Keeping the "Long War" in perspective

This editorial in the liberal Catholic magazine Commonweal (02/28/06) addresses the nature of the global war on terror (GWOT)/"struggle against violent extremism"/the Long War. The point it makes about the nature of the jihadist threat is important. The jihadists are not an existential threat to the US, i.e., they don't threaten our existence. (Iraq was not a threat at all.) The Bush administration's "long war" is also a war of choice by the US:

Needless to say, failure does little to alter the thinking of this administration. In February, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld released his proposed 2007 military budget as well as the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDF). The QDF is an assessment of the threats facing the nation and the military strategy needed to counter them. In presenting the QDF and the military budget to Congress, Rumsfeld has recast the "war on terror" as "the long war," but he might have called it the endless war, for that is the logic of the policy. Initially, victory in Iraq was sold to the American people as a sure thing. Now the battle against "Islamic extremism" is seen as a "generational struggle," one best compared to the cold war. And like cold-war military budgets, no weapons system goes unfunded-no matter how superfluous in a "war" against an enemy who holds no territory and fields no army. The nearly half-trillion-dollar military budget, which does not even include the $130-billion cost of operations in Afghanistan and the Iraq occupation, will provide for a very long war indeed. This kind of spending is more saber-rattling and boondoggle than convincing strategy.

The administration has, at best, willfully misunderstood the threat of Islamic extremism and the complexity of the situation in the Middle East. Yes, terrorists could again inflict a terrible blow against the United States. But the terrorists are not a threat to the existence of the United States in anything like the way the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany was. Nor does defeating Islamic terrorism require the suspension of civil liberties and habeas corpus, or the use of torture. Osama bin Laden's following is miniscule, and almost universally condemned-even after all the missteps of the United States. The world is on our side in this battle. At the same time, however, sorting out the competing claims of the Sunnis and the Shiites, or even the Palestinians and the Israelis, has been made much more difficult. In facing up to the challenges of Islamic discontent, comparisons to the cold war are simply false. Yet Bush continues to resort to Manichean rhetoric and scaremongering to silence his critics. To the nation’s shame, the bullying has worked. And as the fiasco in Iraq and the haphazard implementation of "homeland security" make clear, Bush has in fact made a bad situation worse. When will the Democrats, or some even braver soul within Bush’s own party, hold the president accountable? Changing course will not be possible until and unless the administration accepts responsibility for its failures. (my emphasis)

| +Save/Share | |