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When will the fog clear?
David Warren has a number of thoughts, and Wretchard explicates further.
I agree wholeheartedly.
9/11 only surprised me by magnitude, not by event. I expected a few car bombings, maybe a homicide bombing or two, with the level of violence to ramp up. The fact that we had an enemy was clear from the early 90's, and even before.
But the thing is, that most people that I speak with have no idea about the magnitude of the threat we face.
Most of the left leaning people that I talk to about this aspect of world events have such a different perspective from my own. Initially, after 9/11 most of the chatter regarded the exact nature of the enemy. Who was it that wanted to take us out? I found that most of these folks seemed utterly unwilling to take any kind of definitive stance on who the enemy is. This was, taking into account American cultural values, entirely understandable.
While we all could agree that the whole of the Islamic religion, we could never agree that our enemy may be legitimate and mainstream subset of that group. That is where most people will block off the conversation. Most people are not confortable making these types of distinctions with another culture or religious group. They have been raised not to be comfortable with it. Therefore they never get to the next step.
How big is the problem group? I don't think we have the slightest idea. Nor do I think we will ever know because as Wretchard points out, the distinction between overt and covert supporters is a very fine one. Thus our problem may be huge, or it may not be so bad, but we do need to get on with figuring it out.
However, when having this discussion with some people, you will be frequently accused of being simple minded. This is an interesting charge. What is curious is that many of the world's thorniest problems are that difficult to understand. The Israeli-Palestinian problem, the problems facing South Africa, the Cold War, and the Chinese-Taiwan situation are not hard problems to understand at all.
However, understanding the problem and solving the problems are two entirely different things. I tend to believe some of those problems are insoluble.
Our problems in the GWOT are a real booger. Some of our interests as a nation are in direct contradiction to our interests in the GWOT. Saudi Arabia being a prime example. The Bill of Rights being another. In fact, much of what makes us a great nation creates near fatal flaws in this fight. We have an absolute booger of a problem, and no real solutions. The war in Iraq is not even the end of the beginning.
But the thing is, since most of those on the left are still spinning their wheels trying to get a handle of the nuances of the problem, that they have not begun to contemplate solutions to the problem. This may account for why we hear nothing from that section of the peanut gallery about how we should go about solving the problem.
This would all be fine, but for the fact that our enemies are racing to develop WMD capability. Once Iran gains nuclear capability the stakes of the game change dramatically.
Sooner or later we are going to have to get over this roadblock. Hopefully not under a nuclear mushroom.
posted by pittspilot at 11:24 PM
