armistice for phony wars?

On Veteran's Day it is perhaps appropriate to take some time to think about all the phony wars we are fighting. A phony war is any conflict that does not involve two opposing armies. Calling such a conflict a war is more than just a misnomer. It is an intentional semantical ploy with very serious consequences. We all remember how the Bush administration used to insist we were fighting a war on terror. This was not a police matter they said, it was a war. Unfortunately, the Obama administration has persisted in this folly.

The war on terror is just the latest incarnation of a long series of phony wars. The war on cancer comes to mind. It is a prime example of a condition where declaring war has led to much waste and ill-directed effort. Like all phony wars -and I am not the only one, or even the first one to point this out- it has not produced results.

Calling something that isn't, war is always counterproductive. It leads to misdirected efforts, unrealistic expectations, and an avoidance of the real problem. Not surprisingly that means we keep turning corners until we go around like a dog chasing its tail.

The "other" popular phony war, the war on drugs is a case in point. It has not solved any problems, has led to prison overcrowding, a lost generation of minority youth, and more crime. America does not have a drug problem, it has a gun problem. But nobody wants to see it. Guns are a sensitive issue in America, like sex. That should tell you something!

The war on terror is a phony war too. You can't fight wars with terrorists. The reason why people resort to terror is often because they want something but they are not capable of mounting an outright war to get it. So they resort to terror.

These days terror is a much abused term. Basically we call anything we don't like terror, and anyone perpetrating it a terrorist. It is a very broad and very unilateral view that is not conducive to a solution. Terror should be redefined to its original meaning: the use of fear to accomplish a goal. Sometimes the goal is real and people strongly believe in it, but at other times the goal is delusional. That is why psychotic individuals often become de facto terrorists.

A terrorist causes physical damage but always far less than a regular army attack would. The greatest damage is psychological. A terrorist chooses his or her targets to inflict damage but also a maximal amount of fear. That is why civilians are often targets. In regular warfare, civilians are not or should not be the primary target -although every war has had many instances of deliberate attacks on civilians and we Americans are certainly no better than anyone else here.

In any case, the true reason for the war in Iraq is control over massive oil reserves. To do so, we destroyed a well established dictatorship that maintained peace and a relative calm over an ethnic and religious fire pit. We are now left with the consequences, i.e. a very bloody civil war that will last for years to come. Maybe Bush believed he could bring freedom and democracy but then again, Bush runs around with a bible too. A little too gullible I am afraid.

It seems clear that the war in Afghanistan is no different. Although it was said to be the hiding place of Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of 9-11, the true reason for the war was to get rid of the fickle and untrustworthy Taliban rulers and to protect gas pipelines to the Caspian Sea. I am not sure we were ever serious about Bin Laden, certainly not serious enough to put boots on the ground. However, we have now dug ourselves into the quagmire of a civil war whose roots are no less deep than the Iraqi civil war. We are also on track to destabilize Pakistan.

All the while we "are fighting the terrorists over there so we won't have to fight them here." That is the mantra at least. If you believe that you may as well believe in Santa Claus and I guess a lot of people do. Because the terrorists (the real ones that is) are here as the Ft Hood massacre shows. Nobody in Afghanistan is a threat to us. Nobody there would stand a chance if they came over here to blow things up. These Afghan war lords would stick out like sore thumb and be arrested before they could board a flight. Leave that level of sophistication to Westernized Arabs from Saudi Arabia.

Does anyone remember 9-11? It wasn't the Afghan Pashtuns that came over here.

It would therefore be good if we, on this day of armistice, declared an armistice on all phony wars. There are better ways to spend our energies and our money.