There is no "war against terror". Terror is a perpetual condition of the human psyche. To become enmeshed in a war on terror is, inevitably, to turn one's guns on the terror within oneself. There can only be war against a defined entity whose defeat can be measured by a specific set of conditions that one's victory engenders. Whatever the band of misfits responsible for 9/11, al Qaeda was nothing more than a name that some of them may have adhered to. It is the United States that has made that name a rallying point for violent, angry men in the Muslim world. It is we who, in a process of self-fulfilling prophecy, have turned al Qaeda into a recognizable force, although one whose exact scale and scope of operations are never described for the American people. Yet we are asked to support this perpetual war that has destabilized Pakistan (which according to the President, is one of the resources we shall use to stabilize Afghanistan), helped drive us into bankruptcy, killed numerous innocents, ripped apart families in our own nation through death and separation and injury, and done absolutely nothing to prevent terrorism on the blind claim that we are there as part of the glorious, unending war against terror.
But won't a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan be a breeding ground for terrorists who target Americans, as the President claims? No. In fact, one can argue that it does not matter where a terrorist plot originates anymore than it matters where heroin or cocaine originates. What matters is how one intercedes at the various staging points that lead to the final delivery of a bomb or drug. We cannot patrol every city and town, every cave, every fundamentalist enclave and then go to war when we discover some activity there anymore than we can control or eviscerate every field where coca or poppies grow. The best defenses against terrorism are efficiently applied technological filters, solid investigative work at home, and intelligence work abroad. For starters, let's get the FBI out of the business of spying on peace activists. What a blow that's been for homeland security!
The terrorist threat against the United States does not stem from a devious cabal hiding out in the caves of Afghanistan and safe houses of Pakistan. In fact, the T Taliban, loathesome though they are, are not in and of themselves a terrorist network targeting the United States. We attacked them for harboring bin Laden. Personally, I'd like to see the whole movement dismantled and disintegrated. But we didn't go into Afghanistan to build a nation or liberate the population. We went in there to punish the Taliban for their sheltering of Osama bin Laden and now we're not sure exactly what we're doing there or even who has realliy been protecting bin Laden for the past eight years, or even whether he's alive. But we do know that a Quaker peace group in a small town in Pennsylvania had a meeting three months ago.
Just as the drug war's military solutions have achieved less than nothing against groups embedded in their own native populations (and whose largest market happens to be the very U.S. taxpayers funding the war against drugs), so too is the war against terrorism misdirected at wiping out terrorism at the source. The fact is, this cannot be done. It is a chimera, a pink elephant, an opium dream, poppycock. As long as this world has a potent mix of unlimited arms dealing, disenfranchised and embittered populations, too-easy recourse to military solutions, and irrational religious and national agendas, we will have terrorism. Just as cocaine and heroin will always be with us, so too will potential terrorists unless the fundamental conditions that give rise to the demand for drugs and terrorist action are changed.
Terrorism cannot be defeated by invading a nation that happens to have terrorist supporters living within its borders. President Obama is a very intelligent man who can articulate solutions in a pleasing and reasonable manner. But the mistake of the past eight years cannot be solved by a policy that has only gotten bloodier while going nowhere. The absurdity of our publicly articulated assumptions about nation-building and terrorism is not the only weakness in the President's justification of our Afghan policy. The fact is, there is no "scenario of success" that the President -- or Congress, the Pentagon, or CIA -- can define with any clarity. And by promulgating the same old confused rhetoric and irrational fixations disguised as considered policy, the President is, in the long run, undermining his own broader agenda. Perhaps the required solution is beyond the ability of any one man, one nation, or single plan. Whether or not a "solution" even exists, we will engender only further destruction and more violent enmities by following the Orwellian notion that the way to peace and security is through perpetual war.
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