Bane writes back: That you can question the fact that we are in a state of war continually causes me to be amazed. You are either a bound servant to semantics, or you are teasing us to make an as yet unrevealed point. I refuse to believe you are just stupid.
I don’t deny that a war is being fought against us. It has been since at least 1983. But I deny that we, as a country, are in a state of war. We’re not. The average American is practically unconscious of it, and is being encouraged to stay that way, foolishly, by the administration, which is fighting a minimalist action, most likely in an attempt to win a gradual war of attrition at a minimal cost. Perhaps the strategy will work, but I don’t believe so. And if I were not a bound servant to the semantics of the Bible and, to a lesser extent, the Constitution, I would be just another globalist elitist using the glorious prospective ends to excuse the current means.
I thought that an invasion of Iraq would be only a first stepping stone from the very beginning, as soon as September 28, 2001, as a matter of fact. I was surprised when we started with Afghanistan instead. I didn’t like this sleight-of-hand – mostly because I believe that this sort of devious pragmatic manipulation tends to backfire in the long run – but I accepted it and even wrote a column later theorizing that Iraq would serve as the jumping off point to destabilize and topple the pro-jihad regimes nearby. However, as that looks increasingly unlikely to be the plan, I’m starting to suspect that Clouseau-not-Clausewitz, may indeed be the case. Even the magnet strategy of dilly, dilly, come and be killed would have been much better executed in a neighboring country.
A clean sweep of regimes followed by an immediate withdrawal, allowing internecine struggle to keep the jihad splintered and busy would have been a much more effective and less costly option than the nation-building plan, which I simply do not believe will work. Indeed, Palestinians are deeply concerned that this strategy lies behind Sharon’s move to withdraw the settlements. I don’t pretend to be a military expert, but then, history shows that military experts are not immune to making miscalculations that lead to stupid decisions.