Some Democrats tune out Tony Blair not only because he backed the invasion of Iraq, but because he committed the unpardonable sin of articulating the case for war far more convincingly than George W. Bush.
That's too bad, because Britain's ex-prime minister has some important things to say about the conflict formerly known as the "war on terror." On this issue, in fact, the Obama administration could use a dose of Blairite clarity and candor.
Blair was in New York this week to accept the "Scholar-Statesman" award from The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. In his acceptance speech, he argued that the United States and the "civilized world" must combat not just al Qaeda, but also the extremist ideology that inspired the 9/11 attacks:
"I do not think it is possible to defeat the extremism without defeating the narrative that nurtures it. And there's the rub. The practitioners of the extremism are small in number. The adherents of the narrative stretch far broader into parts of mainstream thinking."
This inconvenient truth highlights a critical vacuum in U.S. counterterrorism policy. While the Obama administration has ramped up the military campaign to oust al Qaeda from Afghanistan (and pound its sanctuaries in Pakistan), it has been less successful in checking the spread of the Islamist doctrine, which casts Muslims as victims of western oppression and disrespect.
Blair believes western efforts to blunt the force of the extremist narrative by apologizing for policies, such as support for Israel, are counterproductive. They undercut rather than fortify the position of Muslim moderates, and they provoke a backlash from western publics against what's seen as pandering to extremists.
Although he was too diplomatic to say so, Blair's call for confronting the extremist narrative head-on challenges current U.S. policy.
President Obama has wisely retired the "war on terror" language he inherited from his predecessor. As Reza Aslan has noted, Bush's relentlessly martial rhetoric lent credence to the idea that the United States was locked in a "cosmic war" with Islam. By narrowing the focus to al Qaeda (and its Taliban protectors in Afghanistan), Obama has sought to reassure both foreign and domestic audiences that the United States is drawing careful distinctions and not making unnecessary enemies.
So far, so good. But even if we demolished what's left of al Qaeda tomorrow, our problems wouldn't be over. Its ideology already has migrated to affiliates in Iraq, Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere, which have adopted the same gruesome tactics of suicide bombers and mass casualty attack. And while their victims are mostly Muslims, as Blair noted, too many in the Muslim world seem sympathetic to their narrative of victimhood, if not their methods.
This ambivalence was captured perfectly by one of a group of Somalians from Virginia captured in Pakistan. He said, in effect, we're not terrorists, we're jihadists come to help our fellow Muslims defend themselves against western aggression.
So Tony Blair is, as the Brits say, spot on. To reduce the threat of terrorist attacks, the United States must wage a two-track fight. One is the military campaign to disrupt and destroy al Qaeda. The other should be a "whole of government" effort to counter the extremist narrative. I'll have more to say in future posts about its key elements, but it starts by engaging directly with Muslim publics and by firmly rejecting the false premises of the extremist story.