Global war as business as usual
One of the things that bothers me the most about the war on terrorism, especially the war on Iraq as it relates to that effort, is that if it's percieved as successful, the American public will be more likely to accept war as a normal part of being America. In fact it doesn't really have to be effective, it just has to appear to be successful, much like the 'war on drugs'. No coincidence that both of these wars are going after 'evil' I suppose.
The State of the Union address had as one of it's goals, to demonstrate that President Bush is not a man of war, but is instead a man being pushed into war. Well I don't know about 'being pushed into war' but I certainly never really believed that President Bush was a war-loving man. The fact is that there is no one person that sets a country to war, we just happen to have the role of the President, with which to personalize the effort.
If anything I think President Bush has done to little to lead a real debate on the issue, and for that I am very disappointed in his leadership. I understand that the Congress runs the country. I also understand that the Presidency provides a lever with which the people can move the Congress in one direction or another. I also understand that the man who becomes President is beholden to all the folks that put him there.
One of the fundamental things the President should do is to provide a powerful voice to the will of the country in the government. This is something that, despite his (many and terrible) faults, President Clinton did extremely well. As a consequence, during the Clinton administration, the vast majority of the country felt that the federal government was responding to their needs, or when it wasn't, they new someone was trying to get it to be responsive to their needs.
So while the black and white moral clarity has been effective during the first half of the Bush administrations, I think the administration is going to have a hard time being right about everything in the morally complex world we have been reacquainting ourselves with over the last year. The war on Iraq, the "Axis of Evil" speech and the personification of terrorism in the form of Osama Bin Laden, all serve to simplify the morality of our actions. Our effectiveness in all three of these efforts has been hamstrung by an overly aggressive, and patronizing view of global politics.
Now, however, we have a world in which our enemies are more committed to coming after us and seem to be gaining confidence and momentum. Are they motivated to increase their aggression because we've been so vocal about going after them unilaterally? How could they not be?
So where is the long term plan? How do we transition from a stance of 'your are either with us or with the terrorists' to a more tolerant and flexible international policy? Do we even have one? It seems we are to just accept that we will need to be fighting against the 'Forces of Evil' regardless of how the American public or the United Nations feels about it. This seems to be the next challenge for the Bush administration. Our success in derailing terrorism organizations in Iraq, Korea, Pakistan, and of course Afghanistan depends on the coordinated efforts of many countries, not just our own efforts. As we move into these engagements, and there will be more of them, we are going to need the American people and most of our international friends to support us. We simply can't expect the problems will shift back to black and white morality. The only way that things will stay black and white for Americans is if there are some more terrible attacks in America.
Korea is just the beginning of the moral ambiguity of the real threats we will be facing in the next year. I don't have any hope that President Bush can be successful over the next two years if he continues to frame all of international conflict in an 'us vs. them' or 'good vs. evil' context.
This simply can't work. The world will not fit an absolute morality. It's too damn big. What then is our transition plan? Where do we go from here? I think we're about to find out. I hope that we do in a way that's not going to costs a lot of lives, or a lifetime of goodwill from our allies. Let's face it they will never forget either and we don't have a monopoly on national tragedies at the hands of terrorists.
