Lost Soldiers

A war is not declared in vain, less still a global war — that is to say, a world war — against an enemy with blurry and fleeting features that project onto any other face. A conflict like this — with no fronts or territory to conquer, fought with arms and methods beyond all norms and probably of infinite duration — intimidates and divides those who see themselves subjected to its diabolical magnetism. Only apocalyptic flags like those that you can imagine in a confrontation between Islam and the Judeo-Christian civilization can fly in such a military undertaking.

George W. Bush declared the war in response to the attacks in New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, prepared and perpetrated by al-Qaida. The terrorist network of bin Laden hoped to lead the primary superpower and the entire world into a cruel confrontation of enormous dimensions that would return Islam to the splendor of the caliphate. The U.S. president, unlike many of those who supported him in his military undertaking, rejected the classification of an entire world religion as enemy but instead compromised the democratic values and constitutional rights of the United States and tangled his country and a good number of his allies in two interminable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

His successor, Barack Obama, tried to tighten the perimeter of the war: It is no longer global and now strictly defines its enemy as al-Qaida, rather than terror. Nevertheless, the war is still drawing in fanatics on both sides worldwide, willing to kill at any moment that the flames of racist hate arouse their murderous instincts and talents. With bin Laden eliminated by a special commando unit and a multitude of terrorist leaders taken out by shots from unmanned aircraft, al-Qaida now finds itself in a decline that has been accelerated by the rejection of jihadism in Arab revolts.

But decay does not indicate inaction — be it in organized cells, such as those that kidnap European citizens in the Sahel, or the individual actions of displaced mujahedeen, such as the one who just acted in Toulouse. Mohamed Merah, a 24-year-old Frenchman, assassinated seven of his fellow citizens: first, three soldiers and, days later, three children and an adult in a Jewish school in Toulouse. He claimed to belong to al-Qaida and alluded to the French presence in Afghanistan and the children of the Gaza Strip.

Only in a criminal mind can a connection work between scenes so distant and lacking any causal relation. The only effective connection is that Merah is united in viciousness and cruelty with another serial assassin who bloodied the streets of Kandahar in Afghanistan in these same days. Robert Bales, a 38-year-old U.S. sergeant, assassinated 16 Afghan civilians — nine of them minors, three of whom were girls younger than six — in a raid as absurd and inexplicable as that of the French assassin. There is no doubt that Bales saw in the Afghans enemies who didn’t deserve to live, just as Merah did in the three soldiers and the students and teachers of the school in Toulouse.

The massacre carried out by Sgt. Bales, together with the desecration of copies of the Quran and the dead bodies of Taliban insurgents by American soldiers, have disrupted the time frame for the orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan planned by the Pentagon for 2014. The massacre in Toulouse has interrupted, even disturbed, the campaign for the first round of the French presidential elections to be held on April 22.

The toxic capacity of terrorist violence is infinite. The disorder created by the death of innocents divides and intimidates: It creates hostages even among those who express their condemnation. Any poorly chosen word can be converted into political ammunition, above all in this era of growing use of instantaneous and excitable social networks. And there are circumstances in which the declarations and expressions of condemnation are subjected to scrupulous scrutiny in search of a profitable reproach.

From representative of European foreign policy Catherine Ashton to President Sarkozy, all the way through to centrist candidate François Bayrou, they all know how difficult it is to make statements in such an electrified atmosphere. They have all, in the last few days, received some reproach for words intended to alleviate the pain and disorder created by the violence. Therefore, policymakers need to appeal to civic unity when these things happen.

There are many similarities between the two assassins, uniformed and civilian, but there is a fundamental difference that separates them: The deaths in Toulouse will cheer al-Qaida’s supporters, while those in Kandahar have saddened the entire world. For the followers of bin Laden, the massacre in Toulouse is a victorious feat, while that of Kandahar is a bitter defeat for Washington and its allies. Both events stoke the embers of the war of civilizations that bin Laden tried to unleash.