Pulled out of comments from an earlier post, and expanded -
I’ve been hearing a lot of talk lately about how people are tired of the war, tired of looking at the scenes of destruction on TV, tired of the flag-draped caskets and what they represent in human costs, tired of the expense and frankly, tired of talking about it. We want to move on, we want it over, we want to change the channel, talk about something else. Get back to full-time Britney and her sartorial choices, the next news blitz about the next telegenic blonde co-ed that goes missing, single-payer health care and Our Crumbling Infrastructure.
People are war-weary, and that’s only natural – no one likes a long, protracted fight. The lines get blurry, goals are re-defined, eventually someone you care about will get caught behaving very badly, casting doubt on the rightness of the entire enterprise. There is so very much misery. But war weariness can be a dangerous indulgence. Partly for political reasons, people have been lulled into thinking that the choice on whether or not to continue the fight is a simple one. It isn’t.
People have been told what they long to hear, that we can bring the troops home and all the killing will stop. Or at least the killing of people we care about will stop. And we do have a choice of course, just as we had a choice on deciding whether or not to go to war. But those choices aren’t of the same weight – it is much easier to decide to go to war than it is to decide to lose one. Most countries don’t get the choice of whether or not to lose their wars – it is imposed upon them. Almost uniquely in human history though, we’ve made a recent habit of picking fights we eventually decide not to win. As we spin up to do it one more time, it’s important that we carefully weigh our choices against the potential outcomes, with those consequences in turn weighed against the likelihood of their occurrence.
Because as tempting as it might be for some to see Mr. Bush lose his little war, it doesn’t end that cleanly. In order for him to lose, someone or something else has to win. And just because things are bad now does not mean that they can’t get worse.
It’ll be a pity, of course, about those poor, benighted wogs. Lied to again, disappointed again, left to be slaughtered again. But they ought to have been used to it by now, wot? After Beirut, after Iraq in 1991, after Somalia, they should have known better than to trust us. With all our talk about democracy and freedom, and the rule of law. That’ll never happen again.
Not to worry though. Eventually enough of them will have been murdered and many of the rest will disperse across porous borders in every direction. There will be enough displaced persons to create yet more of the region’s already all-too-common refugee camps, places of misery and squalor that breed hatred like swamp water breeds mosquitoes. The most brutal killers – and we already know who they are, which takes some of the mystery out of it – will rise to the top of the 21st century Golgotha left behind to rule over cowered masses who lack the resources to escape.
And that’s when it starts to get interesting again, at least from our own parochial point of view: Having consolidated their power – with the help of some friends to the east perhaps – will they be content at home within their self-imposed blanket of smothering oppression? Or will they instead turn their attention elsewhere? To the south perhaps, where lies a land of great natural resources inhabited by impoverished millions ruled by thousands of indolent princes? Will the House of Saud – bin Laden’s true enemy, and the foundational reason for his struggle with the US – stand against this newly victorious combination? They might choose the path of accommodation for as long as they can, to prolong their existence. But at what price, that accommodation, and for how long?
Just wogs though, again. Nothing to do with us. Apart from prices at the pump.
Except that one quarter of the world’s population has been taught, as an article of faith, that their religion is final and perfect and they themselves should be given dominion over the world, to spread the word as it has been given to them. Peacefully, if possible, but spread in any case.
And yet, maddeningly, that promised dominion – so obvious for hundreds of years – has evaporated, never to return. With every passing decade the rest of the world marches on impressively, new technologies creating ever-higher standards of living, happiness, and yes, decadence. That progress is vividly resented by many in an umma that falls further and further behind in every measure of human achievement, stewing in comparative misery, corruption and inefficiency under tyrannical oppression.
Having dabbled unsuccessfully in western concepts such as nationalism and socialism, true believers who ask themselves “what went wrong?” are now faced with only two possible answers: Either their faith is not final and perfect, or they themselves are imperfectly faithful. Down the first path lies reason and the potential for peaceful co-existence. Down the other path, not for the first time, lies the conquering sword of jihad – and the forces of existential reaction.
We should strive to encourage reason. Our enemies in Iraq and elsewhere are busily promoting the alternative. If we abandon Iraq to them, one billion people will observe our humiliation there and decide for themselves which is the “strong horse” and which the weak, which philosophy has a future and which does not. The fact that we do not think in these terms is meaningless – our foe most certainly does.
And do you not wonder, as you follow the branches of possibility down their darkest corridors, how many of us will have to die before we decide to kill all of them? Will New York and Washington, DC be enough, or will we concede Los Angeles and Denver too? We will draw the line, if it comes to that kind of terror.
But perhaps we will be luckier. Perhaps our decline will be more gradual, our choices ever more constrained by the realities imposed by an encroaching world, a world only too eager to remind us of the sins we committed when our power was at its zenith. Picture the future of nation built on trade held hostage by inimical forces in control of the lifeblood of global commerce. This is the eager promise of al Zawahiri’s new caliphate.
But how likely is any of this? The re-imposition of a tyranny in Iraq after a radicalizing bloodbath is almost a certainty if we permit the indulgence of “war weariness” to cause us to yield the battlefield to the entropic forces now engaged there. Everything after that becomes increasingly theoretical and distant. But there is a non-zero possibility attaching to those final scenarios, against which we must multiply the potential consequences.
These aren’t childrens games we’re playing. This is the long war.
Damn, you guys are eloquent.
All I want to do is quit effin around and GET ER DONE.
We are the 800# Gorilla. We can sit or s!it wherever we want. Who is gonna stand up to us?
I think it fair to note that I was strongly in favor of the 2003 invasion, for most all of the reasons that Lex still cites. But my judgement of the wisdom of the effort changed for two reasons.
First, after a lot of study of Islam, I came to understand that the Bush administration is just plain wrong in its repeated assertions that Islam is a “religion of peace” that has been “hijacked by a small minority.” Respectfully, that’s a load of bulls**t, and even if it may have sounded like a good political thing to say in late 2001, in the long run it is harmful because it is not the truth. If this is indeed a “long war,” then it behooves the President to prepare the American people, and to have the temerity to name the enemy. Al Qaeda is chump-change in this war. Our enemies are the self-loathing of our misbegotten liberalism, which leaves us weakened and divided at a time we most need to be united as the heirs and defenders of liberty, that long and bloody line that comes down to us from Marathon; and resurgent Islam, which is a political ideology first and foremost. As Mohamed said, Islam is to rule and not be ruled.
The second was the sequence of catastrophes that followed us the first year in Iraq. We failed to kill Sadr the first time he raised his pimply head. We failed to level Najaf. Instead, we gave in and negotiated. Unwilling to be hard up front when we needed to be hard, we have now invited unceasing conflict. Shock and awe? After Fallujah was cleared of civilians, we shouldn’t have sent in the Marines. We should have sent in the B-52s, and not stopped until we were doing nothing more than making the rubble bounce. Do we have enough iron bombs to do that anymore? I’m doubtful, knowing what we went into OIF with. Do we have the will to use them if we do? Absolutely not, and our enemies know it. Whatever Bremer’s faults, he was dead on target in his original approach. Everything Iraq knew or did was wrong. Government by Sharia? Voting by tribal affiliation? Nationalized oil assets? Not on your life, Bremer was going to bring Iraq into the 20th c. no matter how it kicked and screamed. Then he learned that the President didn’t really mean it, and the military wasn’t going to back him. All that talk of what wonderful successes we made of Germany and Japan just… stopped. We pissed away our chance to build a new Iraq in the first year, no matter how noble or unyielding our efforts at this late date.
I well understand the good Captain’s reluctance to step out and let the Iraqis slaughter each other. Dehumanizing, though? Sorry, that conflict precedes us by 1500 years. We are not responsible their mutual hatred, and if we are somehow liable for keeping them from killing each other, then we must be liable for keeping every other warring party in the world apart, too. My oath was to defend the Constitution of the United States, not various warring parties in foreign lands, either of whom would just as gladly kill those whom I am sworn to defend were they not killing each other. If the enemies of my nation are determined to kill each other, I can’t see any reason why I should do anything to stop them. For all the reasons above and more, it is in our interest to let them do so.
Iraq is only one battlefield. This is a wide war, and must be fought on literally all continents at this time, even in South America (talk to some SOCSOUTH guys if you get the chance, they’re desperate for someone to listen to them when they explain how the jihad has spread to our southern borders, even as Muslims are now Canada’s largest immigrant group). As I noted in the original post, in twenty years the question of who controls France’s and Russia’s nukes is going to be crucially important to us, because in fifty years there will be nothing left of the French or Russian peoples. Resurgent Islam doesn’t have shit to recommend itself in this war except for two things. They have will, and they have the excess population. Do we have the will? Not if we’re already talking about “war weariness.” Do we have excess population? Not that I can see, but we have huge welfare states that require foreign labor to maintain themselves (yes, even America, if the numbers claiming 10-11 million illegals in the USA are accurate). So instead of jamming that excess population up in the hellholes the Ummah calls nations, where it would eventually explode and force Islam to come to grips with reality, we let our enemies (and they are our enemies) export all that excess population to us. That is to say, we let our enemies plant colonies within our borders.
Time to wash our hands of the tar baby. Colin Powell, who said if we broke it we bought it, was wrong, as he was about so many things. Iraq was broke when we bought it, and we have no obligation to fix it. Time to wash our hands of it, and turn to real business at hand: supporting and encouraging our allies, who have endured real trials for our cause and who have gotten pretty much squat from us for their sacrifices; and punishing our enemies, who since 9/11 have seen repeatedly that there is no punishment in store for them for acting against the USA and its allies. Whether or not we like it, the future of liberty, of that long and fretful flame that came to us from Marathon, is now in our hands, and if we fail, if we collapse from within, then who knows what horrors await our children and our children’s children. To quote Abraham Lincoln, My fellow Americans, we cannot escape history…
Fuzzy, It Might get uglyer,(if that is a word). But those of ya’ll in the states prolly wont notice much.
Just read this for the first time today sir (instead of studying for a chem final, I know I know, I’ll get on that too), but again, I am just astounded at your level of intelligence and use of eloquent diction. I don’t know how else this can better be said. Thank you for putting so many peoples’ thoughts into words.
Zane, you paint a grim picture indeed, but not one that I entirely disagree with. The part that still burns inside is that our troops were never allowed to do what they knew was right – take out Sadr, bomb them to hell and back. And it’s still right, IMO. We are so concerned with being politically correct and religiously sensitive, we’ve missed the point. But I still don’t believe pulling out of Iraq is the answer. But then, what IS the answer? Is there one? Or is this one of those situations where every answer is right & wrong, in the same breath.
Lioness: you can come to my bunker as soon as it’s built. I promise it will be comfortable enough for more than the next 10 years…
And you all want to know why I want to build a HUGE bunker in my backyard here in New England? Go here – http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,236337,00.html – to find out just why…
Kris, the grim picture is demographics. But then again, that just makes for the “target rich environment.” The key is to stop diluting our power, and to force that surplus population of the Muslim world back onto itself so it can practice self-destruction vice destruction. There is a possibility that Europe might rouse itself, but it is exceedingly slim. Consider the consequences in terms of loss of basing, fly-over permissions, local resupply, etc., and of course, those nukes. The Navy has spent a huge amount concentrating its European presence in Italy, and yet demographically Italy is doomed, with something like a 1.15 reproduction rate. That means that in about thirty years, there will be half as many Italians as there are now, without a shot being fired. Italy will be in effect a dhimmi nation, with a large, vigorous and youthful Muslim population, one that never assimilated. How welcome do you think we’ll be then? Most European nations are already unwilling to support the USA and oppose the jihad, because to do so will unleash the lurking “youth” we keep hearing about in what little reporting there is of the ongoing civil war in France. Better not to reveal their impotence, maybe, just maybe it will all get better. Funny how those youths are always North African. Better to just keep sucking at the teat of the welfare state, and don’t attract attention. As for the USA, it better prepare to stand alone, because with the exception of Australia, we pretty much are alone, and liberty, that stubborn flame from Marathon, will stand or fall with us.
There is no reason for us to go it alone, but the people we should be spending big efforts getting closer to are in New Delhi and Beijing, not in Paris or Berlin or Rome.
We certainly have differences with those countries, but we also have a lot in common, and we need powerful friends who will have common cause over the long run.
Hmmmmmm,
It’s a big world out there. It ain’t friendly to us at all, is it? We’ll never be able to stay on top forever. But I, for one, would like to stay on top for longer than it takes my kids to grow up and my grandkids to do so also.
If the rest of you agree with that sentiment, then please explain why we should retreat from any shithole we haven’t been kicked out of yet? Why should we leave any place that hasn’t told us politely to please move it on back home? If the bar is peaceful, I’ll go home on my own when the bartender says it is closing time. If there’s someone poking me with a stick to leave, I won’t be leaving until the stretcher carries me out, or him. And it is that way in Iraq, Afghanistan, and anywhere else we have mustered the political cojones to show up.
The only thing which keeps America safe is deterrence. If you poke us, we will eventually beat the snot out of you. And once we’re worked up about it, I don’t think we want to tell everyone we didn’t mean it until they apologize for starting the fight in the first place!
Americans don’t go to war lightly. We shouldn’t leave any place we intend to pacify until it is pacified. Because the next time will take a lot more Men and a lot more money. A lot more wives are going to be widows, and a lot more kids without fathers the next time we have to do this if we don’t finish the job this time.
All our disagreements here are in method or tactic. Lets make sure we all agree that Winning this is necessary. Losing, even once, doesn’t protect you from anybody or anything. It just makes a whole helluva lot of gunslingers come looking for you. They all want to be the one to bring you down and become the new top gunhand.
We’d better decide that it isn’t time to hang up the guns or the badge. Unless we’re ready to end up in Boot Hill. Stay the course is EXACTLY the tack to take. Whatever we choose to do is stay the course. And I don’t think there is a damn thing the insurgents or our own media can do to make us quit unless we all lose heart in the Men in Uniform and the basic goodness of the American People.
That’s not gonna happen in my house. Don’t let it happen in yours.
Subsunk out.
Stay the course leads us no where. The conflict is now a self sustaining reaction. One either needs to escalate it a lot-and in the process kill a lot of innocent Arabs (if such a word can be applied to any Arab) via Dresden style tactics, or leave. Right now its a chain reaction with the rods set just to keep it going.
Futhrermore, like it or not, stay or not, the US will be less and less able to influence events around the world as time goes on. This is one of the unintended consequences of globalization and the transferrence of American wealth to our enemies ( we call them allies in the case of India and China-enemies none the less).
If the Europeans do not play, we should not be suprised-back when it counted we let them flounder on their own. ( and I’m not talking about WW-II). Accordingly they no longer have a stake and they know it. Plus they are proving less and less willing to sacrifice their youth as we appear to be.
The real model for the “war” on terror is not Iraq. Its the Horn of Africa and PI and what we are doing in non military ways with US power. It will take longer to see the payoff, but it will buy the US more in the long run.
Finally, if Iraq does not fix itself by 2008, the next President will do an Ike and pull us out.-or be impeached.
I agree.
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I stumbled on Neptunis Lex and the “War Weary” blog while doing a search on Lincoln’s acceptance speech words, “Fellow Americans, we cannot escape history”. As a 71 year-old man whose father was a career, “ship of the line” officer” of the “old” US Navy and who rose in the ranks from enlistment as a boot during the Great Depression to a WWII commission, but who never served in the military ranks, I offer a different perspective.
The cumulative consequences to the U.S.A. and their affect on it and the rest of the world, especially from military interventions in wars from the 20th century into the 21st, are matters of speculation. However, the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are again fraught with consequences, probably unforeseen by questionable “leadership” and of long-term significance not only for our nation, but for the millions of people in those countries who do not “see” our intentions as beneficial to them, rather often on the contrary.
Besides the very poignant dangers to our young service men and women who are put “in harm’s way” in actual combat situations and the sad toil of their casualties over years in these countries, the dilemna to me are the vast suffering, destruction, deaths and dislocations of their populations attributed to expansion of largely combat operations over the years.
Recently, mass suicide bombings in both countries, as well as in Pakistan, have been gathering headline news, and increasingly again in Iraq and questioning the notion of “stability” there. One wonders about the U.S.’s justification for removing a tyrannical government that provided relative
“order” and “security” (as well as from earlier WMD allegations), only to apparently usher in years of chaos, disorder and insecurity in the name of “freedom” and “democracy”, or, even, to maintain our own “national security”.
So, the historical legacy of the consequences of our last, self-defined “war president” is still with us, and, as with Lincoln’s words, we cannot escape it. I viewed a war movie produced in the late 1970’s, “Cross of Iron”. The protagonist, played by James Coburn, is a German NCO, Steiner, in the Wermacht infantry crumbling into oblivion before the assault of Russian troops. He hates the Third Reich, the officers who uphold the command, the death and destruction of the BlitzKrieg mentality, yet he is bonded to his men, who in turn love him for his bravery and leadership.
I recommend seeing the film (sure, it’s fictional based on a novel), but especially the last scene. The laughter of Steiner, the oddly modern and fatalistic, yet, archtypical warrior, fighting and killing to the end, echoes while disturbing photos of wars’ aftermath appear to end the film.
I’ve also seen the renowned “Band Of Brothers” series of videos produced several years ago, based on Steve Ambrose’s book, and recall some scenes which portray outright murder of prisoners. In the “war is hell” scenario, who is the murderer and who is the victim, when the murderer is murdered?