A Pilgrim’s Digression

This September 11, the “War on Terror” will have lasted longer than our involvement in World War II. From December 7, 1941 to August 15, 1945, we were at war for 1233 days. Put another way, the war lasted three years and 227 days.

From September 11, 2001 to September 11, 2005, we will have been at war 1460 days.

During World War II, a popular, tear-evoking song one would often hear on the radio was “When the lights go on again.”

When the lights go on again
All over the world,
And the boys are home again
All over the world,
And rain or snow is all
That may fall from the skies above
A kiss won’t mean goodbye
But hello to love.

When the lights go on again
All over the world…

The House voted yesterday to curb the Patriot Act. The lights aren’t going on again, but maybe they just flickered a little bit. Specifically, the House voted to revoke the FBI’s powers to obtain library records on a suspected terrorist. “Under the House change, officials would have to get search warrants from a judge or subpoenas from a grand jury to seize records about a suspect’s reading habits.” Basically, that returns us to the pre-9/11 status quo on that one aspect of our privacy. It’s only a small victory, however, and it may not be much of a victory at all.

Even if the Senate also rejects that provision of the Patriot Act, the President says he’ll use the veto.

On the subject of Iraq, the lights may be going on again as well, in another figurative way. The President’s poll numbers are sinking faster than the battleship Bismarck, mainly because of stories like this one also from the Post: Five U.S. Marines Killed In Western Iraq.

1,713 soldiers have been killed in Iraq. Something like 12,000 have been wounded.

There were 385 combat deaths in the Spanish-American War. 1,662 wounded. Some 2,000 died of malaria and other diseases.

But hey, we’re still running behind the number of combat deaths in the War of 1812. For a little while…

There were 2,260 combat deaths in the War of 1812. My statistics come from a Louisiana State University website.

The problem with our thinking about war is that we too often fall into the trap of making a costs/benefits analysis out of it, as if war can ever be truly justified as an investment. “Let’s see, if we sacrifice five thousand lives on the altar of Mars, we can ‘preserve freedom’ or ‘eliminate a threat,’ but more than five thousand and the costs outweigh the benefits. ‘Freedom’ and ’security’ aren’t worth much more than five thousand lives.” We rationalize war, and violence generally, as a necessary evil. But we never really ask, necessary to who? To me? To a general “us?”

Obviously, war isn’t necessary to me. I don’t think it makes me any more secure in my philistinical, materialistic lifestyle. Is it necessary to you? Probably not.

“War is necessary to the security of the country,” some would say.

But who is the country? It’s a conglomeration of individuals, for all of whom war is unnecessary, and who if left alone would do no violence to anyone on either a personal or “geo-political” basis. So what are you left with then? The illogical proposition that we go to war against the interests of every single one of us.

Ultimately, war may only be “necessary” for one man. And we all know who that is.

The War on Terror is an incredible ideological coup for the Republicans. Can you imagine how many times Democrats would have been elected and reelected if they could have retained the Nazis or Japanese as enemies for all time? If the government can maintain fear of an enemy in the populace, power can be consolidated within a few hands indefinitely.

Think about this: there is no Hiroshima on which we can drop a bomb and end the War on Terror; there will never be a treaty-signing on the deck of the U.S.S. Missouri. How will we know the war is over?

It won’t ever end. The President has said as much himself in his more honest moments. Republicans say the only way to “win” is to kill more of “them” than they kill of us. They aren’t joking. Such a war is like struggling against quicksand. The people who are fighting us have an inexhaustible supply of willing martyrs, as do we ourselves, apparently. So I ask again: how will we know the war is over?

I feel myself beginning to hate politicians, all of them irrespective of party or ideology.