More
Inconvenient Truths:
Endless war inevitable When All Players Keep Declaring Victory
By Robert S. Becker,
Ph.D.
02 September, 2006
Countercurrents.org
Even “declaring victory”
and going home is now obsolete, out of sync with President Bush’s
kitchen-sink “war on terrorism.” So much for the Vietnam
option.
Where are incentives to peace
talks when every party – from global power to pipsqueak cadre
– keeps declaring victory – then goes on fighting. Ever
since Osama bin Laden first bragged 9/11 devastation outdid expectations,
followed by George Bush’s absurd “Mission Accomplished”
bravado, there’s been an epidemic of victory broadcasts -- and
more war.
Governments routinely declare
triumphs, whether American, Iraqi, Afghanistani, or Iranian –
alongside claims by al Qaeda operatives and assorted insurgents. Routinely,
Pakistan and India chime in and the list goes on. Lately, Hezbollah
(Syria, even Hamas) and Israel all emerged triumphant in the same war.
And there are gleeful sideshows, in North Korea or Venezuela, boasting
winning plays in their mind games with the U.S.
For all, “staying the
course” has morphed into far more than a political or military
slogan. The lesson is that conflicts full of only apparent “winners”
are endless, meaning no peace in our time, despite a final American
price tag for Iraq pushing one trillion dollars.
War for war’s
sake – and winning elections
By pre-emptively invading
Iraq, the Bush White House sensed a sea change in war, indeed developing
its political essence. War, indeed, not only as the extension of politics
by other means but the justification of faith-based politics. That’s
why there’s no Plan B for Iraq. Despite opening Pandora’s
box, Bush neo-cons didn’t need an exit strategy because occupations
rarely end. Today, the U.S. embraces war without definitive victory,
which means war without end. And why not when politics capitalizes on
declaring unwinnable wars: on poverty, drugs, crime, cancer, so why
not terrorism? Yesterday Iraq, tomorrow Iran and the “war against
nukes.”
While Islamic terrorists
were acting, more or less, like terrorists, Bush’s rashness reinvented
the game, adding more than unilateral pre-emption to the mix. Without
definable ends to either terrorism or anti-terrorism, “winning”
(indeed losing) becomes a phantom. That invoked a critical shift, making
starting (or ending) a national war, as depicted by the movie Wag the
Dog, a wholly political act. What once required serious and overt aggression
is now a political or campaign decision.
Second shift: reliance on
military intelligence (even just causes, like weapons of mass destruction)
has been trivialized: the Bush White House treats arms intelligence
as trial lawyers do "facts," cherry-picked at will. Finally,
staging wars without clear objectives or success markers minimizes what
happens on the battlefield – if there is one. In short, here’s
the modern war strategy in play, unified by the all-critical Bush formula:
the politicization of war, intimidation of elected (and appointed) officials
to force “pro-war” resolutions, squelching of dissent, and
impugning all critics as enemy supporters.
Cheney's retaliation
in advance
To the degree bombing and
threats incite high fear levels, terrorists can boast victories, even
as their structure and leaders fall. Much harder will be gaining stated
goals – outsiders withdrawal from Muslim holy lands – unless
a terrifying weapon is held to the heads of westerners. Staying their
course spurs insurgent recruitment, fundraising, and violence, anything
but negotiating or pulling back.
Certainly, the U.S. will
elect presidents more skilled than the dim bulb at the helm. But short
of giving terrorists a totalitarian religious state, formalizing hostility
towards the secular west, why would Bush neo-cons, yet to lose a major
election since 2000, change a winning domestic strategy?
So follows Cheney’s
dictum: even a 1% chance of mayhem justifies massive U.S. retaliation
– in advance! What an arms maker’s fantasy! For here we
finally achieve that ominous stalemate which George Orwell envisioned
– endless, permanent war. When wars are about intangibles, not
borders or cities, how does one establish terms for peace – let
alone compromise? If ideology and/or campaign victories equate every
suicide bomber with global lethal assaults, inviting Cheney’s
doomsday visions, permanent war joins the updated political toolkit.
Terrorism and bin Laden gifted
Bush not only with campaign slogans but the ideal, shadowy enemy whose
very identity morphs every few months. Remember insane, “evil-doers”
becoming fanatic Jihadists, suicide bombers of women and children, then
“sectarian” insurgents and, of late, “Islamic fascists,”
though without state and corporate sponsors that fascism requires. The
subtext is clear: the conflict never ends because the enemy shifts,
mandating renewed financing and inflated war cries.
Bush political agenda:
Mission Accomplished
Ensconced as permanent war
president, Bush has leveraged his political capital well. Aside from
winning re-election (oddly, for NOT winning a war), count two versions
of the Patriot Act, waging war without concern to mammoth costs, Homeland
Security Department, big tax cuts despite burgeoning budgets, sustained
corporate subsidies, reversal of regulations unfriendly to business,
even channeling hundreds of millions to church-based charities –
plus sufficient rightwing justices to insure against legal reversals.
Mission accomplished, indeed!
And losers? Certainly, by
passively endorsing Bush’s war, Democrats are losers – without
campaign issue or backbone. Mainly, big losers are the dead, injured,
and dispossessed: upwards of 100,000 civilian Iraqi deaths or seriously
injured, 2500 dead Americans, with more than 20,000 injured. War, as
Randolph Bourne describes, continues to serve the health of the state
– almost any state and a bunch of little wannabe states, too.
Every state, government,
terrorist, and arms player in this endless war naturally assures its
constituents, citizens and/or stockholders they are safer, freer to
act (even destroy) all while helping defeat mortal enemies. With God
on every side, each beneficiary of endless war affirms victory, small
and large, and promises more. Whatever the price for victory, war is
served when the price for losing stays higher.
Needed: anti-war
religion?
Nothing changes until a bigger
critical mass realize what zealous, pro-war minorities, in charge here
and abroad, have wrought. While vast world populations reject both terrorists
and occupiers, majority rule, as voters, intervenes too late, after
the fact -- and true believers always re-invent dramatic actions that
fuel tensions.
What’s needed is a
universal repulsion, an empowerment of the majority of earthlings who
reject the rapture of war for the necessity of forced negotiations.
Nothing changes when world leaders equate staying in power with endless
warmaking. A religious movement opposing war won’t prevail when
wars are politicized, open-ended, and so ill defined (or badly executed)
that all sides can declare victory – and go on fighting. A war
with too many winners is a loser for the rest of humanity.
We won’t stop believing
in war until there’s a far more realistic notion of what modern
war can and can’t do. War leaders must be made to state, in advance,
success markers and exit options. Clearly, missiles and bombs incite
terrorism rather than defeat it – so “victory” must
affirm civil order and freedom along with basic needs (like water, housing
and electricity). With Iraq as the worst case, success also requires
officials know what they are doing – and where they are going
– before daring a leap of faith.
So far, in the battle between
peace and war, the forces of violence are entrenched and in firm control
– and that makes changing individual leaders only the first step.
But it is the first step.