Sunday, September 14, 2003
Whack-a-Mole
With American troops facing daily guerilla attacks in Iraq, a question has begun popping up on cable news, radio talk shows, and other forums for political non-discourse: why didn't this happen during the occupations of Germany and Japan after World War II?
The talking heads disingenuously posing this question have their own agendas, of course, which their non-answers reflect.
The answer couldn't be any simpler:
In defeating the governments of Germany and Japan, the United States had defeated the enemy it was fighting, end of story. In Iraq we defeated the government, but the enemy we were supposedly after -- the one that attacked us -- is still out there, waiting to attack us again whenever it can.
The governments of the Axis powers controlled the military of their countries, and defeating them ended the conflict. American forces disbanded their governments and sent their surviving soldiers home to be citizens again. Those soldiers dropped their weapons and went back to their plows, no matter how they felt about losing the war.
That isn't the case in the "War on Terror". This war is being fought against an amorphous entity that exists within and apart from the governments of any country. The terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 aren't a government, they aren't financed through government taxes, and they don't have factories, roads, and buildings to bomb.
Defeating the government of Iraq (or Iran, or Pakistan, or even Afghanistan, if you can call the Taliban a government) won't stop the terrorists. It ends those governments, no question, but it doesn't defeat the terrorists. In fact in many ways it aids them.
The terrorists are groups of individuals. They're financed by individuals. Destroying the governments of the countries in which they operate will no more stop their functioning than it would stop a religion.
There were no extra-governmental entities fighting us in Germany or Japan. But in the war on terror the extra-government entity is the enemy. That's who flew the planes into the World Trade Center.
How to fight a war against millions of individuals is the essential question the Bush administration has failed to grasp. Declaring "war" on an abstract noun -- in this case "terror" -- may make for great soundbites, but bombing it turns out to be problematic. Ultimately you end up bombing places you think it may be hiding near, but that tends to create more problems than it solves -- especially for the innocent people who happen to live in the vicinity.
What you end up with is a global game of "whack-a-mole", the carnival game in which no matter how hard you swing at the mole, it disappears while another one pops up somewhere else. You can turn around and shoot the carnival owner, of course, but then you have to contend with his family. Do you shoot them, too? Then what?
Welcome to "whack-a-mole".
The hard answer, of course, and one that makes for very poor soundbites, is that it's impossible to stop individual acts of terror, especially through conventional warfare. You can no more bomb away "terror" than you can bomb away "sin."
In fact, it's maddeningly hard to stop individual acts of any kind. That's why we have prisons full of people, each of whom committed an individual act. You can catch them and punish them, but you can only do so much to stop them in advance -- and that presumes they'll act somewhat rationally while sinning.
Let your mind wander over the myriad possibilities for small-scale terrorist attacks against ordinary Americans going about their daily business. What would stop violent acts by individuals whose aim is to terrorize, and who don't care if they get caught, or even survive?
Nothing. What stops normal people from doing those things is the thinly defined but widely recognized rules of behavior all sane people follow. Occasionally an insane person breaks the rules, and when that happens we're all shocked.
But the terrorists are doing it. They flew planes full of people into buildings full of people. They're sane people doing insane things. Individual acts of madness from individuals who don't care about the consequences to themselves.
You can't declare war on that. And you can't bomb it away, no matter how many bombs you drop.
In fact, the more bombs you drop, the worse things get.
The talking heads disingenuously posing this question have their own agendas, of course, which their non-answers reflect.
The answer couldn't be any simpler:
In defeating the governments of Germany and Japan, the United States had defeated the enemy it was fighting, end of story. In Iraq we defeated the government, but the enemy we were supposedly after -- the one that attacked us -- is still out there, waiting to attack us again whenever it can.
The governments of the Axis powers controlled the military of their countries, and defeating them ended the conflict. American forces disbanded their governments and sent their surviving soldiers home to be citizens again. Those soldiers dropped their weapons and went back to their plows, no matter how they felt about losing the war.
That isn't the case in the "War on Terror". This war is being fought against an amorphous entity that exists within and apart from the governments of any country. The terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 aren't a government, they aren't financed through government taxes, and they don't have factories, roads, and buildings to bomb.
Defeating the government of Iraq (or Iran, or Pakistan, or even Afghanistan, if you can call the Taliban a government) won't stop the terrorists. It ends those governments, no question, but it doesn't defeat the terrorists. In fact in many ways it aids them.
The terrorists are groups of individuals. They're financed by individuals. Destroying the governments of the countries in which they operate will no more stop their functioning than it would stop a religion.
There were no extra-governmental entities fighting us in Germany or Japan. But in the war on terror the extra-government entity is the enemy. That's who flew the planes into the World Trade Center.
How to fight a war against millions of individuals is the essential question the Bush administration has failed to grasp. Declaring "war" on an abstract noun -- in this case "terror" -- may make for great soundbites, but bombing it turns out to be problematic. Ultimately you end up bombing places you think it may be hiding near, but that tends to create more problems than it solves -- especially for the innocent people who happen to live in the vicinity.
What you end up with is a global game of "whack-a-mole", the carnival game in which no matter how hard you swing at the mole, it disappears while another one pops up somewhere else. You can turn around and shoot the carnival owner, of course, but then you have to contend with his family. Do you shoot them, too? Then what?
Welcome to "whack-a-mole".
The hard answer, of course, and one that makes for very poor soundbites, is that it's impossible to stop individual acts of terror, especially through conventional warfare. You can no more bomb away "terror" than you can bomb away "sin."
In fact, it's maddeningly hard to stop individual acts of any kind. That's why we have prisons full of people, each of whom committed an individual act. You can catch them and punish them, but you can only do so much to stop them in advance -- and that presumes they'll act somewhat rationally while sinning.
Let your mind wander over the myriad possibilities for small-scale terrorist attacks against ordinary Americans going about their daily business. What would stop violent acts by individuals whose aim is to terrorize, and who don't care if they get caught, or even survive?
Nothing. What stops normal people from doing those things is the thinly defined but widely recognized rules of behavior all sane people follow. Occasionally an insane person breaks the rules, and when that happens we're all shocked.
But the terrorists are doing it. They flew planes full of people into buildings full of people. They're sane people doing insane things. Individual acts of madness from individuals who don't care about the consequences to themselves.
You can't declare war on that. And you can't bomb it away, no matter how many bombs you drop.
In fact, the more bombs you drop, the worse things get.
