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New ideas for a dysfunctional war
Former senator uses lessons of the past to prepare for the future
By David Pollan
dpollan@mscd.edu

Photo by Adrian DiUbaldo • adiubald@mscd.edu Newly appointed Scholar-In-Residence and Tim Wirth Chair for Environmental and Community Development Policy at GSPA and former Sen. Gary Hart gave a speech to the public entitled “9/11: Five Years On” Sept. 11 in the King Center Recital Hall.

Former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart denounced U.S. foreign policy and the country’s response to the attacks of Sept. 11 as he addressed a group of people on the event’s five-year anniversary in the King Center Recital Hall.

Hart also provided suggestions on changes in foreign policy, ways to defeat jihadists without using traditional warfare and discussed the nation’s safety five years later.

Hart began the lecture by tackling the issue of official accountability for the Sept. 11 attacks. The 9/11 Commission only tentatively addressed the question of how the attacks could have occurred, Hart said.

According to Hart, the failure was a lack of response to warnings of an imminent attack. A committee that Hart co-chaired, the U.S. Commission on National Security for the 21st Century, predicted a major terrorist attack in the United States and issued a warning to the White House eight months prior to Sept. 11.

“This vacuum of accountability for Sept. 11 remains a dark shadow of an even darker day,” he said.

Fighting the jihadists
The attacks of Sept. 11, according to Hart, were not an act of war, but a crime committed against the American people. His reasoning was that by definition a war is between two or more nations with uniformed soldiers. The Geneva Convention was set up to civilize war, and the barbaric attacks violated the convention.

“Jihadists have a religious and not a political agenda,” he said. “They represent no state, wear no uniforms, attack civilian targets indiscriminately, seek to kill as many non-combatants as possible and make no demands for territory or possessions.”

According to Hart, they should not be considered warriors, but rather fanatical religious zealots who engage in criminal sabotage. Hart said it must be kept in mind that the conflict is with jihadists who use terrorist methods to fight wars. America is faced with a new kind of war and new strategies are needed because traditional, conventional warfare will not be successful.

“The most effective procedures are clandestine infiltration of cells, anticipation of operations and the termination of plotters and plots,” Hart said.

Hart called upon the use of SWAT teams and special operations forces to fight jihadists. The fighters need to be a mix of police officers and regular soldiers, said Hart, noting that when fighting homegrown terrorists – whether right-wing militia, radical animal-rights groups or clinic bombers – police and law-enforcement agencies are used.

“Suppression and elimination of jihadist cells much more resembles law enforcement than traditional warfare,” he said.

The ongoing wars
The current administration has used the war on terror to carry out other agendas that existed long before the attacks of Sept. 11, Hart said.

The United States waged war in Afghanistan directly following the Sept. 11 attacks. The purpose of the war was to terminate al-Qaida with planned attacks, destroying their bases, training grounds and leadership.

According to Hart, Americans and fellow members of the global community agreed with the invasion of Afghanistan as a legitimate and rationalized retaliation.

However, the war in Afghanistan was quickly forgotten when the United States began waging war in Iraq to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein. The Bush administration used the attacks of 9/11 to gain support for the war in Iraq, Hart said. Officials claimed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that there was a direct link between Hussein and the attacks on American soil. It has since been determined there was no connection between Hussein and Sept. 11.

Meanwhile, Hart said, “the real war against the jihad in Afghanistan is far from over.”

The war in Iraq has quickly become a conflict with indigenous insurgents who hold anti-American sentiments. He said it has escalated to a prolonged and bloody occupation, one in which there have been 20,000 American casualties, and noted that his definition of casualties is not the number killed, but rather the number who have been wounded and killed in combat.

“This conflict miscalculation is one of the worst in U.S. history,” he said. “It turned a quick military action into an occupation nightmare with no foreseeable end.”

Hart pointed out that supporters of the war argue that the overthrow of governments that harbor terrorists is critical to winning the war on terror. If that were true, he said, the United States would then have to invade a host of nations where jihadists are located, some of which are American allies. According to Hart, al-Qaida leadership is principally located in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Egypt, not Iraq. He also said Europe is now the stronghold for jihadists, not the Middle East.

“In simple terms, doctrines and instruments of traditional warfare will not defeat the jihadist threat to the United States,” Hart said. “In fact, our voluntary war and continued occupation of Iraq fuels terrorism.”

The Iraq invasion was a strategic move by the American government to form a stronghold in the Middle East, he said.

A pre-emptive strike of Iraq was backed by a couple of motives, Hart said. One was the use of American world power to create, as Hart called it, a unitary presidency. In other words, creating a presidency of extraordinary and supra-constitutional authority. The other motive was to make Iraq a permanent political and military base for the United States. The president has advisers and members of his cabinet who were part of a committee to overthrow Hussein in the past, and now that they were in power, they made their dream into a reality.

Hart also disagreed with a continued American occupation of Iraq, claiming that it only fuels terrorists and puts the United States at greater risk to an attack. In regards to American occupation, Hart said the nearly $500 million spent on military and reconstruction costs to build garrisons throughout Iraq and a 120-acre fortress in downtown Baghdad, could be better spent on the American people for things such as health care and education.

“The Iraqi insurgency will continue as long as American military forces are there,” he said.

American safety: five years later
There have been no major attacks on American soil in the past five years. Some say it is because Americans are fighting the terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan so they will not attack the United States at home.

However, Hart argued, the insurgents being fought in Iraq are 90 percent indigenous Iraqi insurgents and not al-Qaida. These insurgents are not interested in attacking Americans at home. They are interested in getting Americans out of their country. Fewer than 10 percent of the insurgents in Iraq are foreign jihadists, he said.

“Regardless of the length of time we stay in Iraq, we will be attacked again at home,” Hart said. “And we are not prepared.”

According to Hart, the Department of Homeland Security is not what the American people had in mind, evidenced by its response to Hurricane Katrina. The department is too cumbersome and is poorly managed.

Another reason America is unprepared for another attack is that too many National Guard members have been deployed to Iraq, he said.

“The backbone of homeland security is a well-trained National Guard ready for immediate deployment in and throughout the United States to repel attacks or to respond to them when they occur,” he said.

But, Hart said, this is impossible because much of the Guard is in Iraq and not training to prevent or respond to attacks in the United States.

The purpose of homeland security is to prevent jihadist attacks, and the best security, in Hart’s opinion, is to find out through intelligence what is being planned and to stop it before it can be carried out. Hart said Americans are nowhere close to achieving this task.

“There will always be risks, but we are not nearly as prepared as we ought to be and can be,” he said.

Hart called for a change in U.S. foreign policy, starting with rebuilding alliances shattered by the war in Iraq. The United States needs to demonstrate it is a good partner and an equal ally in the fight against the jihadists. The U.S. must also recognize jihadist terrorism as an international threat.

But most importantly, Hart said, the United States needs to lower its military presence and visibility in the Middle East.

“It is essential to our security that we reduce our dependence on Persian Gulf oil,” he said. “No single policy would more reduce the terrorist threat.”

As long as Americans are dependant on Persian Gulf oil, the need to fight for oil will present itself, Hart said, and with the need to fight for oil, soldiers must be deployed to the region. A military presence in the region will only cause national insurgencies, and as long as America is an occupier in the region it will suffer escalating casualties, Hart emphasized.

“We will go to war for oil and all we will get is war, and not oil,” Hart said. “Jihadists will defeat us only if we lay our freedom on the altar of political expediency and sacrifice our convictions and our courage.”

Hart is currently the scholar-in-residence, the Wirth Chair for Environmental and Community Development Policy, at the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center Graduate School of Public Affairs. He was a Colorado senator from 1975 to1987 and a two-time presidential candidate. He has served in the U.S. Department of Justice and at the U.S. Department of the Interior. He has also authored 16 books.