More than four years after 9/11, what’s the balance sheet
regarding the war on terror, or more precisely, what’s the score on
the Bush Doctrine in relation to the ongoing war between Islamism
and Western civilization?
On the plus side, Syria’s President-for-Life, Bashar al-Assad,
has pulled his troops out of Lebanon, Mad-as-a-Hatter Ghadafi has
pledged to dismantle Libya’s WMD programs, Pakistan’s nuclear
smuggling network has been exposed and dismantled, Palestinians are
voting, Saddam’s on TV in his weirdo jail-underpants, and the
Taliban is out of power in Afghanistan.
On the downside, the insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq
continue (as I’m writing this, the breaking news is that a roadside
bomb in Iraq has killed another five GIs and Taliban insurgents
have decapitated an Afghan headmaster in front of his wife and
eight children because his school was educating girls), Wahhabi
clerics in Saudi Arabia are still telling young Saudis that suicide
bombing is godly behavior, the administration’s failure to
successfully prepare for a post-invasion Iraq has exposed the
limitations and vulnerabilities of the American military, and the
bonehead regimes in North Korea and Iran are developing nukes.
More specifically, Iran’s hardline president Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, soon to be wielding nuke-tipped missiles according to
most intelligence reports, declared in October that Israel should
be “wiped off the map.” More recently, he proclaimed that Israel
should be moved to Europe, or perhaps Canada or Alaska, as opposed
to being reduced to instant ashes.
“If European countries claim that they have killed Jews in World
War II, why don’t they provide the Zionist regime with a piece of
Europe,” Mr. Ahmadinejad told Iranian television. He uses the word
“claim” because he denies that the Nazi holocaust ever happened:
“They have created a myth today that they call the massacre of
Jews.”
Mr. Ahmadinejad’s non-nuclear solution: “If you,” i.e.
Europeans, “committed this big crime, then why should the oppressed
Palestinian nation pay the price? This is our proposal: Give a part
of your own land in Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska to
them so that the Jews can establish their country.”
None of this craziness, of course, was supposed to be now
happening. The Bush administration’s war planners thought the
so-called “Shock and Awe” invasion of Iraq, preceded by an easy
knockout punch to the Taliban, would persuade the world’s jihadists
to turn in their beheading knives and create a Massachusetts-style
democracy, sort of like the Japanese after Hiroshima.
Harlan Ullman, one of the authors of the Shock and Awe concept,
explained the strategy to CBS correspondent David Martin. “You have
this simultaneous effect, rather like the nuclear weapons at
Hiroshima, not taking days or weeks but in minutes,” he said,
referring to how a gigantic barrage of precision guided weapons can
destroy an enemy’s will to fight. “You’re sitting in Baghdad and
all of a sudden you’re the general and 30 of your division
headquarters have been wiped out. You also take the city down. By
that I mean you get rid of their power, water. In two, three, four,
five days they are physically, emotionally and psychologically
exhausted.”
We could order a pizza, in other words, and turn on the TV and
watch the fireworks over Baghdad, watch how high-tech weaponry in
the hands of the good guys can be a joy to see, not unlike the fun
of zapping wackos in a fast-action video game.
Unfortunately, Shock and Awe was mostly hot air, as was obvious
on TV the next morning. Instead of Hiroshima and peace, there was
regular morning traffic, people were driving around to pick up
their pita bread, and there was nothing much to stop the Baathists
from getting together to plan an insurgency.
And so, at this point, it’s unclear how the story ends. We could
lose it there, or lose it at home, or win. What’s clear is that our
top planners are about as efficient in war strategy as they are in
cleaning up the bribes in government or fixing Social Security.
