That's when it happened. Someone said, "I can't believe it will be nine years this week since 9/11". And one by one we began to remember where we were, what we were doing, how it felt. It was this generation's "Where were you when they shot JFK?" moment and for a brief shining moment the shared memory pulled us back from the brink and made us one again.In retrospect, 9/11 divides my life more clearly and cleanly than when I married or when my child was born. Before, I was committed to a life that was organized around the pursuit of knowledge. After, I was a man of war. I remember the day well, unlike the other momentous days: the hours spent watching the towers fall I recall far better than the hours in the delivery room, helping with a difficult birth. Though it was a dry wedding due to it being Sunday in rural Georgia, I barely remember my wedding day at all.
But like everything that seems impossibly perfect, that moment wasn't meant to last.
I don't object. I have the sense that I was sent, to live in this hour and place for a reason I'm not given to wholly understand. So be it.
Sounds like we are going to war again, against a foe not so very terrible. I think we can take them. The hard part won't be defeating them, or breaking their armies; the armies of the region are fragile, structurally, when on defense. The hard part will be not beating them until we've developed something better, and organic to the region, to step in and take our enemy's place.
Because it's organic, we can't make it happen faster than it naturally happens. That means we can't win this war by pushing too fast. We can break and destroy the enemy as fast as we wish, but we must be patient, to let the enemy develop its own opposition so we can nurture it. This is war as gardening.
Why doesn't that bother me? Shouldn't we rush to destroy the enemy and restore peace as fast as possible, especially given the brutality of the foe?
Perhaps it is because this is what works, and -- finally -- I believe that the rules of the world are not our fault. Things are as they are not because I wish it that way, but because that's how it is. We play the game that was put in front of us.
Could we refuse? Should we? Those are harder questions, really at the juncture of why someone might elect to be a Christian and not a Hindu or -- more radically -- a Buddhist. You have that choice. It is important to think about what is entailed in making that decision.
I am going to Jerusalem in December. The old tradition held that it is the center of the world. Perhaps it is the place for clarity.
We shall see.
12 comments:
We did not open the gates of Hell, but if we want them to close, we will have work to do.
Valerie
The hard part won't be defeating them.... The hard part will be not beating them until we've developed something better....
People are dying now, evil is being done now. They need to be destroyed now. It would be nice if we had a replacement in place first, but it's sufficient to work on that while we destroy the present evil.
Better is the enemy of good enough, and if we wait on a right follow-on, we'll not get the immediate task even started, much less finished.
Shouldn't we rush to destroy the enemy and restore peace...?
Those are two different tasks, each with its own time.
The longer we let evil grow, the harder it becomes to destroy. Our failing is not that we usually don't have a replacement ready, it's that we don't start to develop one until after.
Also: notice the difference in verb choice. You're using "defeat," "beat," "destroy" as though they're interchangeable. They're not. I'm not interested in beating them; I'm interested in destroying them.
Eric Hines
Grim, you think Islam's forces can be defeated while the Left is behind us handling the logistics?
Eric,
People are dying now, evil is being done now. They need to be destroyed now.
That's certainly within our power, if we are prepared to devote the forces to it. I don't think that we are; and I'm not sure it would be wise in any case. The people I want running that part of the world are not the United States Marines, more than enough of whom have died for that stretch of desert as it is.
I also don't want Iran running the show, for a host of reasons.
The ISIS propaganda talks sometimes about the members of the Awakening, whom they do not like. Those are the ones who should destroy ISIS, but they aren't ready yet. One thing they need to know is that doing it doesn't mean going right back under the heel of a government in Baghdad that will seek to use its laws to oppress and murder them. The administration thinks there is some hope of a unity government in Baghdad winning their trust, but I doubt that is the case.
Still, they're going to want to try, and that will take time -- either to work, or for them to give up on it. Until the Sunnis have some idea of an end game that looks better than ISIS -- or until ISIS murders enough of them that they get fed up -- we won't see the full Awakening movement necessary to replace ISIS.
What we can do, and now I mean we as individuals, is what we are doing. There's been some real progress made this week behind the scenes.
Ymar,
No, I don't think that "Islam's forces" can be defeated -- in part because no one is thinking about trying to do that, and in part because "Islam" doesn't have any forces per se. Almost all the combatants on all sides of this conflict are Muslims, fighting against each other.
Then let's be specific. Do you think AQ in Libya, Syria, and ISIL in Levant can be defeated or pruned back so long as the Left is controlling logistics in America?
Yes. For one thing, I don't think "the Left" is monolithic any more than Islam is, nor do I think of the American Left in the same terms you do. For another, America -- though very important -- is not the whole world. Much of the fighting will be done by those in the region, with interests of their own.
Logistics are important, though. I'm heaving we'll need around 14,000 servicemembers just to support and conduct the air campaign. That's a much larger commitment than, say, John Kerry is talking about.
That's a much larger commitment than, say, John Kerry is talking about.
I'm not sure Kerry is talking about the air campaign, per se, so much as he's talking about an FBI facility as the lead agency in his counter-terror campaign. Or maybe he's babbling about not our boots on the ground. Never mind that the WH now is on about no, it's a war--it's just a special kind of war.
And I agree with you--as long as we (a very generic we--it is the Arabs' fight as much as it is ours) have identified the enemy with a measure of specificity, that enemy can be destroyed.
Eric Hines
For another, America -- though very important -- is not the whole world. Much of the fighting will be done by those in the region, with interests of their own.
And America, historically, has allied with Leftist factions to crush those domestic factions that looked like they were successfully Westernizing. South Africa. Rhodesia. They even tried to install dictators in Latin America, when the locals didn't want them or American intervention.
Those you think are going to fight ISIL, Grim, are going to be executed first, by the Americans. And if not by American power, then by ISIL, which American power created and funded.
This isn't a 1v1 here, it's more like a free for all.
Maybe, Ymar. But I know some of them by name, because I was there before. I've sat on some of their couches, drank their coffee. I've stripped off my armor in their homes, to show them I wasn't afraid.
You'll have to trust me.
It is not your Will or their cultural matrix or warrior skills I question or de-trust. English needs a word for that concept, which it doesn't.
A society or hierarchy like the United States follows a certain strict chain of command for where power goes and influence plays. This is not going to be changed by people's opinion or desires or their cultural status. If the Mad King decides to go to war and burn down the Empire, that's what is going to happen. Isn't anybody going to be able to stop them, because even if they do, the Empire is still doomed.
That's going to leave the Barbarians in the ME and elsewhere to fend for themselves, at best, but until then they are going to be fighting the local powers and the superpowers, at once.
I was recently reading the early American colonial fixation on Columbia. A strong emphasis on a prior fallen imperial civilization, via adopting all these Latin European esque customs. The Senate came from that as well. Columbia, ironically, is now used to name the drug lord havens. That was probably an omen of the future, now the present.
Clarification: Disbelieve and distrust aren't it. It's belief in the opposite, not merely a lack of belief or feeling. But the opposite isn't it either, because that is mutual contradiction. So it must be said in a sentence or paragraph, even though it needs its own word.
Quantity has a quality all on its own is close, but not it. It is not a word but a phrase, and talking about something quite else.
When two sword fighters engage, if they are of equal skill, mutual death is expected. Aiuchi, something of that spelling. They die not because of a deficiency in skill or power or whatever people want to call it, but precisely because they are matched. But the situation in the world and in America is not "matched". There is a puppet master, whatever people call it, that is moving the pieces around so that people die, even if they are not weak. And it's because it's a different issue than direct power.
That is why I can believe in the things you believe in Grim, concerning them or what not, yet I believe the conclusion is the opposite or obverse of what you believe it to be. Because there are other factors at play than people wish to recognize. And that changes things to unknown unknowns.
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