"I don't think we can win it"

"I don't think we can win it."

The rhetorical firestorm that erupted in the wake of Dubya's candid pronouncement was fierce, and the Rove-led fire brigade sent to quell the flames went into hyperdrive just hours after this pronouncement. Just a day later, we had Dubya singing a different tune to the American Legion with "We will win." But let's just take a look at what the War on Terror (notice it's not terror_ism_ anymore - wonder which focus group led to that switch?) is, according to the pols who define it for the American people.

We can't win it, but we are winning it, and we must win it, since we can't lose it.

In other words, the WOT is a permanent war, cut from much the same mold as the Cold War. The only problem: in the absence of a defined state as enemy, we can never know that we have won, even if that were possible. As Dubya and his handlers retractions correctly noted, we will never sit down at a peace table to end this conflict. We may be closer to understanding the shadowy networks of Al-Queda, but we are very far from understanding those networks.

This permanent but "very different kind" of war is very handy, since you get to turn the public's perception of danger on and off to justify particular actions or reinforce your election campaign. The runup to the Iraq War demonstrates this perfectly well. Even if Iraq posed a threat to the US (which is, at the least, an arguable proposition), there was no imminence to the threat - no intelligence that there were new developments. In other words, if we take the 1998 rhetoric of the Congress and then President Billy as gospel truth, we persisted in a policy of no need to invade for 6+ years, including 8 months of Dubya pre - 9/11, and a year and a half post - 9/11 with no talk of the need to depose this despot NOW. Yet, recycled British intel and six year old graduate school essays became suddenly strong evidence of the need to get this guy before he handed over operational weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.

The color coding system proved to be TOO useful in this regard, as the Department of Homeland Security quickly realized how seriously Americans took increases in the threat level. The desire to act proved so strong that Tom Ridge was reduced to telling people to buy duct tape and plastic sheeting to protect their homes from chemical weapons, in a useless charade eerily reminscent of the Civil Defense drills I participated in as a child. No, crouching under your desk during a nuclear war will NOT make you safe, kids .... When I say it has proved too useful, what I mean is that these warnings quickly lost their efficacy as people became jaded by the seeming randomness of the changes.

All of the rhetoric at the RNC from fiscal conservatives justifying their support of the Dubya regime despite the incredible deficits being rung up seems to focus around a repeated mantra - "In case you haven't noticed, there's a war going on." When it comes to time to revisit the USA PATRIOT act (since one rational aspect of that collection of police powers is a sunset provision), the cry "but we're at war" will echo through the halls of Washington. War can justify almost anything - and we should expect that it will.

It's vitally important, regardless of your political stripes, to understand that a permanent state of war is the most likely way to destroy many of the things that we hold dear about America. War and preparation for it have justified torture, sponsoring despots who advance our short-term geopolitical agendas, destruction of the environment, massive fiscal irresponsibility, all things that we associate with the downfall of another once powerful ideological empire - the Soviet Union. I am not drawing a direct analogy here - but listen up for a minute as I explain.

Isn't it possible that this is the _plan_ of those who attacked the US on 9/11? I mean, we hear an awful lot about how bin Laden and Al-Queda are trying to get the US to cower, to retreat, etc. But it would take an awfully unobservant person, regardless of their ideology, to conclude that the result of the 9/11 attacks would be a fortress America, stripped of pride and swagger, crawling back to the shelter of North America with its tail between its legs. No serious observer of American politics could ever conclude that. You should call these folks evil, but I think we are seriously deluding ourselves if we believe that they are stupid.

In fact, lots of evidence points to the opposite - Al-Queda operatives were very busy in the months leading up to 9/11/01, especially on the financial front. Douglas Farah's reporting and book "Blood from Stones" documents how millions of dollars were converted into portable, untraceable diamonds in the last weeks before 9/11. This is surely not a coincidence, and tells a story of an Al-Queda fully aware that one of the first moves of the US would be to freeze bank accounts and attempt to choke off the money supply of the network.

For all the talk of "fighting the terrorists over there" whether in Iraq or elsewhere, we have to take the long view of winning, losing and fighting this war. Surely, given the tremendous technological, financial and numerical superiority of the US military, bin Laden et. al. didn't expect a quick win, or even a direct defeat. The tactics of the mujahadeen in Afghanistan (where bin Laden cut is teeth in making war on an occupying power, ironically financed and armed by the CIA) indicate that a much longer term strategy is at play here. Are we playing into their hands? Will our increasingly overstretched military survive in its current form? Will our new coalition of the willing prove as capable and durable as the old? (This is no small question, since the recent troop realignment proposed by Rumsfeld risks a permanent shift in our alliances). Will the American public have the stomach for prolonged tours of duty for their neighbors and a seemingly perpetual series of conflicts? These are the questions we have to ask as we evaluate and ruminate on the winnability of this war, and if we are indeed winning it, as Dubya would have us believe.

k