A must read.

[wrbones]

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« ABOUT TIME FOR THE NEXT MOVE... |January 26, 2003
WAR

The internet is a wonderful place. I almost wrote “invention,” but it is, in fact, a landscape, a space to explore. We have, at our fingertips, all of the combined wisdom (and idiocy) of our species throughout our long struggle up towards enlightenment.

The internet is also a horrible place, for there are dark rooms and hidden sewers where all of the festering evil we humans commit upon each other are exposed for those with the stomach to witness it.

I have spent much time in these disgusting realms in the days since September 11th, 2001. I have forced myself to endure many videotaped nightmares. I have seen Africans hacked to pieces with machetes, watched mere boys shot in the street and left there like dogs by other Kalashnikov-wielding children. I’ve seen a mass execution by firing squad, men tied to poles set against a gorgeous beach while picnickers cheered and danced. I’ve seen a man’s hands cut off in front of his very eyes.

I’ve seen photos of blackened lumps in a morgue in Bali, the charred and twisted remains of happy young men and women in the prime of their lives. I’ve seen the unimaginable carnage in the few seconds after a suicide bombing in Israel, dead and dying old men and women looking down at their shattered bodies in disbelief, and yonder the head of the perpetrator smiling joyously on the sidewalk. I’ve seen the rage and joy of pre-teen children as they throw stones at their murdered neighbors accused of collaboration in Palestine.

I’ve seen emergency workers with shovels cleaning up what’s left of people after a Serb mortar attack on a marketplace. I’ve seen the almost unimaginable cruelty of Chechens screaming Allahu Ackbar! as they decapitate a Russian civilian with a small axe in a forest clearing, and I have watched them cut the throat of a Russian boy soldier with such horror and disgust that I was sick for the rest of the day. I have seen these things, and more.

There are two images I will never forget, and I expect I will think of them often in the days and weeks to come. For in the front row of this parade of horror and depravity, I have watched a fundamentalist Islamic crowd stone two women to death. They were covered head to toe in shockingly white linen – the better to see the bloodstains. Taken into a field and buried up to their waists, they looked like odd white sails on a sand horizon, until the stones began to fly, leaving red carnations where they landed. One of the women just crumpled, bent at the waist, and I still pray that this person was knocked unconscious within the first minute or so. The other did not go peacefully into that good night. She died fighting and struggling, enduring the most sickening lurches as the unseen stones fell on her, twisting under that now-scarlet hood, trying to protect her face as best she could, as hundreds of her friends and relatives vented their rage, calling out the name of their god as we would cheer on the Tamba Bay Buccaneers. Allahu Ackbar! Allahu Ackbar! Allahu Ackbar!

I will not forget that image.

And I will not forget another one, either. As long as I draw breath, I swear I will never forget the sight of two people holding hands, and leaping from 108 stories above the hard concrete sidewalks that I myself have walked, gawking skyward at one of the wonders of the world. I will not forget them. I will not forget their fall, the spin that finally tore their hands apart as they fell forever, forever down that quarter-mile. I will never stop wondering what they said to each other in that last moment, or their cries to each other as they launched themselves to their deaths, having watched their friends take the same leap a few moments before. I will never forget what an unimaginable hell that their cozy office, full of coffee mugs and pictures of grandchildren, had become in order for them to make that choice, with the ruins of their friends visible on the streets so far below them.



Now let me explain why I have sought out such despair and horror, endured again and again the rising bile, the nausea, the sickening unclean sense that is cured only by a long, hot shower.

I do it because I want to see what is, not what has been fed to me. I have worked as a scientist and a television editor, and both of these professions have driven me to seek out the reality, the raw data, the source footage. I want my worldview and my opinions to reflect facts, not wishes – no matter how unpleasant the facts, or how comforting the wishes.

One of the reasons that September 11th remains so shocking and clear to us today was that it was all raw and unedited during those first few hours. Bland, chatty newsmen were rendered speechless, a tough-as-nails mayor broke down and wept, congressmen spontaneously broke into God Bless America because they didn’t know what else to do, and people sent in video of jets flying into buildings, broadcast unedited as their friends screamed Jesus ****ing Christ!! on network television. It was raw. It was real. It stayed that way for perhaps 48 hours, until people like me (but not me) got a hold of it and turned it into America Mourns with slow-mo flags snapping and moving dissolves of weeping bystanders superimposed over somber musical chords.

Now that awful, enraging footage is being held back, so as not to enflame public opinion. We are about to launch a war in which people will die at our hand, and we have done a dreadful job of making the case for such an action. Public opinion needs to be enflamed, because no cold-blooded, clear-eyed look at what we oppose in this conflict could do anything but enflame public opinion.

Those who criticize the United States from within clearly have not seen any of these horrors I have mentioned, for if they had it could not but mitigate their rhetoric, and put some perspective into their arrogant and affluent lives. Those who actually endure such daily horror as can be found in the world want one thing and one thing only: they want to come here. They want to come here NOW.

We never see these grotesque realities on US television, and yet our news media has not been shy about reporting the effects of US bombing campaigns, never missed a chance to show us the weeping civilians wailing over children lost in US air attacks, never blanched at showing charred Iraqi soldiers hanging out of tanks destroyed by our weapons.

However, by showing only our actions, by showing only what we did to Iraqis without presenting the horrors they inflicted on Kuwait, we have made an editorial decision, that being: The US is the cause of, and not the remedy to, much of the suffering in the world.

That said, in a democracy we are responsible for the actions of our military. Reporting on the consequences of our actions is disturbing and demoralizing, and yet it is well and proper that they do this. We cannot turn our backs on the actual consequences of our actions as Americans. We need to see and hear the result of our military operations, for if we do not we will lose the shock and outrage, the human compassion and decency that so often stays our hand. We, as a nation, learned in Vietnam that war is not jingoistic glory. It is also not a videogame. It is concentrated, unleashed pain, agony, grief and horror, and real people, people who love their children as much as we do, are going to suffer and die because of the actions we are about to take.

Unlike our political opponents both here and abroad, we need to fully and completely understand and accept the consequences of our position. And those consequences, when making war, are the most solemn and heavy responsibilities we can bear as a people.

Those protesting this war do not seem to get this at all. Not only have they failed to make an argument based on fact and historical precedent, they have stooped to the most childish and infantile posturing and rhetoric imaginable. Their chanting has all the mindlessness and cruelty of a kindergarten cabal; their slogans and slanders and taunts seemingly exclusively ad hominem. Watching them on C–Span for as long as you can bear, you rapidly become convinced that they have no point to make at all, other than that the United States is, by definition, the source of all evil and injustice in the world. Conscientious liberals admit in private, and indeed, more frequently in public, to the paucity of thought, the irrationality and sheer lunacy of those who march in our streets in opposition to war with Iraq. I see the absurd posturing of these suburban socialists, listen to the inane chanting from these mall Marxists, watch them return to their Lexus’ and their minivans and their SUV’s and find myself stuck with Life During Wartime running over and over in my head:

This ain’t no party
This ain’t no disco
This ain’t no foolin’ around

This ain’t no Mud Club
No CBGB
I ain’t got time for that now



As we enter the eve of this war, I am myself torn by a paradox in human nature that has confused and baffled minds far greater and more refined than mine. How can we be both so good and so bad? How can the SS and the Salvation Army be staffed by the same species? What exactly is our nature, anyway?

This has been debated for ages, but to me the most cursory look at the world can quickly and clearly provide a powerful clue. The single definitive trait of Homo Sapiens, or greatest – indeed, only strength as a species, is our limitless adaptability. No other creature before or since can live anywhere, (or eat anything) and thrive. From the bleached sands of the Sahara to the ice floes of the pole, we can adapt and prosper. We can be found in every latitude, in the far reaches of space, and at the bottom of the ocean. We appear to be infinitely programmable, and so we adapt to anything.

( cont )

[wrbones]

In societies where cruelty and domination rule, we are capable of the most unspeakable acts of torture, repression and murder. In the streets of revolution-torn Africa, in torture chambers in South America, in the killing fields of Asia, the Gulags of the steppes, the European death camps and the American cotton plantations we see refined and perfected barbarism and inhumanity.

Some say this is just human nature. And yet, and yet, in those few historical moments where freedom and prosperity and democracy are allowed to flourish and grow, we are startled by the near total absence of such plagues. No democracy has ever declared war on another. They may have endured hunger, but no true democracy has ever faced actual famine. Individual crime and atrocity have sadly not been banished, but bloodshed and massacre in the streets day after day are unimaginable. Entire communities and nations have been built and survive on deeply cherished ideals of liberty and freedom.

Where the people rule, soldiers do not come jackbooted in the night. Decency, trust, respect and cooperation are the coin of such a realm, and their by-products are equality, prosperity, and happiness. And by any measure, the most free and prosperous and inventive of these societies may be found in the United States of America.

We have managed, as a nation, to build and maintain what might best be thought of as a bubble of freedom, safety and opportunity. We have paid for this privilege through two and a half centuries by wars that have taken the best of our sons and fathers, and now our mothers and daughters as well. We have for two hundred and fifty years found our voice and our memories intact, and now stand at the doorstep of a new millennium facing a world that has once again largely chosen to ignore the lessons of history.

We and two or three other nations, old and true friends who have stood by us through flame and terror, now confront a menace the likes of which we have not seen for almost a thousand years. We face an adversary in the full bloom of romance with death and destruction, an enemy willing – eager -- to spray our cities with a virus it has taken armies of scientists and doctors, working diligently through centuries of research and learning, to eradicate from the blood-soak rolls of history. We face fanatics who would bring down the entire world, themselves included, in a radioactive Armageddon, secure in their own twisted souls of the heavenly rewards of sexual gratification and revenge for their many abject failures. We face people such as this, people who are so far beyond the pale of human mercy and so corrupted by black and bitter rage that they must be killed, for nothing else will stop them, nothing – as they tell us at every opportunity.

We have blithely ignored them for many years, turned a deaf ear to their warnings and fatwahs, turned an even more blinded eye to their procession of assassinations, massacres, bombings and attacks. Despite our recent and proven record of aiding and defending innocent Muslims in Kuwait, the Balkans, and elsewhere, we have been singled out as a Satan, a nation of sub-human infidels, and been the target of slander and incitement to murder that would have shamed the most fanatical Jesuit in the Spanish Inquisition.

There are those of us who have the courage to actually listen to their unedited rhetoric, view the video records of their atrocities, and face the fact that these people are sworn to kill as many innocent civilians as they possibly can. Some of us, in the months since September 11th, 2001, have chosen to take them at their word.

So let us gather the moral courage to take a factual, cold-hearted look at the reasons why this war with Iraq is the necessary next step in this conflict; one that needs to be undertaken without delay.



First, and most importantly, we can plainly state the prima facie cause that makes up our first argument in favor of invasion:

1. The impending military action is not the pre-emptive opening of hostilities against a sovereign nation, but rather the continuation of hostilities began by Iraq in 1990 with their invasion of Kuwait; said resumption being a direct result of repeated and flagrant violations of the ceasefire signed by Iraq in 1991.

So much for the ‘pre-emptive’ attack criticism. This upcoming military action is indeed the product of a pre-emptive attack on a sovereign nation…that nation being Kuwait. Saddam Hussein took his country to war in a naked grab for oil and glory. He was handed the worst military defeat in modern history, a defeat so complete and total that US forces began to hesitate to fire on Iraqi units that were so spectacularly and completely routed.

The United States acquiesced to international law in the form of the UN resolution limiting military action to the removal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The Iraqi leader, facing complete and total defeat, entered into agreements as a condition of ceasefire, and has failed at every turn to honor those agreements, bringing his country to ruin and starvation by doing so.

It’s really just that simple.

Second, the current resolution is clearly worded so that the burden of proof regarding disarmament is on Iraq, and not on the success of the weapons inspectors. UN 1441 makes it clear that anything less than full and complete cooperation – this means things like meeting us at the airport and handing over the uranium-enrichment centrifuges that we know they have – is a material breach of UN1441 and will be met by “serious consequences” (and we should perhaps rename the Nimitz the USS Serious Consequences.)

So:

2. Failure to turn over known WMD components, and not the failure of UN Inspectors to find them, puts Iraq in material breach of UN Resolution 1441 and authorizes the US and her allies to enforce previous UN resolutions by means of military force.

So much for the legal niceties. Now let’s get down to brass tacks.



On Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, the United States was suddenly and deliberately attacked by forces of Islamic extremism in an act of barbarity that stunned the world.

In order to grasp the full meaning of that attack, we would do well to change our terminology to better reflect the reality we face. We should be thinking and discussing the upcoming conflict not as the War on Iraq, but as the Battle of Iraq. For it is indeed that: a major – hopefully, the major – battle against Islamic fundamentalism and the tactic of terrorism that they have employed against the US and others in their rage and shame at their own manifest failures.

Let us then examine the evidence and motivation that firmly places Iraq as the key component in an alliance of terror directed against the West in general and the United States in particular.

We should begin by having the honesty and integrity to admit that the direct connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda prior to the events of 9/11 are tenuous and murky at best. We should also acknowledge that despite feverish claims to the contrary, Saddam Hussein is a totalitarian dictator exclusively concerned with his own power and in no way is he the Muslim Saladin he makes himself out to be. It does indeed seem likely that Osama bin laden and Saddam detest and hate each other (and soon we shall be able to refer to both of them in the past tense.) But to say that this is enough to prevent them from allying themselves against the United States is self-delusion of the highest order.

For the full horror of a terrorist nuclear attack upon the United States to come to fruition, our enemies need both the means to produce an atomic bomb and a delivery system for it.

Anyone who doubts the willingness and ability of Al Qaeda to deploy and use such a weapon has frankly not been paying attention and is unworthy of this debate. They have, in public statements, on web sites, in training videos and operations manuals, shown a persistent and desperate attempt to obtain such a weapon. We have only to look back to that clear blue morning should we have any doubt whatsoever that such people would do everything in their power to kill as many of us as possible. Let us not forget that without the heroism and professionalism of our police and firemen, and the most well-managed, successful emergency evacuation in history, that death toll that day could have easily reached twenty or thirty thousand. There is a great deal of evidence that other teams, both here and abroad, were thwarted by the quick grounding of the commercial fleet by the FAA. Who knows how many others might have been killed that day, and where? Or how many unsung victories we have won in the months since that terrible day?

A small nuclear device can be fit into a suitcase. We need to face the stark, brutal fact that in a free society there is no defense against such a weapon. This war cannot be won, and our cities and people saved from nuclear annihilation, by playing defense.

Fortunately, constructing a nuclear weapon is not easy. In fact, it took the United States the better part of several years and billions of 1940’s dollars to construct an operational nuclear device, using the full resources of the world’s richest nation and the best theoretical and practical minds on the planet.

Not only must the bomb maker gets his or her hands on large quantities of a rare and tightly controlled substance – uranium or plutonium – they must also overcome huge engineering problems in terms of hardened materials and exquisitely timed explosions needed to implode the fissile material to critical mass.

A finished nuke can fit in a suitcase, but to build one takes a factory, indeed, takes a nation: money, massive equipment, large work areas, armies of scientists. These things, unlike suitcases, can be found, targeted and destroyed.

( cont )

[wrbones]

There can be no question whatsoever that Saddam Hussein has been desperately seeking the means to build such a weapon. Let’s make sure everyone heard that: There can be no question whatsoever that Saddam Hussein has been desperately seeking the means to build such a weapon. Really astonishing piles of independent records and sources confirm this without question. From Iraqi defectors who actually had hands-on experience with the programs, to intelligence reports of the import of the required equipment and raw materials, to the reams of evidence that prior inspectors discovered in their seven years of investigations, to the unabashed statements of Saddam Hussein himself… Saddam has brought his country to ruin for no other reason that his obsession with owning a nuclear bomb.

Had the Israelis not bombed the Osirak reactor in 1981 (and endured world condemnation for it at the time), then without question Iraq would have had a nuclear weapon during the 1991 Gulf War. It is impossible to imagine a man such as Saddam not using such a weapon when faced with the greatest defeat in military history. Whether he used it in a Scud attack on US troops, to contaminate Kuwaiti or Saudi oilfields, or, more likely, to use against Tel Aviv to ignite a holy war against the hated Jews, the result would have been catastrophic, indeed, in the likely case of a nuclear response from Israel, unimaginable.

We can therefore sum up the next argument for attacking Iraq as follows:

3. Saddam Hussein has the means and the motivation to develop nuclear weapons, and there is irrefutable evidence that he has tried to do so. He has shown staggering errors in judgment and a belief in his own personal infallibility by attacking Iran, Kuwait, and Israel. Iraq attaining nuclear capability therefore provides a potent and immediate threat to our allies in the region and the vital interests of the United States.

Like all dictators, Saddam runs a state apparatus ruled by fear. There is no one in his military command structure, or indeed among his party or even his sons, who are willing to give him real information, because most of that information will be bad news. This, coupled with his clinical paranoia and narcissism, have led him to absolutely appalling errors in judgment, such as assuming the Iranian people would join him in his war with Iran, the miscalculation over Kuwait in 1990 and the subsequent evasion of his obligations in the years since.

Furthermore, the people who have had first-hand contact with Saddam Hussein all speak of his messianic complex. He cares not a whit about world opinion, and indeed seems preoccupied with how the people -- particularly the Arabs -- of 500 years hence will record him. Saddam, to put it plainly, plans to make a big splash on the pages of world history. In this he is no different than Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot. There are no legal or behavioral inhibitions on totalitarians such as Saddam. He does whatever he wishes, and every action is met by terrified praise and false adulation from a population cowering in fear.

Therefore, it is not only likely but probable that Saddam will be tempted to use such weapons to strike back at those who have committed the unthinkable crime of embarrassing him before the world. And this is where Al Qaeda can provide him with not only the delivery mechanism, but also, to Saddam’s irrational and misinformed mind, a form of plausible deniability. His success with The Big Lie these past 11 years has emboldened him to believe – with ample justification – that there are legions of useful idiots ready to rally to the defense of anyone who dares attack America.

So we may summarize our fourth cause as follows:

4. Saddam Hussein shows irrefutable signs of mental impairment in the form of Clinical Paranoia and Narcissistic Disorder. Given control of nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction, his temptation to use them against the US on American soil is not mitigated by normal behavioral inhibitors, and indeed is amplified by his aberrant mental state. This poses a potent, immediate and intolerable threat to the safety and security of the people of the United States.

A close corollary to this argument can be made from the fact that Saddam routinely tortures, murders and gasses his own people. We may disagree violently with the Chinese, the Russians, the Pakistanis and the French, among others, but we do not unduly fear nuclear attack from such nations because each of them can be deterred by the unimaginable rain of destruction we would unleash upon them in return.

A self-absorbed Narcissist such as Saddam does not see people – even his own people – the way we do. They are objects to men like Saddam, props and extras the enhance the panoply and glory of their lives. Brave German generals disobeyed Hitler’s orders to destroy everything that remained intact in Germany during the final weeks of the Third Reich. Like all dictators, he saw the impending end of his own life as the final curtain on his nation’s history…and what happened to the extras in his biopic was completely irrelevant.

Saddam has taken the cradle of civilization, one of the most enlightened and educated populations in the middle east, and driven it to utter ruin in the service to his own vainglorious ambitions. The money designated to feed and care for his people under the UN sanctions he has used to build mad palaces of sickening opulence under the noses of his starving children. And yet there are those that say the threat of reprisal against his nation is sufficient to keep him in line.

Nonsense. Saddam has to die someday. And when he goes, he clearly means to take whatever he can with him. Therefore:

5. Saddam has repeatedly shown his contempt and bitter disregard for the welfare of his own people. He has totally neglected all of the misery they have endured since his ascension to power, and is therefore undeterrable and immune to fear of reprisal against his nation and his people.

No one disputes that nuclear weapons are dangerous. No one disputes that Saddam is dangerous. So why do legions of people argue that Saddam with nuclear weapons is somehow not dangerous?



Those, as I see them, are our primary causus belli. Now let’s deal with some of the reasons why people oppose this war.

Innocent people, innocent children will die in this war.

That is true. Innocent people will die at our hand. But let us never forget that action is visible and direct, but that inaction also bears consequences.

We will do everything in our power to limit civilian causalities in this war. In fact, during the days and weeks ahead, we will see something unheard of in military history: a campaign designed not only to minimize civilian casualties, but one aimed at killing as few enemy soldiers as possible. We have already dropped leaflets on Iraqi regular army units, telling them that if they remain in their positions they will not be harmed, but if they mass for a counterattack, we will destroy them. As Steven Den Beste repeatedly has pointed out, they have recent experience in this matter, both with our destructive capabilities and our generosity and kindness to prisoners of war.

Those that do chose to fight will be the hard core element of Saddam’s blood-stained police state, the sadists and executioners who have tortured and murdered their own people on Saddam Hussein’s orders for decades. Don’t forget that. Don’t forget the number that have disappeared in the night during his monstrous reign of terror. Don’t forget well-documented, disgustingly common accounts of the children tortured to death in front of their parents, of girls raped in front of their fathers, not to mention the roll-calls of horror that will emerge when that evil is finally swept away.

And finally, don’t forget your friends and family, the good people you work and play with, the innocent men women and children of New York or Los Angeles or Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Boston, or whichever city we may condemn to radioactive vapor because we were too cowardly and indecisive to act on what we knew to be a threat.


We have thousands of nuclear weapons…it’s hypocritical to say Iraq can not have them also.

We have had nuclear weapons for almost sixty years now. They have been used, twice, within the first days of that ownership to end the most horrible war in history and prevent many times the number of casualties, on both sides, that would have been lost had the war continued through the invasion of Japan. Despite many provocations, they have not been used since then. We have had Chemical weapons for even longer.

Saddam, on the other hand, used his chemical weapons the instant he got his hands on them: first on the Iranians and then on his own Kurds – this after not once being used by any nation in the desperate six decades between 1920 through 1980. What does that tell you?

Many adults are given alcohol, credit cards, automobiles, guns and jet aircraft, once they have shown themselves worthy of the responsibility. We do not put these things in the hands of four year olds, and with very good reason. It may seem hypocritical to you; to me, the idea of keeping a drunken second-grader from waving around a loaded automatic while behind the controls of a hurtling 747 just makes sense.

This war is all about oil.

Demonstrably false for the reasons listed above. Nevertheless, let’s grant the premise. Oil is the only power source currently available to meet the needs of our post-industrial society. Not only our automobiles depend on this oil: it is also a primary source of electrical energy in this country, and is essential to the plastics we use in everything from MRI machines to CD players.

( cont )

[wrbones]

This war is all about oil.

Demonstrably false for the reasons listed above. Nevertheless, let’s grant the premise. Oil is the only power source currently available to meet the needs of our post-industrial society. Not only our automobiles depend on this oil: it is also a primary source of electrical energy in this country, and is essential to the plastics we use in everything from MRI machines to CD players.

To say this war is all about oil is factually identical to saying that this war is all about maintaining our society and lifestyle. If that is not worth fighting for, what is? One may find that offensive ideologically, but my experience with the people who have SPLIT WOOD NOT ATOMS on their bumper stickers have actually split very little wood in their lives. If one feels deeply about NO BLOOD FOR OIL, you must either drive a solar-powered electric car, ride a horse or a bicycle, or walk. You must remove your home from the city power grid. You must discard all plastic items. You must also abandon television, radios and movies, all of which rely on electricity generated by oil. You must forgo modern medicine, surgery and dentistry, likewise driven by oil-fired electricity at many stages. You must grow your own food.

Do all of these things, and you will have my frank admiration for your dedication to a moral cause. Do anything less and you are a hypocrite mouthing an easy lie in an attempt to strike a pose of moral superiority.

We need a ‘smoking gun’ from the UN inspectors.

It is clear from documented reports of bribery attempts on UN Inspectors on the part of the Iraqis, to French inspectors tipping off Saddam about team destinations, that to accept this argument we de facto lose the game. This is why it is so popular. It ignores reams of testimony from defecting scientists, and all of the other evidence stated above. In fact, it raises the question that ignoring such a mountain of existing evidence requires such a willful burying of one’s head in the sand as to make any proof insufficient. To such people, the smoking gun they require is a pile of radioactive rubble where Tel Aviv once stood, or legions of dead commuters in the London Underground, or the wildfire spread of smallpox through greater Chicago and beyond. Scores of independent sources repeatedly and emphatically demonstrate that Iraq has massive quantities of biological and chemical weapons, and is working frantically to attain nuclear ones.

Those unconvinced by the existing evidence will be convinced by nothing less than their actual use against our military or civilians.

To hell with those people.

And finally,

The United States has no right to launch a pre-emptive attack; we can only respond if we are attacked.

This is the most pernicious and dangerous argument of all, because it plays directly into our natural revulsion at being an aggressor and causing the deaths of innocent civilians.

As I mentioned, I see both Iraq’s attack on Kuwait, and the Islamicist attacks on 9/11, as the pre-emptive attacks that started this pending conflict. But perhaps you do not buy that argument. Well, consider this:

We were attacked before, on December 7th, 1941, by a vast navy that had been assembling for years. We watched the Japanese build the Pearl Harbor fleet. We did nothing. We – the French and English especially – also did nothing as a bitter and vengeful Germany grew stronger and more daring. Appeasement was all the rage back then.

In the years following that naval sneak attack, and after a war in which unchecked militarism nearly brought civilization to ruin, it made sense to think that we could stay free by being strong enough to deter or repel any invasion. We would do – indeed, we have done – whatever it took to create a defense so formidable that the mere idea of defeating it has become unthinkable, and to willingly provoke it becomes an act of state suicide.

Those days are gone.

We face an enemy willing – eager – to carry a suitcase into Times Square, press a button, and in one millisecond inflict more casualties on the United States than we have seen in all the wars of our history, combined.

It is an image so horrible that many simply refuse to believe it.

Believe it.

We ignore September 11th at our mortal peril. We no longer have the luxury of watching an enemy build military and naval strength over years or decades. We no longer face uniformed divisions massing at the borders. We face instead a group of depraved murderers to whom nothing is off-limits, who fear no earthly retribution, who love and glorify death for its own end and who hate not only all that we do, but all that we are with a black bitterness that we cannot begin to imagine.



I believe we are standing at a doorway in history, squinting at forms we can barely make out in a dark room. We will, in the years to come, look at the confusion and doubt of the present hour as a turning point in the history, and indeed the identity, of our nation and ourselves.

For we are waking up to a simple reality. In a new millennium where a few diseased people can carry a suitcase with the power to kill millions, the lesson we must learn is simply this: the only way we will be safe, prosperous and free is when everyone is safe, prosperous and free.

Critics of this War on Terror call it ‘eternal’ and ‘never-ending’ as a means of discouraging us from fighting it at all.

But there can be an end to this war. It will end when all people are inside the bubble we have built for ourselves and our children – warm, well-fed, free to pursue their dreams and ambitions, their minds and bodies and women liberated, racial and tribal hatreds put aside, and so on.

The quiet idealist deep inside in me, on a speak-when-spoken-to basis, actually believes such things are possible. After all, it works -- pretty well -- for us, and we Americans are children of all the world. We know what such a society looks like, and we have documents of such stunning clarity and hope as to show anyone the way.

The conservative I have become, however, is certain that if it happens, it will happen because of the actions and sacrifice of US Marines and not because of middle-aged naked hippies spelling PEACE on a golf course. It will take decades. It may take centuries.

Can we FORCE freedom and democracy on people? It seems, from the example of Germany and Japan, that indeed we can. These societies once harbored fanatics no less dedicated to our destruction than the ones we face today. Now they are our trading partners, and often our friends and allies. The point at which it becomes necessary to force such a regime change will be determined by how ugly the swamp has become. And can anyone seriously argue that the people left after the defeat of the Nazis, Japanese Imperialists or American Confederates are not far better off today than they would have been if they had WON?

I am not an ideologue in this regard, and I certainly don’t want to send our sons and daughters out to fight and die for anything less than our safety and survival. But that, to me, is looking like what it might come to. Each success makes the next case easier, and each triumph further shames and silences our critics.

Sixty years ago, we were willing to sacrifice millions of American soldiers, sailors airmen and marines to keep our homeland safe. Such a task may be before us today. With our soldiers’ skill, training and professionalism, and our unparalleled technical innovation and creative genius, we will not need anything like millions of soldiers. But it will not be free – it will only be necessary.

In this, I am guardedly optimistic due to our recent victory in Afghanistan. Not the military victory, magnificent though it was.

No, I am thinking of things like the reopening of their soccer stadium, the field where I have seen -- thorough the camera obscura of the internet -- women in burqas forced to kneel and then shot through the back of the head for the crime of adultery. Kids play football there again. That’s a win, Noam Chomsky, you lying son of a *****.

Little girls march to school in the morning, singing. That’s a win, Robert Fisk. Old men wept as the Afghan national flag was carried by an actual Afghan army during their first free National Day in two generations. That is a win for the Good Guys, too, Harold Pinter. I hear of Special Forces sergeants organizing little league teams and I just smile like a little kid.

I’m smiling because, at last, we have dragged ourselves back from the mud and filth of the Cold War, from allying ourselves with what was only marginally the slightly lesser of two great evils in our proxy wars in Asia and South America and Africa. I’m smiling not just because of my bursting pride in the dedication and skill of our military, but in the essential kindness and compassion of these kids of ours who just want to do the right thing and come home. I’m smiling because I start to see before us an age where, in the words from the 1963 movie The Ugly American, we are no longer “so busy telling people what we are against that we forget to tell them what we are for.”

[wrbones]

We have a long and difficult road to travel in these coming years, and there will be ample opportunities for us to fall off the path. But I reflect on our own greatest peril, the dark days of our own Civil War, and I draw comfort from something not often remembered about that turning point in our history.

In the early days of that conflict, Abraham Lincoln saw one objective, and one only: he must save the Union. That was what marched the men in blue off to Bull Run: Save the Union. Lincoln said as much when contemplating the Emancipation Proclamation:

“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.”

But as the war dragged on and victory continued to recede, Lincoln found a new voice. Southerners could be counted upon to fight because it was their homes and institutions under attack. One poor captured Rebel, when asked why he was fighting on behalf of the rich plantation owner’s right to keep slaves, replied, “I’m fighting because you’re down here.” Lincoln needed something with that emotional imperative, and he found it.

He found it after brave Negro soldiers -- like the men of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, immortalized in the movie Glory --showed to their northern skeptics that they were as gallant and effective soldiers as any in the Union Army. He found it in the words of Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth. He found it by turning the dirge “John Brown’s Body” into the inspirational “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Lincoln turned the Northern cause into a crusade to set men free.

If we have the courage of our convictions, if we do indeed feel that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is worth fighting and dying for, then we may find that freeing the world is in our national interest, regardless of the cost.

So on the eve of this new tempest, let us remember, together, a final image – to me, the most hopeful of all.

Let us remember Afghanistan.

Let us remember that the brutal Soviets we so sullied ourselves fighting during the Cold War had installed in their southern neighbor a puppet dictator, who ruled small enclaves at the point of a tank cannon and tore their nation into civil war that culminated in the atrocities of the Taliban. Let us remember the million Afghan civilians who died forcing off that yoke.

Let us remember an image from that ruin of a nation, in June of 2002, at a meeting hall in Kabul. Inside were all manners of warlords, refugees, opposition leaders, even their old king. Women demanding positions of power, wizened old tribal leaders opposing them at every turn, mullahs and warlords making veiled threats and all the rest of the unruly, loud, preposterous accoutrements of democracy that make up a Loya Jirga or a US Congress.

And let us remember the image of US soldiers, forming a cordon, a bubble of security around this howling, screaming catfight. Not inside. Not dictating terms. Not so much as laying a hand on a gavel. But rather outside, armed and powerful, seeing to it that the future of that tortured country rested in the hands of their own people, protecting this newborn, imperfect, and astonishingly fragile proto-democracy against the legions of Taliban, Al Qaeda and petty warlords who would like to see nothing so much as its failure. Remember them guarding the life and pure, undiluted courage of Hamid Karzai. And remember our soldiers giving them, day by painful day, another week, another month without torture and repression so that they in all their infinitely adaptable humanity have the time to come to find such things intolerable.

Remember that, and smile. Because that is America at war.



After much reflection I have decided to disable the comments section on this post. I hope those who have read the existing comments agree that I can fairly say it is not to limit either debate or opposing opinions.

The reason I have decided to this is straightforward: I simply do not have the time to reply to points that I find screaming for me to confront. You cannot imagine the frustration I have felt today at my inability to find the time to deal with some of the issues raised in these comments. I respect and admire people with passionate positions about issues, even those I find completely contrary to what I myself believe. But some of the arguments made in these comments were so patently dishonest, so factually incorrect, and so astonishingly easy to demolish that my inablility to do so due to the constraints of my work schedule has made this an extremely frustrating day.

Perhaps those of you with your own weblogs may understand what I am about to say, and I'm afraid the rest of my friends and opponents will simply have to take my word for this: A hotly contested debate on your weblog is like having an argument in your living room. You open your doors to all comers, you set out beer and pretzels (and you take notice of those who drink an AWFUL LOT of your free beer). But there comes a time when you have to go to leave the room. Perhaps you have to sleep. Some of us even have JOBS. All the while, you hear people yelling back and forth, and despite the overwhelming temptation to sail in and correct a misunderstanding, confront an an outright lie, referee a fight or just carry on a respectful exchange of deeply held viewpoints...there still comes a time when you have to walk away.

But the shouting, in the living room, continues.

Well, it's time for me pull out that old rhetorical saw that's been heard in every bar on planet Earth: You don't have to go home. You just can't stay here.

And so, we'll have to leave it at that. It's been an interesting 24 hours. I would remind some of my critics that I am not a reporter, and this is not a courtroom. I am an essayist. What I write is my OPINION. As a frequent comment writer on other blogs with more laid-back hosts, I can tell you that the difference between making an argument and attacking one is as large as the construction and the demolition of a skyscraper. You are welcome to disagree until you are blue in the face: http://www.blogspot.com/

I will, of course, continue to read every e-mail I receive, and respond to as many as I am able. Thanks for stopping by.


Posted by Proteus at January 26, 2003 08:20 PM
posted Tue, 28 January 03 07:20