Paper Tiger
-by Mark Silverberg
Frederick the Great of Prussia once counseled his war cabinet: "Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments." To those who counseled caution in the face of aggression, he responded that nations that were not prepared to protect their strategic interests would, in a short order, have no strategic interests to protect. The intervening three centuries have not diminished the truth of the principle.
In his 1996 "Declaration of War Against the Americans," Osama bin Laden cited the U.S. retreat from Somalia in 1993: "You have been disgraced by Allah and you withdrew. The extent of your impotence and weaknesses has become very clear," he said. “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.”
Judging magnanimity as weakness, the half-educated in al Qaeda embraced the concept that the "soft" West was not prepared to defend its strategic interests. This perception became provocative. From Beirut to the Hezbollah kidnappings and executions of American diplomats in the 1980s, to Somalia (1993), to the first attempt to bring down the World Trade Center (1993), to the Khobar Towers (1996) and African embassy bombings (1998) to the USS Cole (2000), America responded with lawyers not marines to deal with "criminals" not terrorists. Our enemies and Middle Eastern "friends" alike sneered at us. The aid we gave to them only convinced them further that we were weak and ripe for an Islamic takeover. The perception grew that the West not only could not fight, but would not fight. We became viewed as a great power who spoke in principled terms, but who was adverse to spend blood and treasure in pursuit of them.
Al Qaeda and its global Islamic terrorist affiliates came to the conclusion that America's weakness stemmed from a post-Vietnam conviction that required future wars to be short, antiseptic and casualty free. Bin Laden summed up his perception of Americans in an interview with ABC News reporter John Miller, published in Esquire in 1998: “After leaving Afghanistan, the Muslim fighters headed for Somalia and prepared for a long battle thinking that the Americans were like the Russians. The youth were surprised at the low morale of the American soldiers and realized, more than before, that the American soldier was a paper tiger and after a few blows……would run in defeat.”
In another portion of that interview, Miller quotes bin Laden as saying: "We have seen in the last decade the decline of American power and the weakness of the American soldier who is ready to wage Cold Wars, but unprepared to fight long wars. This was proven in Beirut in 1983 when the Marines fled after two explosions. It also proves they can run in less than 24 hours, and this was also repeated in Somalia (in 1993)." Three years later, on September 11, 2001, al Qaeda turned our planes into cruise missiles and murdered three thousand Americans in New York, Washington and the fields of Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
With the events of September 11, 2001 behind him, President Bush proclaimed what came to be known as "The Bush Doctrine" - the beginning of the robust use of American power, an end to moral ambiguity ("you are either with us or with the terrorists") defining terrorism as a free floating malignancy; held states responsible and accountable for the terrorists they sheltered, funded and sponsored; asserted a right of preemptive action to prevent rogue states from acquiring weapons of mass destruction; and confirmed that promoting stability in the Arab Middle East through democratic change were now fundamental principles of American foreign policy. (Whether Western-type democracies can be superimposed upon the tribal Islamic cultures of the Middle East remains to be seen). In its wake, both the Islamic theocracy in Afghanistan and the secular dictatorship in Iraq fell.
But when the shock and awe campaign in Iraq fizzled, it became clear to Abu Musab al Zarqawi and his Islamic lieutenants that America had not changed its fundamental nature. Behind all the rhetoric, it remained a "paper tiger." When U.S. forces failed to respond to the looting of Baghdad or to the murders and decapitations of American civilian contractors; when American forces initially hesitated to take Fallujah for fear of casualties and failed again to take action against the rebel Shi'ite leader Muqtada al Sadr's continuous challenge to U.S. authority, the Islamic terrorists realized that America could be defeated if the price was made high enough. If enough body bags could be returned to America and enough members of the Western media were on hand to count them, the Islamic fascists reckoned that they could win by breaking the American will to fight – just as they had done in Beirut and Somalia. Thus was born the Islamic insurgency in Iraq.
Unfortunately, America has done little to dissipate that image. It continues to be viewed as a “paper tiger” that is still not prepared to devote the blood and treasure necessary to stabilize Iraq. It has failed to close Syrian borders to Saudi-funded Islamic terrorists, to isolate the battlefield to save American and Iraqi lives, to cut off external sources of support (most notably from Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran) or to vanquish Zarqawi's insurgents.
When al Qaeda hears President Bush and his State Department representatives proclaim (as they did recently) that America is "standing with (Libya's) courageous reformers" – reformers who later ended up in a Libyan prison, or when they see the American ambassador to Egypt fawning over the recent Egyptian “democratic” election which was marred by low turnout, the harassment of opponents, fraud, and the refusal to allow international monitors access to the polls, or when they watch the frivolous efforts made by American and European negotiators to convince Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that his pursuit of nuclear weapons is "contrary to the provisions of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty" and may be followed by UN Security Council sanctions……they must be amused. UN sanctions. Now there's a threat. If the Oil-for-Food program is any example of UN sanctions in action, imagine how “terrified” the Iranian mullahs must be at the thought of another set of UN sanctions!
Which brings us back to al Qaeda's current perception of an American "paper tiger" thrashing about to find “an honorable exit” from Iraq. In Syria, the Bashar Assad regime is not only anti-American, but is a sponsor for terrorists infiltrating into Iraq - and it does so without fear of American retaliation. When al Qaeda (or the Syrian government for that matter) hears Secretary of State Condolezza Rice overrule a military strike against terrorist bases in Syria preferring instead to continue diplomatic overtures combined with hollow threats, the message is one of American procrastination and weakness. After all, the US has done nothing serious about Syria for the past two years except to tell it on numerous occasions that its conduct is "unacceptable." Unacceptable? Stealing cookies from a cookie jar is "unacceptable." But fomenting civil war and committing atrocities in a state that has become the frontline in the war against Islamic terrorism is a little more than “unacceptable.” Something slightly more dramatic would be in order.
Despite the grandiose proclamations of the Bush Doctrine and the occasional skirmishes on the Iraqi-Syrian border, Syria has yet to be held accountable by the President. Damascus has yet to be bombed. Terrorist safe houses in Syria have yet to be raided. Commando strikes are few, support for Syrian dissident groups is small, and economic sanctions have yet to be proven to be effective.
There comes a point in time when verbal threats become meaningless, noble words ring hollow and righteous proclamations become counter-productive. For America, that point has been reached. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has suggested that there is a very high probability (70%) of a successful terrorist attack in America with weapons of mass destruction in the near future. If the perception of American weakness persists in the minds of the Islamic fascists in Iraq or elsewhere, then the President will be right about one thing - we WILL be fighting them in our streets and cities – provided that our cities are habitable.
The time to mount the strong horse is now and the place to begin is Syria. If we continue to dither, we will do so at our peril.