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(a) A focused threat

Foreign policy commentators have for decades called for, and often lamented the lack of, a coherent and focused foreign policy.

In 1993 the editorial of the Christian Science Monitor called for a “more certain foreign policy in which American power and purpose are aligned” and deplored that the “White House still lacks a focused foreign policy.”{47}

In 1994, Walter R. Mears, vice president of Associated Press, cited President Clinton saying that “without a disciplined, focused foreign policy, overseas problems would swarm in and divert him from the home-front issues he wants to handle.”{48}

In 1995 we have Sen. McCain criticizing President Clinton for a “ lack of focus and a lack of priority and threats by the President of the United States to send us -- our American troops -- almost anywhere....There's got to be a more coherent and focused foreign policy so the American people are comfortable as to where their young men and women might go.”{49}

In 1998, R.C. Longworth, senior writer of the Chicago Tribune wrote: “When everything is important, nothing has priority. Various think tanks and seminars have tried to outline a focused foreign policy for a post-Cold War America, with limited impact. [...] A blue-ribbon commission gathered by Harvard turned out a report called "America's National Interests" that noted a "drift" in foreign policy because the former single-minded goal of defeating communism has been replaced by a wish list of desirable goals.”{50}

Senator John McCain addressed in 1999 the Arab American National Leadership Conference, saying: "I finally want to sum up by saying [...] what we need is a consistent, focused foreign policy… I believe -- that the United States of America can be the greatest force for good in the history of this world."{51}

President Reagan may have provided the clue for the lack of a U.S. focused foreign policy during the 1990s. In a speech he held in Chicago in 1982 he countered charges that his administration had not as yet developed a coherent foreign policy. He said he did not believe it was necessary "to spell out in detail and in advance a formula which will guide our every move in international relations.”{52} Did U.S. leaders, after the demise of the Soviet Union, proceed according to Reagan’s advice of discretion, while they were preparing the Global War on Terror launched on 9/11?

John Lewis Gaddis, mentioned earlier, emphasized in mid-1989 the need for a focused adversary that “has the effect of shaking people up within the bureaucracy in a major way”:{53}

Kreisler: You’re saying that having a clearly focused adversary was important for contributing to a democracy’s ability to have a clear-cut strategy.

Gaddis: Sure. One of the things Kennan always said about Stalin was that Stalin always required an outside enemy to provide a justification for his own rule, to provide coherence, legitimacy. But I would not limit it just to Stalin under the Soviet Union. It seems to me that you could make the same argument about the United States, and about the NATO alliance in particular…But as that sense of clear and present danger begins to erode, then arguments about priorities, objectives, policies begin to surface, as we see very clearly right now in the NATO alliance. So, to an extent, coherence in an alliance structure, and consensus in foreign policy, does depend on a sense of a threat out there…

Kreisler: Do you think an immediate crisis would get our juices stirring, so to speak? An economic depression, an environmental catastrophe, is that what you have in mind? Or do you have in mind an ongoing, continuous threat?

Gaddis: If you can use 1941 or 1947 as analogies, it would have to be something a little more specific than just a Great Depression, it would have to be something like the fall of France in 1940, or something like the perceived crisis over Greece and Turkey in 1947. Something that, even though its influence may have been exaggerated, it has the effect of shaking people up within the bureaucracy in a major way. I don’t see anything like that out there this time because, again, we’re dealing with a very different kind of situation. We were dealing with enemies then, perceived enemies. If the Gorbachev strategy of depriving us of an enemy continues, then that element is not going to be present, and it may be more difficult to formulate something.

(b) A durable threat

The ideal new threat had to last many decades for more than ideological reasons. Senator Sam Nunn explained:

The forces and equipment we used during Operation Desert Storm … were in large part based on defense decisions made 10-20 years ago. The decisions we make this year will affect our military capability 10 years from now and 20 years from now.{54}

Dick Cheney, at the time Secretary of Defense, referred equally to the long-term need for a focused threat, because “decisions we’re making now will shape the forces available twenty years from now.” He emphasized that “America cannot base its future security on just a shaky record of prediction or a prudent recognition of uncertainty.”{55} He thus made it clear that the durability of a threat perception is a requirement for military planning.

(c) A credible threat

Credibility does not necessarily mean that the adversary must represent a true threat. It rather means that the public must perceive the threat as credible. Since the beginning of the 20th century, Hollywood films have portrayed Arabs and Muslims as devious and threatening creatures. Author Shaheen who undertook the Sisyphean task to examine Hollywood’s treatment of Arabs (he watched more than 1,100 films), could hardly find examples before 9/11 in which Arabs or Muslims were represented as ordinary human beings, let alone as people deserving respect and admiration.

In the introduction to his revealing work Reel Bad Arabs, Shaheen wrote:

Seen through Hollywood’s distorted lenses, Arabs look different and threatening. Projected along racial and religious lines, the stereotypes are deeply ingrained in American cinema. From 1896 until today, filmmakers have collectively indicted all Arabs as Public Enemy Nr. 1 – brutal, heartless, uncivilized religious fanatics and money-mad cultural ‘others’ bent on terrorizing civilized Westerners, especially Christians and Jews.{56}

Shaheen discovered parallels between the depiction of Arabs by Hollywood and that of Jews in Nazi films: both project images of hook-nosed, scheming and lecherous persons lurking in the shadows to prey upon innocent Christians.{57}

Regarding the depiction of Muslims, who are widely regarded in the West as “Arabs,” Shaheen writes:

Islam, particularly, comes in for unjust treatment. Today’s imagemakers regularly link the Islamic faith with male supremacy, holy war, and acts of terror, depicting Arab Muslims as hostile alien intruders, and as lecherous, oily sheikhs intent on using nuclear weapons. When mosques are displayed onscreen, the camera inevitably cuts to Arabs praying, and then gunning down civilians. Such scenarios are common fare.{58}

Shaheen discusses more than 900 feature films displaying Arab characters, the majority as villains.

Western audiences, fed on Hollywood fare, have no difficulty conceiving of Arabs and Muslims as potential terrorists. No other group of people could better fulfill that role.

(d) A useful threat

A substantial portion of world oil resources is located under the feet of Muslims and oil has been and remains for the United States a strategical commodity. This was made clear by James R. Schlesinger, when he addressed the House of Representatives on 15 January 1991:

Mr. Chairman, you and Senator Warner have posed the question, “What are America's interests in the Gulf?” I shall mention three and leave it to the committee to decide whether they are in ascending or descending order of importance. First is oil; there is no way of evading this simple reality. Oil provides the energy source that drives the economies of the industrial and underdeveloped worlds. Were the principal exports of the region palm-dates or pearls or even industrial products, our response to Iraq's transgression would have been far slower and far less massive than has been the case. Nonetheless, this should not be misunderstood. Our concern is not primarily economic. [...] Instead, our concern is strategic; we cannot allow so large a portion of the world's energy resources to fall under the domination of a single, hostile party.{59}

Some Muslim countries are regularly accused by the United States and its allies of sponsoring international terrorism.{60} Such accusations are leveled in order to justify threats, economic sanctions and military interventions. Among those accused of supporting terrorism are countries named by Wesley Clark in a speech he held in 2007 at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. According to him the following seven countries were targeted by the U.S. government for regime change after 9/11: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.{61} For unexplained reasons Afghanistan, the first country attacked after 9/11, was not on the list.

Another benefit for choosing the specter of Islamic terrorism as the new threat, was that large Muslim communities live in Western countries. The claim of having to uncover Islamic terror cells allegedly ensconced within Muslim communities will later be used in justifying a panoply of government oppressive measures, such as the surveillance of entire populations, increased government secrecy and the erosion of the rule of law. Where such cells did not exist, the FBI created them. From a governance perspective, such measures have always been desirable.