June 30, 2006
Quantum Note
It is now official. First Donald Rumsfeld, the
ideologue-in-power of the new American Empire, and then President Bush himself
have declared in so many words that America’s war against “extremist Islam” is a
long-term war with no end in sight. This shift from a “War on Terror” to a “Long
War” was inevitable, given the ambitious plans of the neoconservatives, but what
one did not expect to happen so quickly was official adoption of the plan. In
the end it seems that the delay was perhaps due to the reluctance of the
Pentagon, but Pentagon is now on board as well. General Peter Pace, the chairman
of the US joint chiefs of staff, has officially endorsed the concept of a Long
War and Pentagon’s four-year strategy has been presented to US Congress.
This is reflected in the statements coming out of the three most powerful
offices of the government of the United States’ they are now speaking the same
language: “We are at a critical time in the history of this great country and
find ourselves challenged in ways we did not expect. We face a ruthless enemy
intent on destroying our way of life and an uncertain future.” These or similar
words have been uttered by all three men who represent the office of the
President and the State Department.
This shift in American strategy is ominous. It means an endless war against an
unidentifiable enemy. It means war at several fronts ranging from battlefields
to academies of higher learning, and from internet websites to neighborhood
streets; in fact, just as there is no well-defined enemy, there is no
well-defined battlefield. This is something entirely different from the Cold War
which dominated American policies from 1946 to 1991.
In contrast to the Cold War, the Long War involves military operations in
various parts of the world. It means global mobility of a kind never before
experienced. (Even the President and other high officials are constantly on the
move.) It means rapid strikes, unconventional warfare, operations of the kind
undertaken in Falluja, treatment of prisoners like that of Abu Ghuraib. It means
working with foreign military personnel, interference in the affairs of other
countries, even operations involving kidnapping of suspects from foreign
countries. It also means sustained, long-term presence of American intelligence
and military personnel in many countries.
It involves far more resources as well. (The 2007 US defence spending request is
for $513bn and it is likely to increase.) The Long War also requires numerous
fundamental shifts in the working of various American institutions. For instance
Pentagon wants Congress to grant it and its agencies much expanded permanent
legal authority, so that it does not have to request Congressional permission to
embark on operations like those in Iraq. In contrast to the Cold War, the
mythical enemy of the Long War is not behind any iron curtain and therefore
prone to feeling ephemeral into vacuous mist, while remaining everywhere.
Those who have mapped out strategies for this Long War are men and women
obsessed with one ambition: restructuring of the world to ensure American
hegemony in all parts of the world. They are not calling it the American Empire
but the idea of an empire is not far from their minds. One telling sign is a
direct reference in a Pentagon report submitted to Congress to T. E. Lawrence
(commonly known as Lawrence of Arabia), the legendary British colonel who seized
the Ottoman port city of Aqaba in 1917, ushering in a new era in world politics.
This reference occurs in in favor of adopting a strategy in which US forces are
engaged in irregular warfare around the world. “One historical example that
illustrates both concepts comes from the Arab revolt in 1917 in a distant
theatre of the first world war, when British Colonel TE Lawrence and a group of
lightly armed Bedouin tribesmen seized the Ottoman port city of Aqaba by
attacking from an undefended desert side, rather than confronting the garrison's
coastal artillery by attacking from the sea.”
These differences between the Cold War and the Long War are, however, merely at
the operational level. At the ideological level, the two wars have much in
common. The Cold War was against an ideology deemed dangerous to the way of life
of the Western world. Demonized for so long, the men who constructed the iron
curtain and ruled ruthlessly behind it have been framed as villains without a
chance for redemption.
The Long War has a similar focus: the ideological enemy here is “Islamic
extremism”. But the similarities end there, for whereas communism could be
defined and pinpointed, “Islamic extremism” cannot be defined. Even the writer
and the readers of this “Quantum Note” can be classified as a specimen of that
category. In fact, anyone—from a journalist to a university professor—who happen
to say the wrong thing at the wrong time can be called an enemy, directly or by
association. Those who browse the worldwide web in search of real news and end
up visiting certain sites under surveillance, those with long beards, pagaries,
shimaghs, and hijabs—all are suspect, unless otherwise proven.
The Long War has long arms. It has already coopted almost all major institutions
which make up America: the media, the corporate world, and the judiciary. Only
the Academy remains at an arms length, but those in the Academy who can still
see the great folly in the making, are few and far between. And those who have
eyes to see and intellects to fathom the horror are powerless, helplessly
watching the dissolution of the great American dream.
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