North Africa and the War on Terror

The war in Iraq was the first opportunity for the U.S. administration to operationalize the doctrines of preemptive attack, ostensibly the best approach to execute the war on terrorism. This war, however, raises the specter of protracted conflict beyond Iraq and throughout North Africa. The dynamics of this region and projections of what it may look like after Iraq are the thrust of this essay.

The 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., have focused American attention on the Arab world more than ever before. The attacks fundamentally altered U.S. attitudes and policy toward the region. The Bush administration quickly blamed the Arab world for 11 September and launched a new, preventive strategy to defend the country against those who would inflict mass violence in the name of religion. The strategy calls for the U.S. military to launch preemptive strikes against any group or nation deemed to pose a threat to America's security, with or without the consent of the national government.

The American people were angered by the 11 September attacks and felt vulnerable. Many demanded revenge against those who were behind the attacks. President George W. Bush, whose presidency was still relatively new and who had little experience in foreign affairs, turned for advice to Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. Their agenda was to oust bad rulers and change the governance of various Middle Eastern and North African countries, which had become breeding grounds for terrorism. The Bush administration thus embarked on a dangerous new course, abandoning diplomacy in favor of intervention and becoming a unilateralist power unconstrained by international law or the United Nations Charter. Its policy was carried out by ultimatum and backed up by force rather than by collective decisions achieved by consensus among traditional allies. Washington is ready to sacrifice the stability of other countries by meddling in their internal affairs for the sake of achieving its policy goals.

The Bush administration decided on a three-pronged approach to combat militant Islam. The first effort was to go after al Qaeda, which presented the most serious threat to the United States. Bush's top priority was to capture Osama bin Laden by waging a war on Afghanistan, which had given his movement sanctuary. This meant that the Taliban regime would have to be overthrown, since it had not complied with an American ultimatum to turn over bin Laden and his fighters. Between October and December 2001, Washington waged a relentless military campaign that destroyed al Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan, captured many of its fighters, and significantly disrupted its operations. The United States, with the help of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, defeated the Taliban government and replaced it with a secular regime in Kabul.

The second phase was to get rid of Iraq's Saddam Hussein, who had been a thorn in the side of the Republican hawks since the end of the Gulf War in 1991. As Bush told a group of friends in Texas, "This guy tried to kill my dad." For him, it was a national priority and a family matter that he intended to take care of; he would finish the job that his father had left undone. The administration's inner circle exploited the 11 September tragedies to justify the call for a war against Iraq. It mounted a systematic campaign to prepare the American public for possible military action against Iraq.

The third phase called for overhauling the political institutions in the Middle East and North Africa as a means of stamping out threats from militant Muslims. Administration hard-liners have argued that democracy-building programs are needed throughout the region as the only way for the United States to eliminate extremism. This meant paying attention to all of these countries. Lack of political freedom or shortages in economic opportunities in any of these countries, they believed, would...