Get Your War On
I was surprised to hear that Peter Jennings died. He was my favorite anchor of the big three. He will be missed.

News is on my mind.

I’ve grown weary about the “war on terror,” now revamped with a shiny new title “the global struggle against extremism.” I tip my hat to whoever thought up that title (Republicans have some pretty smart people working for them, even some creative people). It’s more nuanced, more PC (a global effort, not a unilateral one). It even has the word “struggle” in it, no doubt an attempt to reach out to moderate Muslims (“jihad” in Islam means “to struggle”). But whatever you call it, it’s a war. I don’t feel particularly more or less safe in the US after 911 than before.

What concerns me with this war is what’s going on everywhere else. Europe is no longer safe, neither is any other continent. Our service-people are not safe, especially if we stuff more of them in every corner of the globe. Travel is a nightmare. Too many innocent people are caught in the crossfire of this global struggle. As usual, it’s mostly the poor and the voiceless (though for some reasons they don’t make the front pages as much as ... well I won’t go there).

Going back to a theme I explored last time, about the burden of control, I think that applies here as well. I actually agree with Bush on some things. Democracy in the Middle East would be a great. But can one country expect to “nation-build” by invading and occupying another? I don’t care what the spin-masters say, there’s a ton of evidence that Iraqis, mostly, wanted Saddam gone, but not the way the US did it. Iraq is a mess, who’s going to control it now? Another dictator? Chaos, as Shibley Telhami points out, without a strong central government, is a vacuum that terrorists fill (look at Afghanistan). We broke Iraq, and now we have to fix it.

Given America’s foreign policy history, I don’t blame Iraqis for their skepticism. You can’t force democracy at gun point, that’s a blatant contradiction. Growing pains of an emerging democracy? Imagine if ours started that way. When Ben Franklin appealed to France for help, it was as a member of a colony, a rich member no doubt, appealing to a competing colonial power. Who is their Ben Franklin? Ahmed Chalabi? A lying double agent working for Iran, a country hostile to the Ba’ath party, and labeled by our own government as part of the “axis of evil.”

Yes, SH had enemies, and yes he is a bad dude (though there are other equally atrocious regimes out there right now, Saddam Hussein is not unique in that regard). But there was no active insurrection going on when we went in, we stirred up a sleeping hornets nest and wonder why we’re getting stung. Pan-Arabism is nationalistic, not an international threat. The terrorists Iraq supported were mainly Hamas, a nationalistic front, not al Qaeda, which is a much bigger problem. In fact, al Qaeda is a sworn enemy of the Ba’ath party (indeed, that type of secularism is what prompted Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East in the first place).

The real reasons for this invasion are obvious: control of the Middle East (using Iraq as a military base), oil resources, defense contracts, taking over SH’s billion dollar assets, keeping OPEC in line, protecting the falling value of the dollar, scaring Arab countries and Iran, protecting Israel, etc.

If this is what the war on terror is going to be, it’s obvious it will fail, just as the war on drugs has failed. We’re not facing a “nation” in the war on terror; we’re facing a tactic and an ideology. You have to look at both supply and demand.

On the supply-side, there this black market of WMB’s that’s been floating around since the end of the Cold War. No one is “safe” with these weapons. Certainly not the US (we currently have thousands). There are all types of terrorist groups out there, with different agendas, but they don’t need the same agenda to cooperate, all they need is money and a common enemy. Mafias, drug cartels, all types of illegal organizations run in these circles, and they know how to hide and protect themselves. Many legal businesses profit off of this too. Every time a gun is bought, a gun manufacturer profits. They don’t care if someone dies from that gun, and they’ll use their profits to lobby congress if they try to cut into their business. Same thing with the military-industrial complex. If we could clean up corruption, contain these weapons, and stop manufacturing them, that would make us safer.

But hey, weapons of mass destruction don’t kill people, people do. These weapons exist because of demand. How can we stop that? Well, until more people become enlightened, we can’t. We have to work on reshaping geo-political structures. The gap b/w rich and poor, overpopulation, pollution, unfair trade policies, unbalanced economies, slave labor, dictatorship – these are real problems that affect the lives of real people. Another important issue is education. You must be taught to think it’s OK to blow stuff up. An enlightened education, and funding it, is a crucial factor in reducing demand.