Gary Hart, former senator and presidential candidate, addressed
a crowd of students, faculty and diplomats Tuesday as part of a
conference called “Global Terror Threat: Are We Winning or
Losing?” put on by UCLA’s School of Public Affairs.
Hart was part of a four-member panel that also included Brian
Jenkins, senior adviser to the president of the RAND Corporation,
as well as public policy graduate Professor Peter Katona. Serving
as moderator was Michael Intriligator, who along with Katona, leads
a graduate seminar about global terrorism.
Tuesday’s conference was the last in a series of events
throughout spring quarter designed to commemorate the 10th
anniversary of the School of Public Affairs.
Hart caught the attention of fourth-year political science
student Joe Holmes. The senior saw a flier on campus for the event
featuring the former politician and decided to attend.
“I really think he’s bright and quite
provocative,” Holmes said.
The conference centered around two questions: Is America winning
or losing the global war on terrorism? And, have the invasions of
Afghanistan and Iraq made America safer?
Hart, an outspoken critic of the Bush administration, was first
to speak.
“We must distinguish between the war on terrorism and the
war on tyranny,” Hart said. He added that if the United
States pursues the former, Americans can expect “a very long
century ahead of us.” Iraq’s role in the U.S.-led war
on terrorism must be clarified, he said.
He said the war in Iraq has relegated the war on terrorism
secondary. Hart also said the Iraq war is not principally over oil,
although “I can’t say oil had nothing to do with
it.”
Hart also talked about the changing nature of modern warfare
engendered by “non-state actors,” such as terrorists,
where battles are fought sporadically. The modern battle is
analogous to those fought in Mogadishu, Somalia and the more recent
battle over Fallujah in Iraq, he said.
Public policy graduate student Renee Moilanen attended the
conference to gain a better understanding of America’s role
in the war on terrorism. “With everything that’s going
on in the world today, I just want to understand why we’re in
the situation we are,” she said.
Panel member Brian Jenkins said the existence of an ideological
divide between the way the West views war and the way he described
“jihadists” view war. “We view war as a finite
undertaking. They see warfare as a perpetual condition.” He
noted that terrorists do not operate on a timetable and see a
struggle against the United States as a battle between their
spiritual superiority against America’s material
superiority.
Pakistani Vice Council Ahmad Farooq attended the conference and
said that in order to defeat terrorism, the source of the tactic
must be addressed. “We must address the root causes,”
he said, in order to take away the terrorists’ motivation. He
added that unresolved political conflicts in the Muslim world, such
as those in Palestine and Kashmir, might serve as motivation for
potential terrorists.