Our War With No End

This War on Terror.  How does it end?  Does anybody know?  Where does it stop?  When will we see the headlines, “War Over!  Terrorists Surrender!”?  Have we noticed that there is no land to occupy, no flag to take, no dictator to eliminate to end this war?  Do we realize we have given one person the power to cross any border, to fire missiles or bombs, even send in special forces, American boots, into any country that person deems a threat.  With no need to go through Congress each time any more.  Congress didn’t declare war on Pakistan, no Congressional declaration needed against Yemen, against Libya, against Syria.  Are we at war with them?  Does anybody know?  Did I miss a “day of infamy” speech or two?  We the people have appointed the United States as the world’s judge, jury, and executioner.  Is this what “might makes right” looks like?  Is this our global “manifest destiny”?

Isn’t that what King George III believed?  Only one has the wisdom to decide?  No international forum.  No coalition needed.  That one person can hold so much power?

We have ceded all that power to the hands of one person, until the terrorists are gone.  Until the War on Terror is over.  Have we tried to imagine what that looks like?  How and when can we say we’ve beaten the terrorists?  When will there be no terrorists and we can get back to normal, where only Congress has the power to declare war?

I’ll tell you when, never.  Because we have declared war on an intangible, on a concept, on a cause.  So there will always be targets to strike.  They have terrorists in Yemen, in Syria, Pakistan and Libya.  They have terrorists in Indonesia, in Egypt and Turkey.  There’s terrorists in France, Norway and Mexico.

This is an endless war.  This is a border-less war.  Our President now with permanent war powers, with arbitrary targets and objectives.  What does the Syrian Air Force have to do with the threat of terrorism here?  What qualifies someone as a terrorist anyway?  Targeting civilians, certainly.  But with our might, the numbers of “collateral damage” are higher by far.  We don’t mean to, we even sacrifice our lives to avoid it, but two thousand pound bombs don’t care and munitions don’t always go where they’re supposed to.  And when we launch so many, the numbers really add up.  “Intent” becomes irrelevant if we “accidentally kill” twenty thousand along the way.  The word “terror” itself is arbitrary, intangible.  How do you go to war against it?  Most importantly, how does it end?

We know war evolves.  Actually, much quicker than mankind.  And we have to adapt to changing conditions, of that there is no doubt.  This is a new type of enemy, elusive, rarely visible, and yes, very dangerous.  They indeed would use weapons of mass destruction if acquired.  But we need perspective.  This enemy will never overrun our borders, they can never enslave our people.  This is an enemy that can never “win”.  We ourselves kill more Americans with cars and guns in a month than they have in twenty years.  We spend more of our national treasure, lose more of our national esteem, give up more of our Constitution against this enemy than they ever merit.  Maybe this is how they destroy America.  This, how they take away our Independence and our Freedom.  They allow us to display our arrogance to the world.  They allow us to show our unbridled self-righteousness, allow us to show that we think we are the world rulers.  They let us show the world our disregard for international law, with no respect for the Geneva Convention, no regard for sovereign countries, no regard for our own base Constitution, our own laws.  That we can indeed, just make them up along the way.  That we will abandon our very Founding Principle if we are frightened, thus, abandon you in the trenches.  They can show the world the referee is corrupt and not to be trusted.  The game truly rigged.  The Imams can say, “See, I told you.  They think they’re God.  They believe they are the ultimate power, the world’s judge, jury and executioner.”

This, the very thing our country was created to fight.  The irony, blatant.  The destination more frightening than the journey.  Where does this end?  What is our goal?  When does the sailor get to kiss the girl?  When does the ticker-tape parade begin?  Can we achieve this peace from the end of a gun barrel or the tip of a cruise missile?  How many do we have to kill to prove our righteousness this time?

War has evolved.  Mankind, not so much.  Fear, our baseline once again.  Foundational Rights, our “collateral damage”.  This war with no end.  This intangible enemy we try to fight with hardware and steel.  War has evolved.  Stone lost against better stones, horsemen lost against better horsemanship, tanks fought tanks, jungle fighting fought jungle fighting.  Oil rig firefighters know, you can only defeat big fires with a stronger fire.  Likewise, you can only fight intangibles with stronger intangibles.  War has evolved.  So must we.  This intangible, border-less enemy can only be defeated by our bigger intangible, our stronger cause, and here on Earth, you can’t get any bigger than “all”, “created equal” and our holding to this as “unalienable”.  This enemy can only be defeated by our ideals, by the steadfast adherence to principle.  By the bravery, the sacrifice, the moral high ground held resolutely.  This enemy can only be defeated by our evolved “shot heard ‘round the world”.  This, the only way to win this war.  This, the only way to end this endless war.

Our Founding Fathers gave us this cause, this ultimate intangible weapon, to fight these terrorists, to win against the enemies of peace.  This cause, much stronger than nuts and bolts.  This American strength on a much bigger scale than mere elemental or chemical reactions.

This, in our modern age, with our evolution of war, is the only way to occupy land, is the only way to take a flag, the only way to eliminate a dictator.  This, the only way to fight this war.  The only way we will ever end this war.

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