A War on Two Fronts

What does it mean to win the war in Afghanistan, in order to make life safer for Americans at home?

On one side, there is a physical theater of war with real consequences at home.

President Barack Obama devoted a significant part of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech to clarifying this, in the wake of controversy over receiving the prize while the U.S. was engaged in wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

I face the world as it is and cannot stand idle in the face of the threats to the American people. For, make no mistake, evil does exist in the world. A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations could not convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates addressed the subject in early December, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He noted that a loss will empower our enemies, just as they were empowered to attack the World Trade Center several years after driving the Soviets from Afghanistan. Al Qaeda has indicated as much in statements like the following one from senior figure Adam Gadahn.

So America’s might, in addition to being exaggerated, is strictly physical, and, thus, ultimately beatable. And I’ll back that up with an example from recent history: the Soviet Union. Before its collapse, the Soviet Union was considered virtually unbeatable by Americans and the world… But the Afghan jihad, which was waged by a small group of lightly armed but faithful and steadfast Muslims wiped the USSR from the world map.

So, although Afghanistan may be half a world away, the war being fought there is about American survival.

Let’s say the U.S. defeats its enemies there decisively. Will that end the threat posed to Americans at home? Will we be safer? Thomas Friedman writes that it’s important, but not enough. There’s another war that needs to be fought.

Whatever surge we do in the real Afghanistan has no chance of being a self-sustaining success, unless there is a parallel surge — by Arab and Muslim political and religious leaders — against those who promote violent jihadism on the ground in Muslim lands and online in the Virtual Afghanistan.

According to Friedman, the internet is playing an important role in recruitment, and in the spreading of extremism. “Whatever threat the real Afghanistan poses to U.S. national security, the ‘Virtual Afghanistan’ now poses just as big a threat,” he writes.

Unless we kill the extremist ideas being propagated online, far afield from Afghanistan, we’ll never win the war with Radical Islam. The case of the five Americans recently arrested in Pakistan is the most recent example of how the internet has promoted terrorist activities. Another recent example is Syed Haris Ahmed, who was part of a loose group of extremists scattered around the world.

A Senate report published last year addressed why the internet has become a highly effective tool for promoting and mobilizing Islamist activities.

It says that there are thousands of violent sites promoting the jihadist cause. Incendiary movies and speeches by jihadist leaders are uploaded and passed around, and there are forums for discussion which connect people from around the world who agree with the cause. Individuals watch these films and discuss their messages and other issues in the forums and chat rooms. If someone was inspired to carry out an attack, he previously had to travel to camps overseas to obtain special training. Today, much of that training is readily available online.

Senator John Rockefeller (D-WV) noted in a hearing that

You can just go on the Internet to find out how to do a suitcase bomb. You don’t have to climb poles and jump over trenches. So I really worry that the American people don’t worry. I really worry that, because there’s been no attack since 9/11, that the American people have let down their guard.

The internet is also a vehicle for recruiting others to the cause. In some ways, it has become a technologically savvy “virtual madrassa” that speaks to today’s youth. Granted, children aren’t born extremist, and are by and large raised in loving homes with normal parents. So, how does the online world help play a role in encouraging violent radicalization?

Often, it begins with young men who have questions about their heritage and are searching for answers. The terrorists’ online media campaigns, coupled with the forums and chat rooms, promote a core enlistment message with three main points; quoting from the Senate report:

The West, led by the United States, is engaged in a war against Islam.

Muslims are obligated to defend their religion and there are theological justifications for doing so.

Violence is the necessary means to defend the religion.

Previously, personal interaction was the key element in changing people’s beliefs. It’s still important, but not critical. A lot of the activity now happens in the forums, meaning someone can be radicalized in the comfortable environs of his dormitory or his parent’s home.

The report concludes that if the enlistment messages are left unchallenged, online activities will radicalize more individuals and lead to more terrorist attacks.

Clearly radicalization is not something that happens only online. Political messages in the mosques can influence people, as can extremist messages televised around the world on stations like Al-Jazeera or Hezbollah’s Al-Manar. Additionally, when Western media and universities give credence to extremist groups—as when Bill Moyers referred to Hamas as a “resistance group”—it can reinforce the messages amongst young people. All that said, the internet is a powerful tool in the jihadists’ arsenal.

Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri wrote, “We are in a battle, and more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media.” Right now, a war is being waged in Afghanistan for the sake of American security. As both Zawahiri and Friedman indicate: A large part of the war is taking place far from the physical battlefield, with serious consequences should it go unchecked.

FBI director Robert Mueller said that

We have become complacent over a period of time, and we have to resist that complacency, understand that there are people out there who wish to do us harm in our communities and continue to work with State and local law enforcement ourselves but also work with other members of the community to identify those who seek to do us harm before they can undertake such attacks.

Part of the solution is identifying threats. Equally as important—perhaps more so—is building our communities. We need to uproot political Islam when we find it, challenge those in the media when they support extremists, and remove terrorist propaganda from the airwaves and internet. Above all, we need to educate our children and actively engage with them on these issues, to ensure threats never have room to develop in the first place.