"The Calling of Our Generation"
Full disclosure: I did not watch Bush's speech tonight. I do not like Bush. I do not trust Bush. And there was a football game on TV.
There's a fundamental flaw in his reasoning--another fundamental flaw that derives from his insistence that we are in a war on terrorism. With the notion of war goes the idea that wars end only with victory or defeat. Historically, nations have been pretty sure what victory would look like. In this case, though, no one has any idea of what victory in the war on terrorism would look like, and Bush refuses to tell us. He only talks about defeat--if we withdraw from the middle east, the terrorists will follow us here. Actually, that's probably not true. If we were not bringing what they regard as a decadent infidel culture to their part of the world, it's unlikely that they would be much concerned with us. Perhaps they'd take over the middle east, which would then fold like a cheap suit because Islamic fundamentalist nations are too concerned with purity to survive economically. Oil wouldn't save them.
The colonists knew what victory in the Revolution would look like: Some thought it would be the restoration of royal authority, and others thought it would be establishment of independence. In the War of 1812, Americans knew that victory would be achieved when the British were forcibly ejected from the United States and stopped impressment of Americans on the high seas. You can go through every American war and see that people knew at the beginning what the objectives were. That has not been the case in this so-called war. We have sought to impose democracy in areas where people do not consider its establishment a high priority and may not want it at all. We have sought to punish nations that might have given aid and comfort to people who probably (not definitely) participated in the attacks of September 11, 2002. We have deposed the leader of a sovereign nation. We've done these things, but we still don't know where they're headed--what victory will look like.
Bush does not grasp any of this; perhaps it is a consequence of his lack of intellectual curiosity that he can, apparently, define victory as "punishing the evildoers," a non-specific phrase that ultimately tells us nothing. And if he can't tell us what victory looks like, we don't know what we're fighting for. And if we don't know what we're fighting for, we shouldn't be fighting at all.
Still, Bushie says "trust me," and some Americans are sufficiently stupid to go along with him.
There's a fundamental flaw in his reasoning--another fundamental flaw that derives from his insistence that we are in a war on terrorism. With the notion of war goes the idea that wars end only with victory or defeat. Historically, nations have been pretty sure what victory would look like. In this case, though, no one has any idea of what victory in the war on terrorism would look like, and Bush refuses to tell us. He only talks about defeat--if we withdraw from the middle east, the terrorists will follow us here. Actually, that's probably not true. If we were not bringing what they regard as a decadent infidel culture to their part of the world, it's unlikely that they would be much concerned with us. Perhaps they'd take over the middle east, which would then fold like a cheap suit because Islamic fundamentalist nations are too concerned with purity to survive economically. Oil wouldn't save them.
The colonists knew what victory in the Revolution would look like: Some thought it would be the restoration of royal authority, and others thought it would be establishment of independence. In the War of 1812, Americans knew that victory would be achieved when the British were forcibly ejected from the United States and stopped impressment of Americans on the high seas. You can go through every American war and see that people knew at the beginning what the objectives were. That has not been the case in this so-called war. We have sought to impose democracy in areas where people do not consider its establishment a high priority and may not want it at all. We have sought to punish nations that might have given aid and comfort to people who probably (not definitely) participated in the attacks of September 11, 2002. We have deposed the leader of a sovereign nation. We've done these things, but we still don't know where they're headed--what victory will look like.
Bush does not grasp any of this; perhaps it is a consequence of his lack of intellectual curiosity that he can, apparently, define victory as "punishing the evildoers," a non-specific phrase that ultimately tells us nothing. And if he can't tell us what victory looks like, we don't know what we're fighting for. And if we don't know what we're fighting for, we shouldn't be fighting at all.
Still, Bushie says "trust me," and some Americans are sufficiently stupid to go along with him.
posted by amsterdr at 6:39 PM
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