The Four Basic Strategic Choices

The American Civil War commenced in April 1861 with the bombardment of Fort Sumter. Four years later, in April 1865, Robert E. Lee surrendered his magnificent Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Courthouse.

American participation in World War II began in December 1941, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Less that four years later, in August 1945, the proud Japanese Empire was forced to surrender, unconditionally, at a ceremony aboard the U.S.S. Missouri.

The World Trade Center towers came down on a lovely late summer day in 2001. Today, more than five years later, we are bogged down in a country that never attacked us. Our President keeps blathering about "complete victory." Has he ever given a moment's thought to basic strategy? Did any of us put much thought into it before bombs away? We simple-mindedly rushed off to a silly war in Iraq just to work off a little angst. Now, our nuts are in a vise and its getting quite late in the game. Previous generations, at this point in titanic struggles, had finished mopping up and were building institutions for the coming century.

There are four basic strategic responses to the challenge of Islamic fundamentalism: capitulation, religious war, a principled accommodation, or Victory. A productive discussion of the Victory option requires some discussion of the capitulation option which requires a lengthy rehash of mistakes made in Iraq. So, let's set that aside for awhile.

Religious war is an option distinct from Victory. Religious war means scorched earth. It has always meant scorched earth. Religious zealots, persuaded absolutely of their righteousness and virtue, inhabit a moral universe where the ends justify the means. They can commit the most unspeakable atrocities, convinced that those butcheries are blessed by the Almighty. A smoking, lifeless, radioactive landscape - purged of infidels and secular humanists - is Paradise for Rapture-impaired theocrats. Christian theocrats, if victorious in a modern Crusade against Islamic fundamentalism, would bring us a hellish Heaven on earth indistinguishable from the Caliphate.

A Principled Accommodation, of course, is the most sensible option. In order to be "principled," the accommodation would have to be bloc-negotiated. The second biggest advantage bin Laden has going for him - greater even than idiotic American leadership - is Nationalism. The best way to neutralize this advantage, short of ridding ourselves of the nation-state, would be a negotiated "East is East and West is West" settlement. All of the countries of the Islamic World would have to get together to hammer out a unified negotiating position. All of the Western, historically Christian countries (and Israel) would have to do likewise. Then, the bargaining would commence. The West needs the petroleum, but would prefer to not soak up the excess(politically unstable) population of the Islamic World. That world often faces shortages in food production. The secular modernizers need to import heavy machinery and technology. They would rather not import the cultural garbage - the fashions, the music, the films - of the West. The West could demonstrate good faith by imposing a Jefferson-style export embargo on the cultural garbage. The Islamic World could demonstrate good faith by repatriating its religious fundamentalists. Etc., etc. The negotiating vista is panoramic.

The decision to attack Iraq defied two basic precepts of foreign policy. First - a nation always seeks to keep its enemies balanced against each other. Second - in titanic struggles - the nation must identify its primary enemy. Secondary enemies, willing to fight the primary enemy, must become allies.

Shortly after 9/11, our President identified an Axis of Evil - North Korea, Iran, and Iraq. One - actively, aggressively, and publicly - was working to obtain weapons of mass destruction. The second was, secretly and mendaciously, attempting to do the same. The third had used WMD prematurely, in a domestic dispute, bringing upon itself an internationally monitored inspections regime. Complicating all this is the fact that Iran and Iraq share a long border. Iran has double the population. More than half of Iraq's population are Shi'a Muslims, dominant in Iran. 90% of Iraq's petroleum is extracted from the Shi'a region. Classic balance of power Realpolitik urged s slight tilt in favor of Iraq. The Reagan Administration, recognizing this reality, so tilted. In 1983, during the Christmas season, Donald Rumsfeld showed up in Baghdad with a $500,000,000 goodie bag for Saddam.

Prior to the invasion, the power relationship vis-a-vis Iraq and Iran was fundamentally the same. Iran still had a much larger population. The Shi'a Muslims of Iraq still looked to the ayatollahs of Iran for spiritual guidance. Obviously, the chief beneficiary of the bludgeoning of Saddam's secular Iraq would be the Iranian theocracy.

It also merits noting that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. The President was so informed of this in his daily brief of September 21, 2001. Osama bin Laden, a stateless Sunni fundamentalist, orchestrated 9/11. In 1990, when Saddam invaded Kuwait, Osama begged permission of the Saudi royal family to bring his mujahideen fighters from Afghanistan, certain he could expel Saddam's infidels. The royal family coolly dismissed his offer and called upon the United States to rescue them. Osama went off the deep end when foreign fighters - most of them Christian infidels - took up quarters on sacred Saudi soil.

Saddam and Osama inherit a regional ideological dispute going back to the rebellion of the Young Turks a century ago. It is a bitter, violent feud. Secular modernizers, like Saddam, are natural allies against Osama and the fundamentalist terrorists - our primary enemy (just like Stalin was a natural ally against Hitler, our primary enemy during World War II).

What considerations could possibly negate these fundamentals? The neo-conservatives argued that a functioning democracy in Iraq would transform the entire region into a Jeffersonian utopia (a curious twist of the domino theory of the 1950s). Sounds delicious on the face of it, but when one takes a clear-headed look at the obstacles, it looks more and more like an excursion into the stratosphere of wishful thinking, a recipe for disaster. The execution of such a plan, running counter to the eternal verities of foreign policy, would have to be implemented flawlessly to stand any chance whatsoever. The objects of that plan - the Shi'a, the Sunni, and the Kurds - would have to meekly submit to foreign re-engineering of their society.

Instead, the United States, led by the neo-cons, made mistake after mistake. We acted unilaterally, alienating our friends and energizing our foes. Our leaders dismissed the advice of the multi-agency Iraq Assessment Group, which warned that high troop levels would have to be maintained, postwar, to quell insurgency. Our lack of troops, coupled with the dismissal of Iraq's army and police forces (de-Ba'athification) led to looting, a sure-fire way to alienate the propertied, productive people. (Celebrating that looting as the prerogative of a free people, as our Secretary of Defense did, was an instance of verbal diarrhea polluting the entire war.)

Our leaders ignored insurgency theory, which teaches that a small, localized resistance (like Malaya during the 50s) takes about 9 years to put down. A high-level insurgency will take 30 years to put down. Rather than prepare the American people for this kind of sustained effort, our Leader dressed up in a flight suit and celebrated victory prematurely.

More mistakes followed. De-Ba'athification was a mistake of mythic proportions. Imagine giving 400,000 armed men pink slips on the same day! The mind boggles at the inspired lunacy of such a decision. Restricting reconstruction projects to political contributors eroded bi-partisan (and non-partisan) support for the war. Poor accounting for those projects, resulting in the waste of $8,000,000,000 plus, rewarded the most rapacious people in Iraq, slowing reconstruction to a crawl. Retaining Saddam's torture center at Abu Ghraib was more inspired lunacy.

Neo-Conservative leaders (backed up by the lunatic right wing radio echo chamber) who blended this toxic Kool-Aid, curiously, share a common biography. Few have any direct experience of war, having taken advantage of family connections or the college deferment program to avoid service in Vietnam. Instead, they stayed home muttering bitter imprecations against the liberal media and urging the lily-livered politicians to nuke the gooks. They've been waiting decades to show everyone how real men deal with brown-skinned primitives. But, we drank the Kool-Aid. The gun they held to our heads wasn't loaded.

Now that the neo-cons have faked us out and manipulated us into this brain-dead war, they say we must stay the course - a classic example of failing in order to succeed. If we cut and run, the damage to American prestige would be devastating (especially having given the world the finger in the run-up to the war). Securing Iraq would require at least a quarter of a million troops. The counter-insurgency formula actually calls for more like half a million. Meanwhile, the war is draining the Social Security Trust Fund. The hyper-rich scream bloody murder when anyone suggests they should give back their tax cuts. All of this "support our troops" from the right wing loonies is just verbal diarrhea. So, our leaders sit around hoping for a miracle. They've staked American prestige on a sideshow, a diversion from the War on Terror.

One of the more irrational right wing nuts, Melanie Morgan, actually blurted: "If we don't win in Iraq , we are going to lose America." What funky weed has she been smoking? Capitulation in Iraq does not mean the capitulation of America. Does anyone really believe that bin Laden's murderous fundamentalists purpose to rule America? Why is there so much hyper-ventilating about bin Laden trying to destroy the American way of life. Clearly, his primary aim is to stop the penetration of Western materialism into the Islamic World. He does not seek our unconditional surrender. But capitulation in Iraq would expose us as a paper tiger to the Islamic World. It would be wise to get ahead of this, diplomatically, by proposing a Principled Accommodation. That would mean admitting we have made a colossal mistake. God would smile on such an admission. (Chronicles II, 12:7, "They have humbled themselves, therefore I will not destroy them.")

A Principled Accommodation could be dressed up to look a lot like Victory. But, it's not. To defeat Islamic Fundamentalism, we must face the fact that the system of competing Nation-States is an abject failure. In a world where 2 billion people go to bed hungry every night, $900,000,000,000 is immolated on the funeral pyre of defense spending. This priority of swords over ploughshares - the inevitable priority of the Nation-State - is roundly and systematically condemned throughout the Bible. (Jeremiah 25:31 for instance - "the Lord hath a controversy with the nations...") Worshiping the graven images of nationalism leads to a mass grave. Now is the time to tear up the Charter of the United Nations, just as the United States tore up the Articles of Confederation. Just as the United States empowered itself with a Constitution creating competent central authority, the United Nations must write a Constitution transforming it into an elected, representative, and Sovereign body. Such a body would be able to act legitimately against Terrorism.

George W. Bush is a Diving Instrument. An elected, representative, and Sovereign United Nations cannot emerge until the United States fails. The last six years - with neo-con misadventures in foreign affairs and trillions of dollars of new debt - has speeded up that process a hundredfold.

Let's have no more aimless chatter about a Strategy for Victory. Like the American Civil War, the aims of the War on Terror must elevate beyond national self-preservation. Humanity, especially the hundreds of millions of veiled women in the Islamic World, victims of clitorectomies, must be given "a new birth of freedom." With the United States discredited, only an elected, representative and Sovereign United Nations can serve as the midwife.