ARMY COLONEL GIVES BARNARD AUDIENCE INSIDER'S VIEW OF WAR ON TERRORISM
By
Matthew Schuerman
NEW
YORK, N.Y., Nov. 2, 2001 -- An Army colonel
told a Barnard audience Thursday evening, Nov.
1, that the war in Afghanistan will be trickier
to fight and more complicated to win than any
other conflict in recent history.
The war is not being fought over territory,
said Col. Robert L. McClure, a military fellow
at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
It has no "clearly identifiable" enemy
and the enemy as it does exist lacks the sort
of power center, like Nazi Berlin or Iraq's
Republican Guards, can be captured or knocked
out and lead to a clear American victory.
"What's the center of gravity in this case?"
McClure said. "There are no tank divisions
spread across the desert."
In a rare public appearance by a military officer
during wartime, McClure offered his perspective
on the war at the fourth of an ongoing series
of forums sponsored by Provost Elizabeth Boylan
on the Sept. 11 attacks.
McClure,
who served in Army actions in Kosovo and Haiti,
was invited by Kimberly M. Zisk, associate professor
of political science at Barnard. Zisk is also
a fellow at the council and moderated the forum.
More than 40 students, undergraduates and other
Barnard community members attended.
In
contrast to the war against terrorism, McClure
said the gulf war 10 years ago was straight
out of a textbook, as clear and straightforward
as the desert it was fought upon. The 1999 bombing
of Serbia, he said, was a type of "coercive
diplomacy" that eventually prompted Slobodan
Milosevic to withdraw from Kosovo.
The
enemy in the current conflict -- terror networks
in general and Al Qaeda in particular -- challenges
the very notion that wars are fought between
nation states, McClure said, a notion he traced
back to the 1648 Peace of Westphalia.
"In
Afghanistan, we are not attacking a state. We
are attacking a non-state actor: terrorism,"
he said. "We have someone who's hijacked
a religion and taken us back to pre-1648. It's
not a happy thing."
A
number of audience members grappled with the
idea of fighting terrorism instead of another
country, one asking why the Sept. 11 attacks
were not treated as a law enforcement matter.
(Zisk's answer: It is being handled that way
in countries where a legal apparatus exists.)
Another audience member asked when we would
know that the war is over.
"I'm
not sure we're going to have VT day," McClure
said, offering a twist on VE and VJ days. "This
is going to change us as a society for years
to come."
Other
listeners suggested that Americans have failed
to ask why they are hated by so many people
around the world, and whether the country should
not change its stance on sanctions against Iraq
or even its long-standing support of Israel.
Barnard Senior Vanessa Vieux for one was unsatisfied
with President Bush's explanation, "They
hate us because we are free."
"They
are symbols of U.S. presence abroad, the Pentagon
and the World Trade Center," Vieux said
after the discssion. "There are reasons
why people don't like us: unregulated globalism."
Zisk
offered up questions of her own for the audience
to consider, including whether President Bush
is too wishful in thinking that limited strikes
can topple the Taliban or prompt its leaders
to surrender bin Laden.
But
Zisk defended other actions taken by the U.S.
government so far, stressing again and again
that it has had to take unsavory actions at
times-such as accommodating Saudi Arabia despite
its ties to bin Laden's group-in order to build
a coalition. In the same pragmatic light, she
argued that the United States' financial support
of the Pakistani government is key in preventing
a nuclear war.
"The
worry now is that the Pakistani military could
stage a coup and seize nuclear weapons. Their
weapons would not be capable of reaching the
U.S., but they might hit India," she said
in closing. "At that point the entire region
would see massive casualties. That's the kind
of thing that worries people."
.jpg)
