[Bill,
July 17, 2007]
Pre-September 11 mentality
I've long since mentioned my dubious, yet consistent support for the President's Post-Sept. 11 war policy. I had strong doubts about it, but my point of view was so out of touch with what my fellow citizens seemed to be feeling, especially in the blue state where I work, that I haven't taken to restating it too often.
As I've mentioned, I thought we needed to do something pretty horrible in the wake of Sept. 11 -- I would have gone full Jacksonian, which is to say, immediately done to Afghanistan what Rome did to Carthage. Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Saudia Arabia and the Palestinian Authority would have been on our short list. The war would have been over by Sept. 20.
I believed this not because I am a bloodthirsty maniac, but because I believe in the end, we would save more lives by obliterating Afghanistan than we will ultimately lose in this war.
That's because the destruction of the World Trade Center, while extraordinarily evil, was a brilliant strategic move by our enemies. It left us a series of choices that ranged from bad to terrible, and attacked us at our most vulnerable spots and cultural fault-lines. We are vulnerable not only in our freedom, but it left us playing defense, or trying to remake the Middle East, which at the time, I felt, was a fool's errand.
Still, I've gone along because it seemed to me that perhaps an annihilating attack of neutron bombs would after all commit a massive genocide. It also would have sent the message that we were not to be screwed with -- and that's a very important message to send. You don't pull this shit on us. Not on our homeland. Not ever.
As this War on Terror drags on and on, it's become apparent that our enemy knows us pretty well, and knows that they can get away with mass murder and terrorism on U.S. soil. That doesn't mean they'll win. Indeed, their movement could peter out merely through our resistance and our cultural and technical inertia. That is, they may get "canceled" one day by TV news networks that decide it's just not that important anymore ... and may be considered nothing more than a nuisance by most people. Like most evil, they may devour themselves in the end.
In the past six years, I've thought about the position about "what's the right thing to do?" from a lot of perspectives. I think about Iraq in terms of chess (it may seem convenient, I know, from my perspective, but this war has no fronts. That's clear.). In chess, there's something that happens when you've got a king and a pawn against a king. If done correctly, you can force checkmate. Done wrong, you stalemate. Similarly, there are several other times where you have to back off and "untie the knot." Do we need to untie the knot in Iraq? Or do we lose tempo? Is the holding action enough? Or are we on a fool's errand, flawed in the conception and doomed from the start?
Clearly, if we leave, we leave a mess and we're utterly discredited for a generation at least, if not more. No nation or group, after seeing us abandon the Kurds a second time, the Shi-ites a second time, will ever believe us again. And I wouldn't blame them. I wouldn't believe us again, either.
Yet we have bigger problems than Iraq. Pakistan has hinterlands that are now, effectively, the exact safe haven for terrorism we sought to deny Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. If we're serious, we should fight Al Qaeda in Pakistan. But we're not ... so we have a politicized situation, in which we try to look like we're doing something, when in fact we're taking half-measures.
Syria and Iran have committed acts of war against us. Yet we do nothing. Again, for fear of spreading the war.
I expected all of this malfeasance by Pakistan, Syria and Iran when we went into Iraq. In fact, I thought that was the point of the Iraq invasion -- then we'd have reasons to declare war against Iran and Syria, and maybe Pakistan as part of the Afghanistan War, and fight the terrorists there. But I also expected a full mobilization of the United States into war mode, and fight a World War II-style war with conscription of all able-bodied men and women, domestic interning Muslims and vocal opponents of the war [we did it in WWI--where do you think the "fire in a crowded theater" phrase came from -- it was to silence opponents of the draft], banning visas from Muslim nations, a permanent ban on Muslims working near airports and safety-sensitive areas, and the full-scale, Dresden-style total war against these nations. (I have since moderated these views considerably, you'll be relieved to know :))
I realized pretty quickly that the reality of the War on Terror was we were simply playing a game of pattycake with the terrorists, that we were actually dumb enough to try to think we could defend all our soft targets. That we were going to play the terrorists' game. Except for the invasion of Iraq, which really threw them for a loop. Right now, Iraq is the place we found in the world to conduct our war with Al Qaeda. We are doing a good job. They know that Iraq is crucial to their strategy, so they are fighting us there.
Victory for them there will not only demoralize our nation, but would be a resounding victory for Al Qaeda. And Al Qaeda has repeatedly stated that they've got a lot riding on Iraq.
Perhaps Iraq can be a holding action -- can we stand another 10 years of this -- that is, for Al Qaeda, like a virus, to run its course and go away. People forget that Vietnam, while a defeat for the United States, may have been crucial to the Cold War by holding the line for 12 years or so. Sometimes time is important.
In chess, we call this tempo. When you have tempo, it means your opponent is reacting to your threats. When you intentionally give up tempo, you now must respond to his threats, and the only ways you can usually regain tempo is (1) By simultaneously neutralizing a threat while creating a counter-threat [see my nuke Afghanistan idea], but that's very, very difficult against skilled opponents, or (2) Your opponent blunders.
Our opponent has blundered, and will blunder again. We have blundered, and will again ... we may need to hold in Iraq, or we may need to widen the war -- which is politically impossible. But giving tempo -- perhaps not too bright.
Still, we're muddling through. It may work. We may win in spite of ourselves. And let's hope that we can continue to prevent attacks. If so, then clearly nuking Afghanistan would have been wrong. However, if Iran gets the bomb, and we see nuclear terrorism, then clearly muddling through won't work.
It's possible that as Peggy Noonan said, this generation of leaders (I would extend that to a lot of Americans, too) simply aren't up to the challenge of the times. It's also possible that ignoring problems may cause them to go away.
Pray.
As I've mentioned, I thought we needed to do something pretty horrible in the wake of Sept. 11 -- I would have gone full Jacksonian, which is to say, immediately done to Afghanistan what Rome did to Carthage. Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Saudia Arabia and the Palestinian Authority would have been on our short list. The war would have been over by Sept. 20.
I believed this not because I am a bloodthirsty maniac, but because I believe in the end, we would save more lives by obliterating Afghanistan than we will ultimately lose in this war.
That's because the destruction of the World Trade Center, while extraordinarily evil, was a brilliant strategic move by our enemies. It left us a series of choices that ranged from bad to terrible, and attacked us at our most vulnerable spots and cultural fault-lines. We are vulnerable not only in our freedom, but it left us playing defense, or trying to remake the Middle East, which at the time, I felt, was a fool's errand.
Still, I've gone along because it seemed to me that perhaps an annihilating attack of neutron bombs would after all commit a massive genocide. It also would have sent the message that we were not to be screwed with -- and that's a very important message to send. You don't pull this shit on us. Not on our homeland. Not ever.
As this War on Terror drags on and on, it's become apparent that our enemy knows us pretty well, and knows that they can get away with mass murder and terrorism on U.S. soil. That doesn't mean they'll win. Indeed, their movement could peter out merely through our resistance and our cultural and technical inertia. That is, they may get "canceled" one day by TV news networks that decide it's just not that important anymore ... and may be considered nothing more than a nuisance by most people. Like most evil, they may devour themselves in the end.
In the past six years, I've thought about the position about "what's the right thing to do?" from a lot of perspectives. I think about Iraq in terms of chess (it may seem convenient, I know, from my perspective, but this war has no fronts. That's clear.). In chess, there's something that happens when you've got a king and a pawn against a king. If done correctly, you can force checkmate. Done wrong, you stalemate. Similarly, there are several other times where you have to back off and "untie the knot." Do we need to untie the knot in Iraq? Or do we lose tempo? Is the holding action enough? Or are we on a fool's errand, flawed in the conception and doomed from the start?
Clearly, if we leave, we leave a mess and we're utterly discredited for a generation at least, if not more. No nation or group, after seeing us abandon the Kurds a second time, the Shi-ites a second time, will ever believe us again. And I wouldn't blame them. I wouldn't believe us again, either.
Yet we have bigger problems than Iraq. Pakistan has hinterlands that are now, effectively, the exact safe haven for terrorism we sought to deny Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. If we're serious, we should fight Al Qaeda in Pakistan. But we're not ... so we have a politicized situation, in which we try to look like we're doing something, when in fact we're taking half-measures.
Syria and Iran have committed acts of war against us. Yet we do nothing. Again, for fear of spreading the war.
I expected all of this malfeasance by Pakistan, Syria and Iran when we went into Iraq. In fact, I thought that was the point of the Iraq invasion -- then we'd have reasons to declare war against Iran and Syria, and maybe Pakistan as part of the Afghanistan War, and fight the terrorists there. But I also expected a full mobilization of the United States into war mode, and fight a World War II-style war with conscription of all able-bodied men and women, domestic interning Muslims and vocal opponents of the war [we did it in WWI--where do you think the "fire in a crowded theater" phrase came from -- it was to silence opponents of the draft], banning visas from Muslim nations, a permanent ban on Muslims working near airports and safety-sensitive areas, and the full-scale, Dresden-style total war against these nations. (I have since moderated these views considerably, you'll be relieved to know :))
I realized pretty quickly that the reality of the War on Terror was we were simply playing a game of pattycake with the terrorists, that we were actually dumb enough to try to think we could defend all our soft targets. That we were going to play the terrorists' game. Except for the invasion of Iraq, which really threw them for a loop. Right now, Iraq is the place we found in the world to conduct our war with Al Qaeda. We are doing a good job. They know that Iraq is crucial to their strategy, so they are fighting us there.
Victory for them there will not only demoralize our nation, but would be a resounding victory for Al Qaeda. And Al Qaeda has repeatedly stated that they've got a lot riding on Iraq.
Perhaps Iraq can be a holding action -- can we stand another 10 years of this -- that is, for Al Qaeda, like a virus, to run its course and go away. People forget that Vietnam, while a defeat for the United States, may have been crucial to the Cold War by holding the line for 12 years or so. Sometimes time is important.
In chess, we call this tempo. When you have tempo, it means your opponent is reacting to your threats. When you intentionally give up tempo, you now must respond to his threats, and the only ways you can usually regain tempo is (1) By simultaneously neutralizing a threat while creating a counter-threat [see my nuke Afghanistan idea], but that's very, very difficult against skilled opponents, or (2) Your opponent blunders.
Our opponent has blundered, and will blunder again. We have blundered, and will again ... we may need to hold in Iraq, or we may need to widen the war -- which is politically impossible. But giving tempo -- perhaps not too bright.
Still, we're muddling through. It may work. We may win in spite of ourselves. And let's hope that we can continue to prevent attacks. If so, then clearly nuking Afghanistan would have been wrong. However, if Iran gets the bomb, and we see nuclear terrorism, then clearly muddling through won't work.
It's possible that as Peggy Noonan said, this generation of leaders (I would extend that to a lot of Americans, too) simply aren't up to the challenge of the times. It's also possible that ignoring problems may cause them to go away.
Pray.