For me, the most depressing feature of discussion of the Bali bombing (apart, of course, from the images of the event itself) has been the eagerness of partisans on both sides to score points on the Iraq issue. Opponents of war were ready to blame Howard even before there was any good information on the likely perpetrators of the crime. Meanwhile supporters of war had their counterattacks in print (or posted on weblogs) without even waiting for the other side to start.
For what it’s worth, I doubt that any policy an Australian government could plausibly have taken on Iraq would have made a lot of difference to the people carrying out this attack. For a start, I don’t imagine most of them care much about Saddam Hussein. And even a clear statement that we were staying out of it, like that made by Schroder in Germany, would be unlikely to change their view of Australia as part of the Western enemy.
If we want to look at what we could have done differently, and will need to do differently in future, I’d suggest looking at the attitudes towards both Islam and Indonesia that were displayed during the debate over refugees, well before S11. I don’t think this influenced the attitudes of the terrorists and their immediate supporters, but I’m sure it influenced the people we’ll now be relying on to catch them, and not favorably. The idea that we don’t have to worry about what the rest of the world thinks of us is looking pretty naive right now.
Coming back to Iraq, the comparison between the Bali bombing and S11 has crystallised many of the concerns I have had about the US Administration’s eagerness for war with Iraq. Although the attack on the Taliban and Al-Qaeda was only a partial success (with Mullah Omar getting away, and bin Laden unaccounted for) it was still a success. It’s natural to want to repeat the same thing, with an enemy army that can be bombed into submission, an evil leader who can be chased and hopefully caught or killed, and a hostile government that can be overturned.
But on any plausible assessment, a war with Iraq is likely to increase terrorism of the kind we have just experienced, not reduce it, and it will certainly chew up resources, including money, political capital and attention, that could be used against Al-Qaeda. That may be a necessary price for getting rid of Saddam’s weapons, but we should recognise it as a price, rather than imagining that the whole thing can be done without cost, or even, as some have suggested, at a profit. If we can achieve a peaceful settlement that would keep Saddam contained, it would be our interests to do so.
As previous experience, for example that of Europe in the 1970s, has shown, the struggle against terrorism is likely to be long, slow, expensive and frustrating. In most cases, for example, we’ll never conclusively identify the actual perpetrators of particular terrorist crimes, even if we can destroy the organisations to which they belonged. The appropriate strategy is one of unremitting effort to hunt down the actual terrorists, combined with a sustained attempt to chip away at their bases of support.