The Foreign Service Journal, September 2007

debate about what precisely those root causes are, with candidates ranging from poverty to military occupation. But regardless of the particulars, people are more likely to resort to violence when peaceful avenues for pursuing grievances are blocked. Autocratic governments are more likely to breed violence than governments that permit dis- content to be addressed through open political competition. Moreover, fighting terrorism requires not only neutral- izing the suspects who have already joined terrorist con- spiracies but also dissuading others from joining them. That also requires maintaining the moral high ground. Most people are law-abiding and would never resort to terrorism regardless of provocation. Others — the Osama bin Ladens of the world — are firmly committed to ter- rorism and need no incitement. But the fight against ter- rorism will be won or lost in the “swing vote”— the angry young men who have deeply felt grievances and are unsure how to address them. As jihadist Web sites demonstrate, terrorist re- cruiters have long understood that abuses committed in the name of counterterrorism are among the best recruit- ing devices they have. By delegitimizing the counterter- rorism effort, these abuses facilitate the extremists’ essen- tial task of replenishing their ranks. As the U.S. Army Counterinsurgency Manual explains, because it is impos- sible to kill or detain every terrorist, the key to effective counterterrorism is to diminish the enemy’s “recuperative power.” But if the administration’s abuses drive even a small percentage of these angry young men to violence, that can still add up to a lot of people. Applying former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s famous test, the abuse may well be generating more terrorists than it is stopping and, in the process, keeping the threat alive. Moreover, by treating terrorist suspects as “combatants” rather than criminals, the administration portrays al-Qaida and its ilk exactly as they would want to be seen: as warriors rather than despicable murderers. During his Guantán- amo hearing, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed clearly relished the combatant label, seeing it as a status symbol. By con- trast, as the Army Counterinsurgency Manual observes, “when insurgents are seen as criminals, they lose public support.” Even when the administration chooses to prosecute a suspect before a military commission rather than a regular court, it is losing the battle for hearts and minds. Com- pelling terrorist suspects to face their day in court should be a moment of triumph for the fight against terrorism, an opportunity to distinguish America’s respect for the rule of law from the lawlessness of its opponents, and to parade their crimes before the court of public opinion. Instead, the administration’s insistence on using substandard military commissions has directed public opprobrium away from the crimes at issue and toward the due-process short-cuts that epitomize the commissions. Setting an Example America’s loss of the moral high ground has been par- ticularly harmful to the effort to combat repression abroad. The United States has never been a fully consis- tent promoter of human rights, but it has long been the most influential one. Yet today, that influence is seriously diminished by the Bush administration’s refusal to prac- tice what it preaches. America’s denunciations still carry weight in Darfur, for example, because the United States isn’t committing mas- sive ethnic cleansing anywhere. In addition, in some countries that maintain close political, military or eco- nomic ties with the United States, our diplomatic inter- ventions can still be powerful. But when it comes to the traditional tools of repression — torture, “disappear- ances,” detention without trial — America’s voice of con- demnation has been largely silenced. A U.S. diplomat cannot complain about such abuses while his own govern- ment practices them — at least not with a straight face. Indeed, to make matters worse, the United States continues to set a powerful example for others. When an ordinary government commits an abuse, the inter- national standard remains firm. But when a govern- ment as influential as the United States is the violator, the abuse tends to degrade the standard itself. U.S. misconduct becomes an excuse for others to do the same — a cheap excuse, to be sure, but one that is very real because it helps deflect condemnation. And as repressive governments effectively lose a powerful F O C U S 30 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 7 Defeating terrorism requires a foreign policy built on strict respect for human rights and their vigorous promotion.