. At last report, those goal posts were all the way to the parking lot.

**Late update: via Kevin Drum.

It gets worse for Pakistan:

Afghan officials allege that Taliban and allied fighters who fled to Pakistan after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001 are learning new, more lethal tactics from the Pakistani military at numerous training bases.

“Pakistan is lying,” said Lt. Sayed Anwar, acting head of Afghanistan’s counter-terrorism department. “We have very correct reports from their areas. We have our intelligence agents inside Pakistan’s border as well.

….Zulfiqar Ali, a Pakistani journalist who freelances for the Los Angeles Times, recently reported that at least some training camps that were closed on [President Pervez] Musharraf’s orders have been reopened.

The government denies that there are training camps. But Ali, who also writes for the Pakistani magazine the Herald, visited one camp and found armed militants with fresh recruits as young as 13 undergoing 18-day “ideological orientation” and weapons training. Several sources said 13 militant camps had been reactivated in the Mansehra region alone in the first week of May.