Additional impetus has come from the political game surrounding the "strategic review" over the course of the "war of necessity" (per President Obama) and the potential deployment of another large chunk of American troops. This feature gives additional force to the need to finally settle just what we are fighting for--and against. It just is not right either ethically or politically to expect people to put their one and only ass on the line for unknown reasons and unknowable goals.
In past confrontations, in previous wars, on those occasions such as World War I, World War II and, at least at their outsets, the Korean War and the American War in Vietnam, We the People had a reasonable consensus as to both the goal of our fighting and the nature of our enemy. In the cases of the two world wars, the consensus held until after the shooting stopped. With the other two wars, both limited wars in support of policy, the consensus did not hold. As a necessary consequence, We the People (or at least a large, vocal segment) lost political will to continue the effort, the sacrifice.
The First World War consensus was predicated upon a nifty combination of Allied (that is to say, British) propaganda, news management, and perception manipulation with the domestic ideals so well expressed by President Woodrow Wilson of "the victory of democracy" and a "war to end war." The Second World War saw consensus built from diversity in the blinding humiliation and destruction of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The first casualty of the Japanese bombs was the very large, vocal, and politically potent isolationist movement in the US.
The Korean War achieved an almost instant but not universal consensus because the invasion of the South by the North was so blatant, so evident, and so aggrandizing in the estimate of American public opinion molders that a response by the US was virtually guaranteed. The shrewd use by President Truman of the UN (made possible only by the Soviet self-inflicted absence from the Security Council) comforted Americans in their love of multi-lateral action based on the World War II alliance structure.
In a very real sense the consensus on the sending of troops to fight in the Vietnamese Wars was an artifact. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was a ready-made, fill-in-the-blank exploitation of the expectable North Vietnamese response to the provocative actions under MarOps 34A and the twin ELINT collection by US destroyers. Waving the red flag of expansionist Communism was both possible and justifiable given the internal political dynamics of the day. (It might be noted that the documents of the day show the leaders of both parties in both houses of Congress were far more hawkish than the administration and far, far more pawing the ground for war than President Johnson.)
The consensus held remarkably well. Even in the closing days of the Johnson administration and the first term of President Nixon, public support for the war effort at its lowest was higher by far than the nadir of support for the earlier Korean conflict. In part this was the effect of the body count--in war the dead often dictate policy. In part the continued support for the war was a response by the "silent majority" to the actions and rhetoric of both the anti-war movement and the counterculture generally.
In any event there was no time during the Korean and Vietnamese wars that We the People had any doubt as to just who we were and what we stood for. Nor was there any doubt as to who the enemy was and what the enemy was all about.
True, in the cold light of history practiced with the utmost of human objectivity, We the People might have been as wrong as a soup sandwich about both us and them, but that didn't matter at the time. Nor, practically does it matter after the fact.
On 9/12 We the People were One. We lusted to strike back against those who had struck not at some far away naval base but in the heart of our greatest city and the center of our nation's capital. Worse, this new enemy had not used military ships and aircraft, soldiers and sailors, but had seized civilian aircraft and turned our own fellows into weapons against us.
The attacks were acts of war. Of that We the People were certain. In the main most still do. A very confusing factor for We the People and the government alike was simply the nature of the attackers. In all of our previous experiences, attacks had been leveled by states, by governments, by soldiers, airmen, sailors. This time the attackers were of no specific nation, no government, no armed force.
It is hard to muster and focus a consensus for war when there is no easily named enemy. Sure, Afghanistan was a convenient and justifiable target given the nature of its government and the total unwillingness of that government to turn over the ultimate architects of the outrage to the US. The invasion of Afghanistan was plausible. It might even be described without undue inaccuracy as having been a "necessity."
But, attacking Afghanistan, overthrowing Taliban, ejecting al-Qaeda to Pakistan did not constitute a blow against the enemy. It may not have been a dangerous diversion as was the later great adventure in regime change in Iraq, but neither was it an effective strike against the real enemy, the (to use another piece of fine old Soviet terminology) "main" enemy.
Eight years ago as today the US government and the vast majority of the chattering, academic, and political classes made and make a bright and shining distinction between Islam and whatever and whomever the "enemy" might be. There were those eight years ago as there are those today who maintain that the "enemy" isn't some Muslim other but We the People and our government.
Despite the well intentioned and tactically justifiable attempt to put great swaths of daylight between acts of "terror" and Islam qua Islam, it is long past time to blow a whistle on the play.
"Wait one, Geek! Don't tell us you're becoming one of them there "Islamophobes."
Not hardly, bucko. Ole Doc Geek isn't a man of the cloth. Neither is he given to the fine details of theological disputations. To the Geekmo, all religions are created equal. They all deserve their time in the public square. None inspire any more "phobia" in the Geekmeister's mind than any other.
Even given the diversity of commitment and belief which must reside in the minds of one and a half billion human beings, there are some very salient, quite clear, and horribly unmistakable facts which have been growing since long before that bright September day in 2001. These are the ground truths which have not been given proper respect in the ever-so-polite, ever-so-sensitive, neverendingly tolerant chambers of the chattering, academic, and political classes in the US (OK, and elsewhere as well).
The first of these never-to-be-spoken brutal truths is simply that the vast majority of "terrorist" acts perpetrated over the past twenty years have been conducted by people who purport themselves to be Muslims. It doesn't matter who the keeper of the numbers is or has been--the US government, the UN, independent organizations, individual students of the phenomenon--the total comes out the same.
The second of these foundation realities is simply that the acts of the suicide bombers, the rocket launchers, the trigger pullers have been and are justified, even sanctified in the sacred writings of Islam. It matters not that the majority of Muslims may not act according to these strictures and requirements or even consider them germane to their lives today. The fact remains that the sacred literature, much (though admittedly far from all) Islamic jurisprudence historically and contemporaneously supports or even compels the actions taken by the bombers and their ilk.
The third basic also comes directly from Islam. The religion is totalistic in nature. It admits of no separation between politics and belief, jurisprudence and faith, the society and the community of believers. Additionally, Islam draws a line between the House of Peace--Islam--and the House of War--everybody else on the planet. The distinction coupled with assorted strictures as well as the record of the life of the Perfect Man, Mohammad, provides the basis to carry war both defensive and offensive against the unbelievers and apostates.
Again, it is irrelevant to aver that these factors play no real role in the lives of most Muslims most places most of the time. It may be a true assertion, but it doesn't matter.
The fourth leg of the table of reality is to be found in the West generally and the US in particular. Neither the West nor, most specifically, the US can avoid being the target of those within the Islamic faith who seek to put the greatest vitality into their beliefs. By its very existence, its size, its geographic reach, its characteristics and values, the US must draw the greatest hatred, the greatest loathing.
Samuel Huntington was right whether any of us like it or not. (Be assured, the Geek does not.) The world is engaged in a "clash of civilizations." The US and the West are in a battle to the death not with Islam per se, but with those within Islam who subscribe to "political Islam" or Islamism. More to the point today we are in a battle to the end with those Muslims who accept armed political Islam (Islamist jihadism) as their duty to and under the faith.
Perhaps this seems to be too fine a parsing to be made by politicians, pundits, and academics. Perhaps these elevated minds believe it is too fine a distinction to be understood by the great unwashed of the hoi polloi who are, after all, the majority of We the People.
In either case the unwillingness or inability of the public opinion molders of the US to make the necessary, properly and historically very well based distinction between Islam and Islamist jihadism assures two outcomes. The first has become very evident with the slow but recently accelerating public disenchantment with the war in Afghanistan.
The American consensus on the "global war on terror" has gone. Period. It will not return unless and until the necessary distinctions are made clearly, repeatedly, and convincingly. We the People must be persuaded that we have a real enemy. And that the enemy is not some amorphous tactic called "terror" but a very real political ideology rooted in specific aspects of Islam which can be distinguished from other features of Islam.
The second outcome of the persistent lack of a proper definition of the enemy is a growing uncertainty as to what positive outcome we might be fighting for. This loops to a growing unease within We the People as to just what we are all about, just what our beliefs might be, our values, the sort of future (beyond material comfort and stability) we might be seeking.
Events in both Iraq and Afghanistan prove beyond a doubt that the old magic words, "democracy," "freedom," "free enterprise" and so forth to the point of projectile vomit are no longer possessed of the charm they held in past wars. Nor, can it be claimed that a victory here or there will "make the world safe for democracy" or "end war."
It may be the case that the Islamist jihadists are both collectivist (as is Islam itself) and certainly addicted to actions such as stonings, amputations, and other delights of Shariah which heap insult and indignity upon the individual. In the past the cause of the individual, the rights and dignities of every single person, have been used quite successfully to mobilize and maintain a consensus within We the People.
It may be that this set of core values is the best, the only means available today to keep We the People grimly dedicated to bear the sacrifices necessary to keep fighting against the denegrators of the individual waging war under the banner of Islam. The Islamist jihadists desire more than anything else to impose their dystopian vision upon us and the rest of the "infidel" world. They want us to submit to the religion of submission and will use any and all means available to achieve this end.
The grim robot warriors of Islamist jihad can be stopped only if We the People are willing to keep on manning the lonely ramparts. We face with the Islamist martyrdom seekers an enemy far more determined and perhaps more numerous than any we faced during the great and lesser wars of the Twentieth Century, including the Cold War.
No doubt. Fighting wears thin. Fast. We the People have already fought way too many wars against all too many collectivist enemies flying many different flags. It is tempting to say, "Enough, already! Been there. Done it. Have the scars to prove it."
In a just and fair world we would be allowed to drop the fight. Put down the burden. To take a well earned and deserved rest.
But this is not a world which is fair or just. It falls to us, the unwilling, led by the inept, to do the impossible. We have stood against German expansionism (twice), Japanese aggression, the Crimson Tide of the Kremlin, Pyongyang, Beijing, Hanoi. And, we won.
We won because we knew what we were fighting against. And, fighting for.
We can do the same today and into endless tomorrows. But, only if we have leaders both in and out of government who can tell it like it really is. Leaders with the intellectual and moral courage to say without equivocation who we are, what we fight for, and what we are fighting against.
Well, it's an idea.
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