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CIAO DATE: 12/03
Principles for Victory
On The Issues
November 2001
To achieve victory in the War on Terrorism, the United States and the international coalition must adhere to the following ten principles.
The attack on September 11 was a twenty-first century Pearl Harbor, committed by a twenty-first century enemy, and it launched a twenty-first century war.
In August 1990, we orchestrated a coalition of twenty-eight countries for eight months, put 500,000 American troops in the field, and bombed Iraq for forty-two days in response to its invasion of Kuwait. If that was the appropriate reaction to the invasion of a distant country, then what is the appropriate response, by the most powerful nation in the history of the world, after thousands of American civilians have been killed in our own cities? It is important to understand that September 11 was not a small event. This is not about a few Tomahawk cruise missile strikes. This is not about magical missions performed by three special-forces teams.
Defeating terrorism is an enormous task. In terms of scale and complexity, we may be closer to the Second World War than to any other conflict.
In that context, here are ten principles necessary to create the potential for victory.
Principle One: We Are at War
We have been at war since 1990, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Since then, terrorists have been continually killing Americans—only this time a threshold was crossed. So many Americans were killed on U.S. soil that our politicians could not ignore it.
On September 11, terrorists used American aircraft, on American soil, to kill thousands of innocent civilians. That was an act of war, more despicable and more costly in terms of American lives than Pearl Harbor.
We are at war. We have to defeat terrorism to preserve our safety, our freedom, and civilization as we know it. We have no alternative. We must win.
Principle Two: In War Your Enemies Are Allowed to be Clever, Courageous, and Determined
A headline on the Washington Post website read, "Taliban warns of revenge. Afghanistan's ruling Taliban [party] warn[s] of revenge if the United States attack[s] their country in retaliation for this week's devastating terrorist assaults."
Given the choice of being on the side of civilization or on the side of terrorism, if the Taliban chooses terrorism and we are so foolish as to only bomb their country, why shouldn't the Taliban seek revenge? When you go to war, you should seek total victory to make sure that your enemy is no longer in power and does not have the power to take revenge or threaten you. Time is always on the side of evil. That is an important premise of history. Time is always on the side of evil because the terrorists can wait, they can plan, and they can look for vulnerabilities while the good go about their daily business. To defeat terrorism, the good have to mobilize for decisive victory.
Principle Three: In War, Your Vision of Success Is Decisive for the Rest of Your Achievement
It is important for this administration to codify what the president has said.
In the Second World War, we picked a very specific goal—unconditional surrender. We were very clear. We occupied Germany, Japan, and Italy. We created democracies. The world has been better ever since. That was a direct goal.
In the Civil War, Lincoln chose a very specific goal, a very hard goal: unconditional victory. To achieve that goal, he paid with more lives than in any other American war.
In Korea, we tolerated a stalemate as our goal because we thought the geopolitical consequences were too great. We have had troops in the Korean Peninsula since 1950. This is the fifty-first year of the Korean campaign.
In Vietnam, we decided that defeat was preferable to the risk of victory. Not that we could not win, but the nation—the body politic—after a decade of agonizing internal struggle, had decided that defeat was preferable to the cost of victory.
In Desert Storm, we arranged a coalition for a limited goal—kick Iraq out of Kuwait and weaken Saddam. That was a very specific goal. In retrospect, it turned out to have been wrong. I think all the architects of that goal would now agree. They thought Saddam would fall as a consequence of our military actions—an underestimation of the survival mechanisms of dictators.
It is vital to have the right vision. It cannot consist only of going after bin Laden, who is trivial in this larger context. It should not consist only of going after the specific terrorist organization that launched the attack in New York. Yes, it would be useful to know who they are, yes, we should get them: But they are a symptom of the disease. If we eliminate them, we will simply create martyrs. Following them will be a new generation of children to fight us.
The only legitimate vision is the defeat and the destruction of the terrorist system. That requires that we declare terrorism to be a crime against all nations, just as we did with piracy. We must refuse to accept the existence of any regime that harbors, supports, or protects terrorists. Anything short of that goal will ensure the return of organized terrorism in a few years.
I was a member of the National Security Commission, also known as the Hart-Rudman Commission. We spent three years studying the world of 2025. Our bipartisan panel of fourteen people unanimously concluded that the number one, most significant, threat to the United States is a biological, chemical, or nuclear weapon of mass destruction going off in our cities.
We know today that Saddam Hussein is willing to accept any level of sanctions to keep his program for weapons of mass destruction running. Iran has a massive program underway, and North Korea—while its population is starving despite being the largest recipient of U.S. food aid in Asia—also has a massive program of weapons of mass destruction.
Principle Four: The Stakes Are Enormous
We understood the Second World War. Our way of life was threatened. Had the German Nazis, the Imperial Japanese, and the Italian Fascists won, our world would have been stunningly different. Today we face a similarly stark choice. Two principles are at stake. The first is our free worldwide economic political structure, the ability to travel, the ability to have a decent job. Consider also the necessity in our global economy to have just-in-time delivery, a system in which Taiwan, Thailand, China, or Mexico produces parts scheduled to arrive at a factory exactly on time for assembly. Terrorists are directly threatening the entire fabric of the world we have built for the past sixty years.
The second is that if we do not eradicate terrorism while conventional weapons are still being used, we will inevitably be faced, in our lifetime, with terrorists who will use weapons of mass destruction. September 11 is a tragic, but providential, warning of a much worse future.
Principle Five: We Must Insist on Change
The Taliban should cease to house terrorists, or we will we replace the Taliban. This does not mean we have to be stupid. It does not require us, for example, to put seven American infantry divisions in Afghanistan. It may mean, however, the allocation of three billion dollars to hire every Afghan who does not like the Taliban, to arm them all, and to back them up with American firepower. I would guess that in less than a year, American air power, combined with support from armed Afghans, would drive the Taliban from power.
We are a serious nation, and the message should be simple if this is to be a serious war: Saddam will stop his efforts and close down all programs to create weapons of mass destruction. He will expel all terrorists from Iraqi soil, or we will substitute a new government in Iraq. We must insist on change, because we now have vivid proof in New York and Washington of the future if we do not. The next time, it will not be an airplane. The next time, it will be a chemical weapon, or it will be germs, or it will be a nuclear weapon. We must take this seriously. No one can say we have not been warned by what happened on September 11.
Principle Six: To Achieve Victory We Must Plan a Coercive, Not a Consensual, Campaign
In a consensual campaign you say, "We wish the troublemakers would be nice." In a coercive campaign you say, "Anyone not doing X, anyone not doing the minimum we have set, will have to be replaced. So we just need to know which side you are on. In addition, there are only two teams for this war—the team representing civilization, and the team representing terrorism. Just tell us which team you are on because you cannot be neutral."
Foreign banks now have to break their secrecy law to help us find out everything we need to know about the terrorists. If not, we should isolate them. Those banks will no longer be part of the world banking system if they do not help us. Repeatedly, around the world, it is amazing how many people decide that they are on the side of civilization when the United States is serious.
The key word is replace, not punish. One hundred thousand Iraqis have been killed, and Saddam's dictatorship has not been overthrown. This should teach us something. Saddam Hussein does not care if every other Iraqi dies, as long as he remains in power. We have to talk about replacement, not about punishment.
Principle Seven: The Campaign Has to Be Comprehensive
We should reach out economically, diplomatically, and militarily to all Muslims who oppose fanatical terrorists. We should offer the promise of a better way of life to every Palestinian who would like to live in peace and prosperity. We should make clear to every Muslim country that we are not anti-Muslim. We are antifanatic, and we would like to have good relations with every nonfanatic. It is as important to be economically supportive as to be militarily effective.
One of the keys to winning the cold war was the Marshall Plan, which proved to be as important as the creation of NATO, the CIA, or the Strategic Air Command. In this war, we should understand that we have to help create prosperity, safety, and freedom for the Muslims who choose the side of civilization. We should punish only the fanatics who give us no choice, the governments that give us no other option. It cannot be only a military or an intelligence campaign. The war has to be fought on economic, military, diplomatic, and political fronts.
Principle Eight: All Coalition Members Must Be Willing to Support Our Plan
This is a very important distinction. We cannot write a plan designed only to win over a big coalition. We have to write a plan to win, and then recruit countries to support our plan. We will tolerate passive support. Countries that do not share our goals, but do not harbor terrorists, are fine. Nonetheless, we should not tolerate outright opposition. Any country harboring terrorists cannot claim to be passive.
Principle Nine: We Have to Sustain Freedom Every Day
A global economic system and prosperous free societies are inevitably vulnerable to deeply committed state-supported terrorism. Whatever plot we stop, whatever protection we achieve will be studied. Terrorists will always look for the one thing we have not figured out, the one thing we are not protected against. Terrorists have to hit only once. They do not have to hit every day. We have to sustain freedom every day. If we intend to remain a prosperous, free society, our campaign must be 90 percent offense and only 10 percent defense. Our job is to root out the terrorists, root out their organizations, and root out the governments that support them, because only by pursuing evil abroad can we stop evil from entering the United States. We cannot build a passive system that will stop evil from entering the United States. We can only slow it down.
Principle Ten: We Must Continuously Communicate to the American People, and to Most People around the World, What It Means to Be on Our Side
This war will be fought in the age of twenty-four-hour news channels. The powerful wrenching images of Americans dying on September 11 will gradually fade as new images are projected on a daily and even hourly basis. Our opponents will maneuver to maximize civilian casualties of any American action. The timid and the undecided will seek every opportunity to explain why we should accept minimal results, why we should be patient, and why we should avoid aggressive action.
Mistakes will happen. It is vital that the right explanations and the right language be available for the news cycle. It is also vital that those words and explanations be acceptable to both the American people and to audiences around the world.
Information campaigns are the decisive campaigns of the twenty-first century. They have to be well organized, supported, and led just like any other aspect of warfare. The campaign to defeat terrorism will last only as long as it has popular support, and that support will require a sustained major information campaign both at home and abroad.
Newt Gingrich is a senior fellow at AEI.
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