Tania Branigan Wednesday October 31, 2001 The Guardian (London)
The eminent military historian Professor Sir Michael Howard launched a scathing attack yesterday on the continued bombardment of Afghanistan, comparing it to "trying to eradicate cancer cells with a blow torch".
It had put the al-Qaida network in a "win-win situation", he told the conference, and could escalate into an ongoing confrontation that would shatter our own multicultural societies.
The longer it went on, he added, the worse the consequences would be.
"Even more disastrous would be its extension... through other rogue states, beginning with Iraq, to eradicate terrorism for good and all," he said. "I can think of no policy more likely, not only to indefinitely prolong the war, but to ensure that we can never win it."
While praising President George Bush for moving away from the unilateralism and isolationism that had characterised recent US policy, Sir Michael said the administration had made a "terrible and irreversible" mistake in calling its anti-terrorism campaign a war.
It had granted al-Qaida a status it did not deserve and created overwhelming public demand for military action.
"Many people would have preferred a police operation conducted under the auspices of the UN on behalf of the international community as a whole, against a criminal conspiracy, whose members should be hunted down and brought before an international court," Sir Michael said.
"Terrorists can be successfully destroyed only if public opinion supports the authorities in regarding them as criminals rather than heroes.
"As we discovered in both Palestine and Ireland, the terrorists have already won an important battle if they can provoke the authorities into using overt armed force."
Sir Michael, who was for many years regius professor of modern history at Oxford University, scorned the idea that al-Qaida could be defeated by the removal of the "evil genius" Osama bin Laden.
He warned: "It is hard to believe that a global network apparently consisting of people as intelligent and well-educated as they are dedicated and ruthless will not continue to function effectively until they are traced and dug out by patient operations of police and intelligence forces."