Stephen Green contemplates the absurdity of trying to plan for the peace before the war has been won and the even greater absurdity of complaining about the inadequacy of such plans in his most recent post on Vodkapundit (via Instapundit):
Now that we know that we don’t know how we’ll win, that leaves the question (and the oxymoron): How do we win?
Ending the rule of the Taliban didn’t end the war. Ending the rule of Saddam didn’t end the war. We could depose the dictators in every dictatorship, and still not be done with this mess. Our enemy isn’t a nation. It isn’t a leader. It isn’t, despite the misnomer “War on Terror,” a war on terror.
What we’re fighting is an ideology.
Steve answers his own question:
With all that in mind, I’ve identified three keys to winning this war:
1. Take the initiative.
2. Fight when we have to, even if we can’t win.
3. Remain what we are.
I admire Steve’s writing and thinking greatly. I”ll admit to being a little fond of him perhaps because he appears to be a very attractive and affable guy, partly because he’s a fellow St. Louisan (even if he did go to Country Day).
I think he’s got one thing wrong and it’s the greatest concern I have right now about the War on Terror. Steve writes:
If we fight and fight and fight, without ever giving up those freedoms we’re fighting to defend. . .
But we did. That’s what happened during World War II. Before the war the military and the government was a very small part of the nation and what we were about. Afterwards they were a lot of what we were about. That’s what Eisenhower’s Military-Industrial Complex speech in 1961 was about. We had become much more military. We weren’t the same country we were before the war.
Part of the reason for this was that payroll deductions for income tax and social security (a temporary wartime measure) put the federal government’s hand into nearly every American’s pocket. Before the war the government knew very little about the average Joe’s income. After the war the government knew everything. Steve, that’s a basic liberty. A fundamental freedom we surrendered to win the war.
So I worry about the lack of commitment to win the War on Terror decisively. And I worry what we’ll surrender to win the war after fifty or a hundred years of war against the fantasist ideology that is radical Islam.
In my defense, I was kicked out of Country Day. Grin.
Oh — and thanks!
One day in 2001, I heard John Ashcroft reassure us that some (what I would call) repressive measure would only be around for the duration of the war.
The next week, I heard George Bush mention that the war might last a generation.
We should never accept anything as being for “the duration” of this war because it’s not what I’d call a war, which implies (at least in the past two centuries) maybe a decade, tops, blighted by it and its exigencies—four or five years if you only care about American history. We should accept any measure in this current struggle only if it were acceptable from this day forward.