Many US citizens probably think their government actually did something about international terrorism when Congress passed and President George W. Bush on Aug. 3 signed a 5-year extension of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA). This misconception is the worst part of a law with much else to regret.
Government propaganda sustains the ruse.
"Supporters of ILSA renewal make the argument that ILSA has succeeded in deterring Japanese investment and has probably deterred some European investors from investing in the energy sector" of target countries, says a statement accompanying the extension bill.
Big deal. While the law might have deterred some investors, it hasn't stopped many others. Energy projects financed by foreigners are, in fact, progressing nicely in both Iran and Libya. US companies can only watch.
What is worse, fanciful US deterrence of investment in scorned countries has no apparent effect on terrorism.
Thinking twice
How much does it matter that some company might have thought twice before investing in a country the US accuses of sponsoring terrorism?
Ask the families of 16 Israelis killed at a pizza restaurant in Jerusalem on Aug. 9 by a Palestinian bomber, who also perished.
Ask the more than 100 other persons who were injured in that abomination but not killed.
Ask representatives of Islamic Jihad and Hamas, who competed with one another for credit for the attack.
And ask the thousands of Palestinians who demonstrated outside of Jerusalem to celebrate the bloodshed.
The slaughter in Jerusalem was just the bloodiest recent incident in Israel's accelerating cycle of terrorist murders and military reprisals. International pressure builds for Bush to intervene. Yet what can the US president realistically be expected to do?
There is no easy answer. There is no ready antidote for hatred such as that on display in Israel. And mistakes by an overreaching US are always costly.
There is, nevertheless, a constructive first step that the US can take but probably will not. It can repeal ILSA. The step would demonstrate seriousness of purpose that the rest of the world would welcome and goodwill that the target regimes could not ignore.
The rest of the world knows that ILSA is about US domestic politics, not international terrorism. If not for the law's threat of third-party sanctions, which rankles allies by smirching their sovereignty, it would be a laugh.
Of course, the US has not enforced ILSA's third-party sanctions and has no intention of alienating friends by doing so. So all that remains for consideration outside the US is the farce.
The story is simple. Properly revolted by misbehavior of rogue Iranian and Libyan regimes, the US responds by proscribing investment by its own companies and blustering against companies from its allies. It's like kicking the household cat because a stray mongrel bites a pedestrian down the road.
Most Americans probably don't see the situation that way. Assured by their representatives in government that ILSA is having an effect, they mistake ILSA as constructive action against terrorism. Yet ILSA only gives the US government an excuse not to seek some course of action with genuine promise.
There is no question that the world would be a better place without the likes of Libyan President Moammar Qaddafi, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and the murderers they support to whatever degree they do. There is no question that those parts of the world appalled by acts of mass murder need to respond and that leadership in the effort falls to the US.
But there also is no question that sanctions not only don't prevent terrorism but also encourage it. They assure terrorists that the US responds to clandestine bombs and innocent blood with nothing more than gestures designed for domestic consumption. Worse, they make the US a partner in institutionalized animosity.
In the middle
Oil companies based in the US, through no fault of their own, find themselves uncomfortably in the middle of this deadly loop. They must not fall for the pretense that support for sanctions means resistance to terrorism. It doesn't. Companies should encourage the US government to repeal sanctions against Iran and Libya and carry its grievances to Tehran and Tripoli.
The direct approach might not work. But it at least would lay to rest a self-delusional strategy that has already failed.