Obama Doubles Down

What would you say to a guy who had spent all night gambling... was down to his last $100... and who said he was going to put it all on the table because that way he would win enough to recoup all his losses. Wouldn't you say something like, “Hold onto that $100 and get the hell out of here, you moron!” ?? Yeah. And that's what we should all feel like saying to Obama when it comes to Afghanistan. If the Cheney/Bush cabal, who really _believed_ in that war, couldn't make any headway, how much better is a guy who apparently _doesn't_ believe in it going to do? Even the headline in today's paper betrays the incoherence of the policy: “Exit in mind as surge begins.” Which is like saying, “I'm getting married in order to get a divorce,” or “I'm eating right and taking supplements in order to stunt my growth.” Clearly, Obama has drunk deeply of the poisonous draught of Wilsonism, globalism, empire building, and all-around meddling offered to him by Bush/Cheney on their way out the door. And that will be followed, in due course, by an equally toxic draught of frustration and defeat. Better men than he have met their political and military fate on the rocky crags of Afghanistan; and the notion that that place represents some sort of “vital national interest” for the U.S. is sheer lunacy. All we're talking about, really, is payback for 9-11; isn't that right? We're still, eight years later, determined to teach those ragheads a damn good lesson. The problem is, they are unteachable, and the reason they are unteachable is that their value system is, basically, the exact reverse of ours. If we try to punish them with bombs and bullets, they rejoice in their impending martyrdom, and in our deteriorating image in the world's eyes. If we earmark a huge portion of our national wealth for our war on Islam, they brag that they are bankrupting us – which they are – and that our empire is doomed – which it is. As a number of commentators have pointed out, how are you going to deal with people who would rather die than live? It's impossible. It's like the kamikaze fighters of old – or The Blob – or a Bobo doll – or Al Capp's Schmoos -- or the Tar Baby. It is an enemy far more alien, for example, than the Nazis ever were... or the Soviets... or even, perhaps, the North Koreans and the Vietcong. Even the kamikazes only made their appearance toward the end of the war in the Pacific, whereas the suicide enthusiasts have been with us since Day One.

But yes, it's true – dealing with people who are, basically, not punishable is a brand-new experience for us, and for our foreign policy mavens. We assume that because our value system requires certain things, and certain priorities, that theirs ought to as well. So we set out on the road to battle on our terms... but the battles we wind up fighting are fought on their terms, simply because we are fighting them on their territory. (And forget about the notion of al Qaeda not being a territory or “state” -- its territory is simply all of the Islamic world – which includes parts of Paris, for example -- not to mention Fort Hood.) And the notion of “preventing further attacks” by turning the U.S. into a police state totally misses the point (in addition to being another victory for them). They opened our veins with the 9-11 attacks, and the bloodletting began... and it continues in the sands of Iraq and on the rocks of Afghanistan. What more need do they have of attacking us on our own soil? None, as far as I can tell. Much better to keep up the attacks on our puppet regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan – that will keep us over there, and keep us hemorrhaging resources until we run out.

But then – you might ask – how were we supposed to respond to 9-11? Were we just supposed to sit there and lick our wounds? Was no retaliation even possible? Well... to begin with, one must refer to Ron Paul's surgically precise comment during the Republican debates, that “they're over here because we're over there” -- a comment that caused Rudy Giuliani to have an apoplectic fit in public, which in turn – I can argue – was the beginning of the end of his own campaign, for which we can all be eternally grateful. So if I'm a radical Islamist, my feeling is that 9-11 required no retaliation because it, in effect, evened the score – for decades of abuse, exploitation, interference, and meddling on our part in Southeast Asia. But of course that won't satisfy any red-blooded American; something else had to be done. Well... if you want to punish al Qaeda, you basically find them and kill them, which we have been trying to do for eight-plus years now. The problem is that al Qaeda is larded through the Islamic world, like the tares in the wheat... so for every one of them we kill, we also manage to kill a few dozen “non-combatants”. Dick Cheney would consider that a small price to pay, of course – since, after all, those ragheads aren't “real people” any more than the Vietnamese were. But in any case, total victory is highly unlikely, especially since they gain more recruits every time we bomb another wedding party.

Well OK then, if al Qaeda is like an inoperable brain tumor in the skull of Islam, how about the Taliban? They were the government of Afghanistan at the time of the attacks, and they presumably supported, or at least were sympathetic to, al Qaeda. So the answer to that was to do what we did, namely to blast the crap out of Kabul -- but we should have stopped there. Our mistake was not in turning a few thousand Taliban into fine powder, but in assuming that, to finish the job, we also had to land ground troops in Afghanistan and, basically, occupy the country and install a puppet regime; that is the source of our (and Obama's) present woes. (This is the puppet government, by the way, that we're supposedly about to build up so that it can continue to act against the wishes of its own people. Just see how long that lasts if we ever pull out; I give it about 24 hours. Because the truth is, we're not over there helping the “good” Afghans assert our values against the “bad” Afghans; we're fighting the whole country, and the only ones on our side are those who feel it's in their short-term interests to be so.) But it did not necessarily follow then, nor does it now, that this package was the only option. For example, what would be wrong with – and this has been proposed by a few brave souls – simply leaving Afghanistan but “standing offshore” with a few naval vessels. If they dare to install another Taliban government, just blast the crap out of them (again) with cruise missiles. No troops, no “drones”, no nothing – just nice neat, clean missiles. And we do that as many times as is necessary. This would be much more defensible to the international community (and to the U.N. -- as though we cared) than our present policy is. They declared war on us – or at least aided and abetted war on us – so we declare war on them. And the way we do this is to constantly threaten their power base. This is not the same as making Afghanistan into an American colony and expecting it to magically adopt the pomp and circumstance of democracy; if they want to give that a try, well and good – but that's their call, not ours.

Now, the above scenario is presented fully mindful of the fact that full, all-out, Old Testament-style vengeance for 9-11 is unattainable. In that sense, the pacifists are right – you can't unscramble the eggs of war, terror, genocide, murder, etc. All you can do is defend against a recurrence (which we are supposedly doing, although sometimes I wonder) and try to educate the rest of the world, on some level, as to the desirability of peaceful coexistence (which mission we are definitely failing at). “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.” And this is at least partly because it is ultimately impossible for human beings to achieve in a just way – or in any way at all, for that matter. It is the eternal frustration of the Jews, for example, that they will never be able to “get even” for the Holocaust, no matter how hard they try – and no matter how many old guys in hospital beds they drag into courtrooms. You can't do it; it's impossible. Ultimately, it has to be left up to God. But that doesn't keep people from trying, and from overfunctioning, and winding up worse off than before it all began. Haven't we lost more soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan than we lost people on 9-11? Does that make any sense to you? The way we return blow for blow is to sacrifice more people and wealth than they destroyed – and there is no sign that this process will ever end. If you want a good example of “perpetual war”, just say “Afghanistan”. The Russians didn't leave because they had won; they left because they were sick of the whole thing. Ditto us in Vietnam. That's the kind of victory that people in that part of the world are used to – the kind that requires infinite patience, attrition, and working on the mind of the enemy. And frankly, with our orderly, Napoleonic concept of war, we just can't handle that sort of thing. Those people just don't fight "fair". So we will be defeated whenever we go over there – whereas, when they come over here... well, that would be 9-11. So yes, it's “asymmetrical warfare” all right, and we're the ones on the short end of the asymmetry.