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From the Los Angeles Times

4 Lessons to Make Us Safer
What Bush could do to create a more secure world for our children and
grandchildren

Rosa Brooks

July 28, 2006

LET'S pretend.

It's been a bad few weeks, with the Israel-Lebanon confrontation daily
growing more devastating and Iraq continuing its downward spiral. Why not
indulge in a brief escapist fantasy?

So let's pretend — just for a few minutes — that we have a president who is
serious about creating a more secure world for our children and
grandchildren. What lessons would this imaginary president draw from the
tragedies and mistakes of the last five years?

Lesson One would surely be this: Although there's a time and place for
military force, technological military superiority is no guarantee of
success. The weak will always seek — and find — asymmetrical methods of
warfare against the strong.

More than two centuries ago, our own war of independence succeeded in part
because we didn't "play fair." Our untrained soldiers wore dull, homespun
clothing and sneaked around in the woods. In their proper red uniforms, the
British soldiers were sitting ducks.

It's the same today, except that all the technologies are more lethal. Any
reasonably capable teenager can manufacture a homemade bomb with
instructions from the Internet, and the more talented can turn lampposts
into crude but effective missile launchers. In Iraq, we're discovering all
over again that technological military superiority is no match for a
determined foe on fire with religious or nationalist zeal. In Lebanon, the
Israelis are banging their heads against the same brick wall.

Lesson Two: If you can't defeat your enemy militarily, you need to take
away his motivation to fight. Overly aggressive military approaches only
increase the bitterness that caused the conflict in the first place. Unless
we want to become the permanent global cop in a permanent global police
state, we need to change our approach.

We want peace in the Middle East? Stability in Iraq? An end to terrorist
attacks? We may not achieve any of those things even in the best of
circumstances. But we certainly won't achieve them if we refuse to take
seriously the idea that our enemies — like us — consider themselves good
people, with legitimate grievances. Eliminate the grievances and you're on
the way to eliminating the conflict.

When progressives say things like this, right-wing pundits immediately
sneer: "What do you want us to do, sing 'Kumbaya' with the bad guys?" No.
But you don't have to love your enemy — or trust him further than you could
throw him — to recognize the benefits of talking to him and taking his
concerns seriously.

That's not being "soft." It's being realistic.

Lesson Three: Imperfect solutions are better than none at all. Condoleezza
Rice thinks a cease-fire in Lebanon would be premature because it wouldn't
resolve the conflict's "root causes." It's sweet that she's so interested
in root causes, but sometimes you've got to start small. When civilians on
both sides are having their limbs blown off, it's hard for anyone to focus
on root causes.

Lesson Four: If we want to build a safer long-term future, we need to start
giving those root causes more than lip service. We need to invest our money
and our political capital in spreading peace and prosperity for all people,
not just those inside Fortress America (which — pursuant to Lesson One —
can never truly be a fortress anyway).

That means there must be a genuine willingness to recognize that we are
part of the world and will share its fate. It means a commitment to
confronting the dark side of globalization: the deeper forces that create
and sustain poverty, repression, conflict and terrorism.

More specifically, it means revamping U.S. foreign policy to dramatically
increase our focus on foreign aid, disaster relief, conflict prevention,
humanitarian interventions, peacekeeping, reconstruction, economic
development, public health and environmental challenges, democracy and
promotion of the rule of law.

And, perhaps most crucially, it means a renewed commitment to the
international institutions we have recently scorned.

Impossible?

I know, I'm supposed to be part of the reality-based community. But with
better leadership, this wouldn't have to be just a fantasy.

Even as World War II raged, an engaged and visionary U.S. president took
the lead in planning the dense web of international institutions and laws
that would help tamp down conflicts, spread global well-being and buttress
American prosperity throughout the postwar period. Institutions such as the
United Nations were never perfect, but for more than half a century they
have kept our world reasonably stable.

Today, international institutions will need significant reform if they are
to be effective against the challenges that have emerged in the 60 years
since their creation. If we had a president who truly understood what it
means to "lead the free world," he would embrace that task with enthusiasm,
humility and hope.