As the war on terrorism drags on over the decades we may begin to long nostalgically for the Vietnam War. At least then we knew who the enemy was and where to find him: Lyndon Johnson - in the White House. Yes, I know we paid a price – 58,000 Americans dead, long-term damage to our economy, and the creation of a cultural divide which still afflicts our nation. But every dark cloud has a silver lining. The silver lining was the wave of immigration which followed our defeat, enabling Americans to enjoy Vietnamese food.
The War on Terrorism doesn’t have a silver lining. The appropriate adage now is “Every dark cloud has an even darker lining.” I have a bad feeling about this. I’ve got a hunch we’re creating terrorists faster than we’re killing them. Rumsfeld hasn’t exactly been re-assuring about this.
Unlike Richard Clark, I’m not shocked and outraged by the notion that pre-September 11, our government did not view the threat from Al Quaeda with sufficient urgency. If the Bush Administration had responded to this charge by saying, “Okay, so what? Do you think Al Gore would have done any better?” Everybody would yawn and say, “Probably not.” And that would be the end of it. Because Americans really don’t expect that much any more. A believable re-election strategy for Bush would be to admit that the War in Iraq was a slight miscalculation, then adopt as a campaign slogan: “Kerry would do even worse.” Personally I’m willing to forgive a lot from anybody who cuts my taxes.
There have been many instances over the years when government administration has been extraordinarily competent and efficient. Perhaps you can think of some examples; I can’t. More typically the level of government competence has run the gamut from vicious malfeasance to incomprehensible ineptitude. On rare occasions government effectiveness has risen to a level fairly characterized in such comparatively glowing terms as “muddling through.”
For example, weren’t we all astonished when we suddenly figured out in 1989, without knowing how it happened, that we had won the cold war? I miss the Cold War. In retrospect it was comforting dealing with an enemy with whom we shared a common desire to avoid being blown to smithereens. Pundits have since debated whether our victory resulted from the Reagan Administration’s tough minded policies towards the Soviet Union, our military build-up, the Star Wars threat, our emerging technological superiority, or our growing economic pre-eminence. But the real reason we won is because Soviet society happened to collapse. At the time I thought it was a miracle that we could have fought the Cold War so incompetently, and still won. I later realized, of course, that the Soviets were even more incompetent.
Hopefully the terrorists will prove to be as incompetent as the commies, and hundreds of suicide bombers, invoking the name of Allah, will detonate prematurely on the way to their targets, enabling us to muddle through this mess too before these whack jobs get the chance to nuke us.
A case study in how governments evaluate foreign threats is World War II. I’m not talking about the emergence from oblivion by America on December 7, 1941 when we figured out that the Japanese were mad at us. I’m talking about Great Britain’s response to the Nazis, i.e. their lack of response. Anybody who assumes that people who rise to the highest level of government in a great democracy must know what they’re doing ought to study England before World War II. Despite repeated impassioned warnings throughout the 1930’s from the only man in Parliament whose head wasn’t up his butt, Winston Churchill, that Hitler was building the most powerful military machine in history and planning to wage war against all of Europe, and despite overwhelming evidence over a period of many years that Churchill was right, successive English governments did little to prepare for the Nazi onslaught because, um, they didn’t notice.
So if the U.S. had its head in the sand before Pearl Harbor, and Great Britain wasn’t concerned about Hitler, why should it come as such a huge surprise to media elites that the United States wasn’t paying enough attention to some obscure group of Muslim fanatics led by a madman living in a cave in Afghanistan? It’s human nature to go bonkers worrying about imaginary threats – the Salem witch trials, Y2K, Communists in the State Department, , the Trilateral Commission, global warming etc. - while failing to notice real threats – the Nazis, Al Queada, Communists in the State Department, the Trilateral Commission, global warming, etc.
But since September 11 of course we’re fully alert. That’s why we invaded Iraq - to prevent them from giving non-existent weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. Of course everybody knows that the real reason was so we could take over the oil. But we didn’t take over the oil. Problem: even if we did do it for the oil, we didn’t want anybody to think we did it for the oil, so after we did it we decided not to take over the oil. And now gas prices are higher than ever. I never bought into the WMD argument; I was kind of hoping we did it for the oil. Instead we’re leaving the oil under state control to help Iraq back on the path to socialism.
One thing about the debate over Iraq makes no sense. Liberals should support the war and conservatives should oppose it instead of the other way around. Conservatives should oppose the war because it furthers no tangible American strategic or financial interests, and is purely altruistic in nature, producing benefits for the Iraqi people, who have been liberated from a brutal despot, but at a huge sacrifice to us. And for these same reasons, liberals should support the war.
Oh yes, we also fight the war on terror on another front by making old ladies take off their sneakers in airports.
A forward strategy for fighting the War on Terrorism would recognize that this struggle must be fought on many levels. We must go beyond apprehending terrorists with AK 47’s and explosive devices strapped to their waists. By that point it’s too late. We need to attack terrorism at its source before the brainwashing and training begin. We need a four-pronged plan:
1. Cut off funding not just for the training camps, but for the madrasas and other religious institutions which teach violent jihad, murder, and terror.
2. Infiltrate and neutralize media outlets which promote Islamic extremist propaganda and anti-western hatred.
3. Fund moderate Muslim leaders and media to speak out against terrorism.
4. Develop a new generation of smart medium-sized and strategic nuclear precision weapons with the capacity to atomize Muslim extremists while doing no harm to Christians and Jews who are standing next to them.
I realize that #4 may, at first blush, sound implausible. However one of the great scientific achievements of our age are gardening products which, when spread on the lawn, are capable of killing weeds while simultaneously nourishing the surrounding grass. If science can achieve this sophisticated level of discrimination in the development of precision consumer gardening products, why not in the field of nuclear weaponry?
If you think this sounds impossible, consider this. Recent reports have leaked from the Defense Department that the Pentagon’s work on the next generation of precision “smart” bombs includes a new weapon, called the “really smart bomb,” which not only can locate and hone in on foreign enemy leaders such as Saddam Hussein and Usama Bin Laden, but can also verify their identity using DNA testing, and then give them a prefrontal lobotomy.
The ramifications of this technology are mind-boggling. Labotomizing terrorist and extremist Muslim leaders could be incorporated into a comprehensive strategy to win the War on Terrorism by transforming all the Mullahs into peace-loving Buddhist Monks chanting “Om.” If this doesn’t work it’s World War III and Dr. Strangelove and his ilk will be chanting, “Mein Fuhrer I can valk.” There’s nothing else you can do because you can’t deter these headcases with threats of retaliation. They think a nuclear Armageddon would be just the thing so they can get their 72 virgins. Hey, that gives me an idea. Maybe we could get these horny bastards to chill out by getting them 72 virgins here on earth.
I know what you’re thinking: “Where are we going to find 72 virgins?” Well, they don’t really have to be virgins. They can just say they’re virgins. A little deception’s a small price to pay for world peace.
Serving all of humanity, but mainly serving myself – this is ...
Jim Greenfield