Isaac Bonewits has renamed his blog --it's now Cyberhenge, which is a good name for a Druid's blog. [6/12/06 Correction: As Mr. Bonewits notes in comments, I goofed. He hasn't yet changed the name of his blog, but is considering doing so. I regret the error.]
What he wrote this week is so "spot on" as our friends across the pond like to say, that I think it's worth reprinting in its entirety. I'll only add that it's awfully ironic watching America be unable to figure out that you can't defeat an insurgency. We were an insurgency at one time. We defeated the British in a manner not completely unlike that being used by the insurgents in Iraq. You'd think we'd remember. And now, Pappa Isaac:
Hooray! They cut off a few more of the Hydra’s heads!
Ooops! Doesn’t that just wind up making matters worse? Today’s blathering about the killing of Al-Zarqawi in Iraq provided yet more evidence (as if any were needed) that the White House and the Pentagon just don’t understand insurgencies.
Don’t misunderestimate me; I’m glad the son of a bitch is dead along with his so-called spiritual leader. But calling this yet another “turning point” in the war against Iraq seems like complete nonsense to me. Sure, we successfully murdered (that’s what war is) one man and several of his associates (along with an undisclosed number of women and children nearby). By next week there will be two dozen devout fanatics ready to take their places and continue the jihad.
The Pentagon always fantasizes that it can defeat insurgencies with just a few more men and a few billion dollars more of fancy high-tech killing machines. That’s what macho personalities need to believe in order to do their job. History shows them, over and over, that revolutionaries, guerillas, and insurgents fighting from behind cover and using “sneaky, dirty, and ungentlemanly” methods can always defeat guys wandering around their turf in recognizable uniforms.
This Administration’s ability, however, to avoid perceiving “inconvenient truths” (to coin a phrase) has become truly monumental over the last five years. So, as my little part to help out, I’d like to list a few for the examination of those people in our government and military who actually want to win the multiple wars we’re now bogged-down in:
It’s the oil, stupid. Plans to invade Iraq were being made in the late 1990s. Permanent military bases are being built there now so America can (1) control the oil supply and (2) launch invasions into Iran and other nearby oil sources. Revenge for his daddy was just a nice perk for the President. “Promoting democracy” was just a nice sounding excuse. Denying that this is a resource war prevents clear and effective strategy by the imperial forces.
Iraq is another artificial country created by western empires and held together by a dictator we helped put into power (as with the Shah in Iran, as with several other nations). America took out the kingpin without providing another ruthless dictator to replace him. Of course the country’s going to fall apart—the Shias, Sunnis, and Kurds have been hating, raping, torturing, and slaughtering one another for centuries. They aren’t going to stop until everyone they can kill is actually dead. Then the victors will look for someone else to murder. This is the nature of tribal societies, especially when they have dualist religions/ideologies.
Weirdly enough, Al-Zarqawi actually did the American forces in Iraq a major favor: he got Iraqis back to killing each other, just when they were on the verge of uniting against the invading crusaders. As horrible as the results have been for Iraqi civilians, this tactic of promoting a three-way civil war has probably saved a number of American lives.
The so-called “war against terror” is impossible to win and always will be. Terror is a tactic, not an enemy, one that America has used ruthlessly in previous wars. Anyone in the world who wants to strike against a powerful enemy now has the knowledge and the material to blow up innocent victims by the thousands (or millions). This genie is not going back into the bottle.
While the Administration has been religious (so to speak) about denying that the current war against terror is actually against Islam, what it hasn’t said is that it’s in large part a war against fundamentalists with weapons. That’s a meme they don’t want spread, because it then becomes easy to figure out that the unspoken enemies at home, the ones fueling the hate and goading the Administration to “bring on” Armegeddon, are our own fundamentalists, the Christian ones. In this game of Crusaders vs. Jihadists, all the sane people in the world are the losers.
It’s time to start saying it out loud: fundamentalists are crazy. Anyone who believes their scriptures literally is insane. People who are mad should not be running governments, here or anywhere else. They certainly can’t be expected to make clear military decisions about strategy, tactics, or logistics. In the end, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic fundamentalists have more in common with each other in their hatred for and fear of pluralist, open, and liberal societies than they have separating them from one another. Fundamentalisms are ideas; really sick and dysfunctional ones. You can’t kill ideas with guns or bombs, all you can do that way is make more martyrs. Didn’t the Roman Empire make this same mistake with the early Christians?
Terrorism will only begin to end when wealthy nations and multinational corporations stop giving poor peoples and nations good reasons to hate them. That isn’t going to happen anytime soon. If, as, and when it does, the world will still have to wait until people whose grandparents were abused/raped/murdered by identifiable enemies have grown old and died. So Americans and other westerners will have to decide over the next few decades whether they are willing to give up having totally unrestrained capitalism or would prefer to change their democracies into police states.
We know how Bush and the Republicans have decided this last question. It’s the one damned elephant in the livingroom they have noticed: the only way to protect people from terrorism without inconveniencing the wealthy is to persuade the general public to give up every personal freedom they have. When everyone in the country is being tracked by GPS and filmed 24/7, then it will be hard to smuggle bombs into public places. Of course, the terrorists will just get cleverer. Hatred and fanaticism are great spurs to sneakiness.
Is there any way out of this mess? Possibly, but before we can find solutions, we’re going to have to stop being major parts of the problems. We can start November 7th, by putting sane people into power in Congress and removing the madmen in charge from the White House. Before, during, and after those events, we need to spread anti-fundie memes and strip the Religious Reich and their Islamo-Fascist counterparts of their auras of spirituality. Tolerating bigots isn’t sane or liberal. It’s suicidal.
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