Happy 9/12

It's pretty rare that I write a detailed political entry, but what the hell, it's 9/11, let's live a little. There have been twenty suicide terrorism campaigns waged against democratic states by non-state actors. In each, the terrorists perceived the democracy as having invaded, conquered or occupied their homeland and had the specific political goal of forcing the democracy's government, armies and sometimes civilians (i.e. Israeli settlers) out. In each, the government responded by sending in more troops and attempting to exert more control. 15 have ended with concessions by the democracy, four (Palestinian Intifada II, Al-Qaeda vs. The Western World, Iraqi insurgency, Tamil Tigers) are still ongoing, and only one has concluded successfully for the democracy (Turkey vs. the PKK, in which Turkey captured the leader of the PKK and "convinced" him to tell his followers to stop). Everyone knows this. The 87.4 billion dollar question is "How do we win?" The better question to ask is: "How do they win?" How do they win? How do they, who can only cause a tiny fraction of the casualties to us that we can to them, who can only prick our economy, while we can anihillate theirs, who can infiltrate small groups of unarmed men into our homeland while we can place 150,000 soldiers in theirs, manage to defeat us? They know that it is militarily impossible, so they must rely on Terror, with a capital T. They must convince us not that our goal is impossible, but that it is not worth the cost of achieving it. Take, for instance, the people of Spain, who decided that 131 dead in Madrid and the risk of hundreds more was not worth the goal of rebuilding Iraq. Or the more obstinate Israelis, who for 38 years clung to the Gaza Strip, only to decide it wasn't worth blood in the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. It does not matter whether Spain should have been in Iraq or Israel should have been in Gaza. What matters is that suicide terrorists convinced them to leave. There is an equation to wars. Will to fight= (Military/Political Goals*Probability of Achieving Goals)-(Costs*probability of costs). If the enemy's will to fight < st="on">New OrleansNew Orleans, we did to every major German and Japanese city with fire. Then we did it again. But we discovered something in Vietnam. Costs alone (Aerial bombardment) without being backed up by blocking the enemy's goals (successful ground operations) fails. So for the past 25 years, American foreign policy has focused on blocking the enemy's goals. This is why, in 1991, we destroyed Saddam's ability to wage war in Kuwait, rather than leveling Baghdad and demanding he leave. If raising the costs to an enemy doesn't work, we figured, threatening them with costs will be even more useless, it could never work. The Terrorists made it work. By scaring the bejeezus out of us, they make it work. How do they do it? Even when we leveled Germany's cities, they fought to Berlin. Japan wouldn't surrender until nuclear weapons and Stalin's entrance into the war made it clear that there would be no American invasion force, blocking the Japanese goal of bleeding the Americans until they stopped. Vietnam beat us back. But with less dead in Iraq than a week's or two of fighting in The Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea or Vietnam, the New York Times has proclaimed the war in Iraq lost. We have a military built to fight armies and governments. As of this moment, we are the best in the world at this. The terrorists have learned how to fight and destroy hearts and minds. As of this moment, they are the best in the world at this. They are masters of the media. Every cover story the New York Times runs on the Gaza pullout is a hearty note of congratulations and encouragement to Hamas. "Yes! You have won! By your determination and bloodshed, you have forced the more powerful Israelis to leave! You have brought worldwide attention to your cause! You can do it again, in the West Bank, in Iraq, anywhere you like!" So how do we win? We don't. We can, as the New York Times suggests, (and I know I'm picking on the Times, but that's only because it's what I read the most of) concede our goals, pull out and let them all start fighting each other instead of us. Or we can become an Orwellian society, in which ignorance is victory. The media will be required to only tell us about the cool new technology we're using to fight terrorists, like they did in their patriotic fervor of 2002 and 2003. Either way, we lose. Happy 9/12. I'd like to credit Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago, leader of the University of Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism and author of the books "Dying to Win" and "Bombing to Win" (once you have a good title, you stick with it I guess) for having thought up most of this stuff, and teaching it to me, and probably saying it better than I. Stop reading now and just go get his book on amazon.com instead. Go.

-Sam