Can This War Be Won?
March 19, 2002
by Joe Sobran
Why does everyone seem to assume the United States
is winning -- or can ever win -- the amorphous "war on
terrorism"? Shortly after the 9/11 attacks we seemed to
realize that we were in a new period of warfare, unlike
conventional wars between states. Even President Bush
warned that we might never know when this war is over.
In conventional terms, the war is going well for the
United States. It's inflicting enormous damage on
Afghanistan while suffering few casualties. There have
been no successful terrorist operations within the United
States since the war began. (Never mind that the enemy
forces seem to have escaped.)
We have already forgotten last fall's tremendous
anxiety over possible chemical, biological, and nuclear
weapons within our borders. We are beginning to feel
victorious and omnipotent again, if not quite as
invulnerable as we once felt. In truth, this war appeals
chiefly to our nostalgia for World War II: it offers the
satisfaction of bombing suspected enemy strongholds
without suffering reciprocal bombing at home. It makes us
feel that the good old days of American power are back.
But Bush had it right the first time. We will never
know whether our enemies have been decisively weakened.
If Osama bin Laden were to resurface and surrender, he
couldn't guarantee that his fellow fanatics would throw
in the towel too. Some of them surely would not.
If -- tomorrow, next year, ten years from now --
someone who hates America should get hold of a second-
hand Russian nuclear device and smuggle it into
Manhattan, blowing it up with conventional explosives,
the ensuing panic, even if there were fewer deaths than
on September 11, could paralyze economic life in this
country.
The principle of terrorism is simple. All social
life depends on our implicit trust that strangers won't
harm us without a reason. Terrorism is violence
calculated to destroy that trust. Anyone, even a lone
individual, can do that. It's absurd even to speak of a
"war on terrorism."
So the Bush administration is pretending that this
is really in essence a conventional -- i.e., winnable --
war, a war against an identifiable enemy, and is
targeting regimes it thinks it can defeat with
conventional forces, with an occasional hint that it may
resort to nuclear weapons. It also tries to shore up
American morale by repeating that the enemy is "evil,"
rather than, say, "cussed" or "ornery."
But since we can never know whether the war has been
won, we can only know that it's making us more enemies.
The Roman Empire made a vicious war on early
Christianity, which didn't even fight back, yet the
martyrs won so many converts that the Empire itself
eventually became Christian. The Israelis have been
fighting terrorism for decades, yet they now face more
and worse terrorism than ever before. You can neither
deter nor punish those who are willing to die in order to
hurt you.
It may already be too late, but we should ask
ourselves why we are hated with such extreme bitterness.
To ask this question is not necessarily to "blame
America." It is merely to try to understand the enemy's
motive, as a good chess player tries to understand his
opponent's moves -- not to seek defeat, but to avoid it.
If you can never know whether you have won a war on
terrorism, can you ever know if you have lost? The U.S.
Government can never really lose, because its resources
are inexhaustible. It can tax us and prune away our
freedoms while claiming it does these things to protect
us. And since we are much easier targets than the
supposed enemy, the "war on terrorism" amounts to a war
on the victims of terrorism.
In Randolph Bourne's famous aphorism, "War is the
health of the state." Our government doesn't mind if its
war actually hurts us more than it hurts the nominal
enemy. Yet I don't doubt that Bush sincerely believes he
is waging this war for our sake.
Only time will tell whether our government has
bitten off more than it can chew. And time may take a
long time to tell us. In the end we may learn that the
war has only aggravated the problem it set out to
eliminate.
If Bush's aim were to save American lives, rather
than to preserve American empire, he might take these
steps: call off the war, close U.S. military bases
abroad, bring American military personnel home, and ask
for an end to U.S. support for foreign regimes,
particularly Israel.
For additional safety, he might also announce his
conversion to Islam. That would be no more improbable
than the other steps, would it?
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