It's called "war on an abstract noun"

[ddeclue]

Take your pick:

War on Terror
War on Drugs
War on Poverty
War on AIDS
etc....

Victory is notoriously hard to define in these types of wars and even harder to achieve. The more nebulous the abstract noun the harder it is to achieve victory. There is a better chance of ending the war on poverty and the war on aids than there is for drugs or terror which are far more vague.

A war on "terror" can't be won because there simply is no way to determine when you've killed the last "terrorist". It is Orwell's perpetual war against the other.

If we properly declared war on say "Al Qaeda" or "Hezbollah" or something like that, then it would be much easier to define victory but then I don't believe that the Bush administration wants a victory - the previous Bush administration had a victory over communism, Panama, and Iraq but lost the re-election anyways because the voters are notorious for having a "but what have you done for me lately" mindset and fired H.W. anyways over a poor economy and a poor response to Hurricane Andrew.

What W has apparently learned from daddy H.W.'s experience is that he wants to have an indefinite war rather than a victory.

What W has failed to learn from Truman, LBJ, or Nixon however, is that while voters are fickle about victories that the voters respond very poorly to prolonged wars without victory.

Both Truman and H.W. suffered the wrath of voters in 1946 and 1992 over the economy, even though they were both victorious "war" Presidents. Truman, Johnson, and Nixon in turn were excoriated for their failures to win in Korea and Vietnam.

Starting a third war with Iran will not be rewarded by the voters nor appreciated by an overstretched military that can't really handle the current missions of Iraq, Afghanistan, and handling domestic disasters like Katrina. In fact it is quite clearly a military disaster waiting to happen. And of course, because "terror" is an abstract noun, Iran will be conflated with "terror" just as "Iraq" was previously.

This is specifically why the Founders charged Congress with the duty and the power of declarations of war and forbade it to the President because they did want an adventurous militaristic "King" but rather a "President" who would only go to war reluctantly as the commander but not as the initiator.

Much like the Nazi dentist in "Marathon Man", asking "Is it safe?" while torturing Dustin Hoffman - Bush thinks if we torture people and attack them that somehow we can be safe.

The truth is that no one can ever truly be entirely "safe" - The Supreme Court famously once rule that "safe is not the equivalent of risk free." We will never be entirely free of risks - let's face it we all are going to die someday - nobody leaves here alive (not counting RaptureWingNuts..)

We can't be safe but we CAN be free if we recognize that we can't be safe and focus on being FREE instead. That's what the Founding Fathers knew and understood.

Let's face it - we are already much safer than our ancestors. The Founders had a very small military and were surrounded by Indians and the English in the West and North and Spainards and Indians in the South. Their entire coastline was exposed to attack from the any number of European powers with substantial navies. Yet they somehow managed to have the courage to make us free where our superpower President wants to take away our freedom in order to "protect" us.

We are the pre-eminent military and economic power on the planet. There has not been such an asymmetry of power since the Roman Empire. We are a nuclear superpower and a conventional one. We spend more than the next 27 countries on defense and intelligence and yet somehow we can't manage to be safe?

Someone needs to explain that one to me...

Someone needs to explain to me how the current situation is worse than:

1) The Civil War - 9/11 wouldn't even count as the 20th largest battle of the Civil War. 2% of the population died in it and many cities were destroyed. Yet somehow the Constitution managed to survive relatively unscathed.

2) World War II - At the outset of World War II, our Army wasn't even the 10th largest in the world and the enemies weren't pretend - they were real and had larger militaries than our own. We had no nuclear weapons and were in a desperate race to acquire them with a technologically superior Germany. About 291,000 Americans were killed in battle about 100 times the number who died on 9/11.

3) The Great Influenza - Killed over a half million Americans in 1919 and 24 million around the world. This is the closest thing in modern times to the Black Plagues that struck Europe in the Middle Ages.

4) World War I - Happened just before the Great Influenza and killed only 116,000 Americans by comparison. Yet this was still 40 times as many as died on 9/11.

5) The Great Depression - a world wide economic collapse that left 1/3 of Americans unemployed and financially ruined. In other countries such as Germany it lead to democracy being replaced by dictatorship.

6) The Cold War - while our country at the zenith of its military power during this period, we remained in a nuclear arms race for over 40 years with the Soviets and for most of that period remained 45 minutes (or less) from total nuclear annihilation. If we managed to expand our rights and freedoms dramatically under such a threat then why are we so willing to give it back for a rag-tag bunch like al Qaeda? They clearly are NOT the Soviets.

7) The Cuban Missile Crisis - Happened during the Cold War but was actually the closest we ever got to total annihilation yet we didn't become a dictatorship in response to it.

In short Bush and Company are selling Americans short on courage and cheapening our history.

In reality our biggest threats are of our own making: We eat too much, we eat poorly, we exercise too little, we smoke, we drink too much, we drink and drive, we drive wrecklessly, we kill each other with guns - we kill ourselves through poor lifestyle choices far more than anything al Qaeda did on 9/11. The top causes of death in this country are heart disease, stroke, and cancer followed closely by automobile accidents and gun deaths. Terrorism isn't even in the top 25 causes of death.

Let's get some perspective and stop being such cowards.

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

[NanceGreggs]

1. Really thoughtful piece ...

.. and beautifully articulated.

:applause:

[ddeclue]

2. Thanks

I should have spent a little more time polishing it had I intended from the start to make it a top level post instead of just a reply to someone else..but I'm still happy with how it came out..

Doug D.

[Jack Rabbit]

3. It's called use of Orwellian language

Everybody knows that the "war" in War on Pverty, War on Drugs, etc., is a metaphor. Now we have war on Terror. OK, at its its best, it's going to involve sending troops in somewhere. But it didn't have to involve invading a sovereign state, even one under the iron grip of a heinous dictator, who was fighting his own private on terrorists because he perceived them to be a threat to his hold on power.

Bush's war on terror is no metaphor. It is a literal war. Nevertheless, the term is still dishonest. It is not a war on terror. It is a war against resource-rich developing nations who want to develop their own economies and limit what foreign investors can do. Osama the Terrorist? According to Mr. Bush, taking Osama into custody is either a priority or not, depending on which way the political winds are blowing at any given moment. We have learned by now not to take anything Mr. Bush says seriously not so much because he is stupid but because he thinks we are.

[pwb]

4. i agree. we have wars against words.

how about the fact bush family Saudi oil keeps pumping at record levels. all other oil producers we are told are evil doers. hmmmmm?

[ChairmanAgnostic]

5. Bbbbut, 746,000 people were arrested for pot possession this year

how can you say we are losing the war on drugs?
Especially since bush plans to provide even more Product Liab. protection for drug companies?

[ddeclue]

6. WOD also unwinnable war of abstraction...

To borrow some lyrics from Glen Frey on the WOD:

"See it in the headlines, you hear it every day
They say they're gonna stop it but it doesn't go away
They move it through Miami, sell it in L.A.
They hide it up in Telluride, I mean it's here to stay
It's propping up the governments in Columbia and Peru,
You ask any DEA man, he'll say, "There's nothin' we can do"
From the office of the President, right down to me and you, me and you

It's a losing proposition,
But one you can't refuse
It's the politics of contraband,
It's the smuggler's blues
Smuggler's blues"

-Glen Frey, Smugglers Blues, from the Miami Vice Soundtrack

Anyways the movie Traffic had it about right on the WOD, it can't really be won by law enforcement alone and it becomes more about creating self-perpetuating institutions when it does - prisons, law enforcement agencies, etc., etc. - the only real solution is honest education on the subject, common sense laws, and constructive alternatives for young people that give them hope, a career and a future.

The same guy that did Traffic also did last years "Syriana" and he knows a hell of a lot more about both the WOD and the WOT than Mssrs. Bush and Cheney will ever know.

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

[AzDar]

7. An excellent post. n/t