More Inconvenient Truths:
Endless war inevitable When All Players Keep Declaring VictoryBy 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.
