Thursday, August 10, 2006
(11:49 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
The War Against Jihadism
Kevin Drum quotes an article in which Jacob Weisberg expresses worry:The problem for the Democrats is that the anti-Lieberman insurgents go far beyond simply opposing Bush's faulty rationale for the war, his dishonest argumentation for it, and his incompetent execution of it. Many of them appear not to take the wider, global battle against Islamic fanaticism seriously. They see Iraq purely as a symptom of a cynical and politicized right-wing response to Sept. 11, as opposed to a tragic misstep in a bigger conflict. Substantively, this view indicates a fundamental misapprehension of the problem of terrorism. Politically, it points the way to perpetual Democratic defeat.I am among the Democrats he describes. I do not "take the wider, global battle against Islamic fanaticism seriously." The War on Terror is idiotic. We are not in a battle of civilizations. If we think that people like bin Laden pose an existential threat to the Western world or even just to the United States, then we're simply insane. A bunch of two-bit fanatics recording videos of their rants from caves do not pose a major threat to the wealthiest and most powerful country in the history of humanity.
Taking "the wider, global battle against Islamic fanaticism seriously" means succumbing to sheer fantasy. It was precisely "the wider, global battle against Islamic fanaticism seriously" that led the Democrats to trust Bush on this idiotic Iraq thing. It's this supposed necessity for "the wider, global battle against Islamic fanaticism" that has led to curtailed civil liberties and to torture as a matter of policy -- all so that we can jump at word of the made-up plots that we tortured Osama's file clerk into producing. The entire thing is a huge paranoid fantasy, and it's been hugely destructive.
Ideally, we'd have some sort of public figure (other than Chomsky) speaking against the very premise of the War on Terror. None of this idiotic bullshit like from Peter Beinhart claiming that "only liberals can win the War on Terror" -- no, no one can win the "War on Terror." Taking reasonable measures to keep terrorists from carrying out attacks on American soil is completely necessary, but making terrorism the center of our political culture is just fucking insane. Why does no one realize this? Why is it considered "serious" to support an insane and unwinnable global conflict? I do not understand.
