The antithesis of war. . .
If you didn’t catch it, Andrew Bacevich had an in the LA Times the other day, good enough to waft away the putrescence of Jonah Goldberg for a while:
Don’t expect to hear this from the White House any time soon, but the global war on terrorism conceived in the wake of 9/11 has effectively ended. As President Bush travels from one military post to the next giving pep talks to soldiers, he manfully sustains the pretense that V-T Day is just around the corner. Yet events have shredded the strategy that his administration was counting on to produce its victory over terrorism.
War requires adherence to principles. Once a conflict becomes an exercise in improvisation, it ceases to be meaningful. It becomes the antithesis of war — killing without political purpose or moral justification.
Going into the Iraq war, the White House at least had theoretical objectives: remaking the middle east into an eden of budding democracies which would be progressive, economically vital, and pro-Western. As Bacevich precisely notes, all pretense to any maintaining these objectives is well past. The Middle East has become less stable and more radicalized, and the only recognizable policy now is trying to keep the disorder and chaos Bush started from exploding on his watch. After he leaves office, the focus will no doubt shift to trying to blame his successor for the mess he or she inherits.
Bacevich also articulates 5 realistic goals for US policy which are, shortly:
* Rather than squandering American power, husband it. . . .
* Align ends with means. . . .
* Let Islam be Islam. The United States possesses neither the capacity nor the wisdom required to liberate the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims, who just might entertain their own ideas about what genuine freedom entails. Islam will eventually accommodate itself to the modern world, but Muslims will have to work out the terms.
* Reinvent containment. . . .
* Exemplify the ideals we profess. Rather than telling others how to live, Americans should devote themselves to repairing their own institutions. Our enfeebled democracy just might offer the place to start.
The massive hubris of the Bush administration has been matched only by its nonpareil incompetence. When an adult is back in charge, the goals Bacevich articulates will be difficult enough to obtain by themselves.