A Pilgrim’s Digression

…or is it fiddlin’ while New Orleans sinks?

You’ll see the above picture linked to on many Lefty blogs today and used as political fodder in the war against George Bush. However, the picture seems to me less important than what Bush said in a speech shortly before being presented the guitar.

The text of the speech can be read at the White House website. Most importantly, and more adamantly than ever before, the President tried to make the link between the War on Terror and World War II. World War II is like the touchstone by which a war is judged a “good” or “bad” war. Unfortunately, few wars in history rise to the standards of the “good” war.

The comparison to World War II is weak, at best. The twin sneak attacks of Pearl Harbor and 9/11 mark the end of any real similarity, in my opinion. In World War II, we were attacked by a sovereign nation with an Army, Navy, and an Air Force. Japan had the ambition to dominate the world, and it also had the means to do so at its disposal.

On 9/11, we were attacked by a handful of men belonging to what, in the United States, we would consider a violent cult. It had no real Army. Al Qaeda’s Imperial ambitions were at best overweening, but more aptly described as preposterous. With ties to a primitive, weak government in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda was easily routed; and if we had maintained the pressure on Al Qaeda that we applied in the months following 9/11 I have little doubt that today, Bin Laden would be dead or imprisoned, and the “war” (such as it was) would have been long finished. However, no such victory is in sight, if indeed we define victory as the capture of Bin Laden and the destruction of Al Qaeda. I don’t think anyone can answer with certainty that yes, that is indeed the proper definition of victory. No one today, probably least of all the President, knows what victory means in the context of the War on Terror.

However, the victory over Japan, while not inevitable, was also a clearly defined, achievable goal. If we could destroy the military machine of the Japanese empire, we could win the war. Without the atom bomb, victory might not have happened without the sacrifice of thousands upon thousands more lives, but Japan would eventually have been defeated, if not in 1945 then in 1946 or 1947.

This is perhaps the most important distinction between World War II and the War on Terror, and cuts out the heart of the Bush Administration’s varied defense of the war: we do not know what the end of the War on Terror will look like, or even if it will ever end. Maybe it will be like Ronald Reagan’s “War on Drugs” and just become another slogan. However, with no one able to explain what victory means, how can the President expect Americans to support his war? “Defeat the terrorists” isn’t good enough as a definition of victory—they can’t be defeated in a conventional sense. Terrorists have no military machine to be totally destroyed. Terrorists have no political leaders with whom to exact an unconditional surrender.

I mentioned here previously that as of this month, the War on Terror will have already lasted longer than American involvement in World War II. Strangely, the President failed to mention that fact in his speech yesterday.

As someone with an avid interest in World War II and military subjects generally, I do not conisder myself a pacifist or a military hater. I love reading stories about the life of the average soldier, whether it be in France in 1944, or Baghdad in 2004. However, as a citizen who realizes that every death in a war brings only sorrow and heartache, not freedom, I wish that the President would speak to us honestly about when we can expect an end to this damned war. Without some clear, achievable definition of victory which we can strive for, the American people will not support an ambiguously justified war that seems bound to drag on even longer than Vietnam. Speaking only of Iraq and not the War on Terror, Americans have been given so many conflicting reasons for going to war, and so many conflicting declarations of what victory will mean in Iraq, it’s no wonder that a kind of fatigue has set in. The Bush Administration itself is constantly revising deadlines and criteria for Iraqi success, in other words changing the goal line so that it looks like we’re winning while in fact we might be losing.

If I had five minutes with Mr. Bush, I’d tell him to drop the comparisons to the noble war of the 1940’s. Give us a rationale for a meaningful victory. Tell us what it will look like. Give us hope that it’s achievable.

Maybe he can’t give us that because he doesn’t himself know what victory will look like. Or maybe he is the cold, political monster his opponents make him out to be, playing a guitar while a city sinks into the sea and soldiers bleed into the dust of Iraq. I don’t believe the latter, but when someone seems as divorced from reality as this President, you have to wonder.