The "war on terror"

Written ten months ago, this article looks at the game plan for our war on terror. One question people ask is, how will we know when we've won this war?

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Nobody ever knows what the peace will look like. At Fort Sumter, who could have predicted the KKK, Jim Crow, or Radical Reconstruction? <snip> When peace comes, it could look like whatever Mecca, Tehran, Damascus, Riyadh, Pyongyang, Cairo, etc., look like after nuclear strikes. Or it could end with the entire Arab and Muslim world looking like the really well-manicured bits of Connecticut. It could even end with a terror strike on America so awful that we sue for peace – not that we'd get it.

Part of the problem is, we're not just fighting Osama bin Laden, or even the whole Taliban. We're not fighting Saddam Hussein (nor is he a "distraction" from fighting Osama, since we've already established the fight isn't only with Osama).

Our enemy isn't a nation. It isn't a leader. It isn't, despite the misnomer "War on Terror," a war on terror. We're fighting an ideology.

The immediate objection is, "you can't fight an idea with bullets." The author of this piece sidesteps this objection, but it's valid as far as it goes. You don't fight an idea with bullets – you fight it with ideas. Bullets buy you the breathing room needed for your ideas to make themselves felt. The pen is mightier than the sword, but you still need time to write.

With all that in mind, I've identified three keys to winning this war: 1. Take the initiative. 2. Fight when we have to, even if we can't win. 3. Remain what we are.

In particular, and as applied to the current battle, we have:

If 9/11 taught us anything, it's that we must be proactive and remain so for the foreseeable future. Being proactive means taking the fight to the enemy, before he can take the fight to us. <snip> Taking the initiative is why – despite all the WMD talk – we invaded Iraq. Iraq is directly linked to what is wrong with the Arab world, and unless the Arab world is fixed – either by setting up decent governments (I hope), or by nuclear castration (my nightmare) – then we remain at risk.

The last point, remaining who we are, is a huge point:

You don't defeat the enemy by becoming him. We didn't beat the Soviets by establishing our own Five Year Plans, and we won't beat the children of oppression by becoming oppressors.

This is a war of ideas. It is a war of human freedom and individual liberty against fascism. It is a conflict between those who trust the individual to run his own life and those who would impose "the one true way" on all of society. The World Trade Center represented more than just American power – it represented capitalism. Capitalism is the notion that people own their own lives, and have the right to make their own decisions. In a free market, two people make a deal because each believes he's coming out better in the end, and not because a dictator tells him he has to make that deal, or else.

In order for our ideas to win, they must stay in place. In the end, it is as much a loss if we tear down our own freedoms as if an enemy tears them down for us.