ZGram - 4/6/2002 - "Sobran: Can this war be won?"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

April 6, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Another thoughtful column from the pen of one of my all-time favorite 
American writers:

[START]

Can This War Be Won?

by Joseph Subran

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?

April 3, 2002


[END]

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Joe Sobran  is a nationally syndicated columnist. He also edits 
Sobran's, a monthly newsletter of his essays and columns.

He invites you to try his new collection of aphorisms, "Anything 
Called a 'Program' Is Unconstitutional: Confessions of a Reactionary 
Utopian." You can get a free copy by subscribing or renewing your 
subscription to Sobran's.

Just call 800-513-5053, or see his website, www.sobran.com. (He's 
still available for speaking engagements too.)

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Thought for the Day:

"The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall."

(Bacon)