Time for a New Strategy

It is time for patriotic Americans who support the cause of freedom in the world to say that there are things fundamentally wrong with the Bush Administration’s war on terror in general and the war on Iraq in particular and to participate vigorously in the search for better strategies and approaches. This is not an easy thing to do in wartime, and it must be done carefully and only after the observed facts make it clearly necessary. It is especially difficult in the present situation, because of the additional necessity for patriotic Americans to make sure that, in their criticism and questioning, they do not inadvertently aid either the enemy or the anti-American left. Irrespective of these difficulties, it still must be done.

The first thing we must demand is some level of rationality and consistency in the government’s public polices for the war on terror. Right now we have a situation where our government is so worried about the safety of airline flights that it has us shuffling barefoot through groping stations at airports, but is not worried enough to focus its attention on classes of passengers who might actually be dangerous; where the government wants to know what library books we are checking out and what web sites we are visiting, but can’t be bothered with securing the Mexican or Canadian borders; and where the government makes it painfully difficult for students and legitimate travelers to come to our country, but cannot find a way to avoid issuing entry documents to known terrorist suspects and members of the Taliban. We should all hope that the covert part of the war on terror is being run well, but we should also require that the overt, domestic public policy part at least make sense.

The next thing we must demand of the Administration is a strategy and set of objectives that both make sense and are commensurate with the problem and the threat in Iraq. It makes sense to hunt down and kill terrorists who attack or threaten us. It makes sense to demonstrate violently to governments who support terrorists that they will be subject to retribution along with the terrorists. It makes sense to prevent these governments from obtaining nuclear or biological weapons.

It can be argued reasonably that, given the state of knowledge at the time, points such as these perhaps could justify the decision to invade Iraq, neutralize its armed forces, and overthrow and replace its government. It is possible to imagine a well defined and successful mission having been executed along those lines, even if the threat turned out to be less than was believed before hand.

However, it is much harder to find good sense in a policy that seems to assert that we can turn Iraq into Belgium and that we have to stay and fight until we do. That policy seems questionable on several levels. First it assumes it is an appropriate strategy to commit our forces to a mission the success of which is contingent not on their actions but on the actions of the Iraqis. Second it assumes that the Iraqis want a pluralistic, fairly free democracy. Third, it assumes that such a democracy can be created in Iraq. Fourth it assumes that such a democracy will be beneficial and sustainable - that is that in their new democracy the Iraqis will in at least a broad sense vote right. Finally it assumes that creating such a democracy is important enough to the interests of the United States to justify the cost. Every one of these assumptions is questionable, and it is quite possible that all of them are wrong.

We need to define a mission in Iraq that provides a definition of success and completion that is reasonable and consistent with our actual interests and long term aims. Then we need to complete it and, upon that completion, we need to disengage as much as possible.

Our country faces some real problems. The Administration needs to come up with some good ideas for solutions.

Exaggerating the Threat

Conservatives rightly criticize leftists and their allies in the press for fear-mongering and creating phony crises over trivial or non-existent problems. Indeed, it is probably an essential and necessary part of left wing strategy to do so, since confident, independent people are less likely to want a powerful, maternalistic government running their lives. However, leftists are not the only people in government who have agendas, and the Bush Administration and some of its supporters have been engaged in some counterproductive hyperbole of their own in regard to the war on terror. The danger from Islamic terrorists and fanatics is real and serious, but it does the country no good to exaggerate it. In particular it is absurd to equate it to the menace of the Nazis and Communists in the 20th Century.
Nazi Germany was a powerful, technologically advanced state, ruled by fanatics with a murderous and evil ideology and a desire for world mastery. It created brutal and effective armies that overran most of Europe before America even entered the war. Its scientists and engineers were world leaders in many areas. It was a German scientist, not an American, who first discovered nuclear fission. Nazi Germany and the other axis powers were a direct threat to the survival of both the United States and civilization, and it took the bloodiest war in human history to defeat them.
The Soviet Union was a vast continental empire, ruled by vicious men with a murderous and evil ideology and a desire for world mastery. It possessed a large and deliverable arsenal of nuclear weapons that on any day during the last decades of the Cold War could have devastated the United States and killed millions of its citizens. It ruled Eastern and much of Central Europe, and had large and well-developed military technologies and industries. It deployed the largest modern army in the world in the middle of Europe and trained it to overrun the rest of the continent in a blitzkrieg. It supported wars and insurrections and created client states around the globe. In the United States and Western Europe, it was aided by an effective Fifth Column of spies, traitors, and sympathizers. The Soviet Union and its empire were a direct threat to the survival of both the United States and civilization, and it took a great and long Cold War to defeat them.
To put things in very clear perspective, consider the world situation in the summer of 1940. Throughout the 1930’s the most powerful military force of any nation outside the Nazi and Communist realms (and the supposed bulwark against Nazi expansion ) was the French Army. Yet in about six weeks in the late spring and early summer of 1940, the Germans had destroyed that army completely and demonstrated that theirs was the most powerful army on earth. At that point, the Nazis were masters of Europe. The Soviet Union, with the world’s second most powerful army, was their partner and de facto ally. Italy was an active ally and belligerent. Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, and half of Poland were under German occupation. Spain, Sweden, Finland, Hungary, and most of the Balkan states were friendly neutrals. In Asia Japan, a German ally, had the world’s third strongest army and its most powerful and deadly fleet and was slowly expanding its empire by conquering the richest and most productive parts of China. Against all of that, there was only the British Empire with a great navy and a powerful air force but a weakened and defeated army and, in the wings – neutral and uncommitted - the United States with a navy that, though large and first rate, was not yet adequate to defend both oceans and with almost no army at all.
That was a crisis of civilization. What we have now is a problem with some despicable terrorists and some technologically and culturally primitive outlaw states beyond the periphery of civilization, states that surely don’t need to be allowed to get even a few atomic weapons. There is a difference, and honesty and good sense require that members and supporters of the Administration refrain from exaggeration and avoid crying wolf in ways that make them seem silly. Then the country can have a rational debate on how to deal with the actual threats.