History Lessons

We will never win the war on terror. Everyone knows this, including the warmongering neo-cons in the White House. We won't win the war because it is not a war in the classical sense. It is not army pitted against army battling for sovereignty. It is a guerrilla war of ideology being fought as a conventional war of supremacy.

Every generation considers itself smarter and more advanced than the generation before. The arrogance of each progression explodes exponentially. This hubris is what has lead our current leaders to make the same mistakes civilization has made before. Cliches are cliches because they hold a modicum of truth but we tend to ignore such golden maxims as "hindsight is 20/20" and "those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." There are insanely valid reasons why this war is compared to Vietnam. We cannot see a finish line not because there is too much blinding ticker-tape, we cannot see it because we are running the wrong race.

The number of lessons to learn from are staggering. The most glaring should be our very own Revolution. The Reader's Digest version: Americans waged a successful guerrilla war against a conventional army unwilling to modify it's fighting tactics. The attacks of 9/11 changed the face of modern warfare, in terms of tactics, just as the introduction of mustard gas and mechanized weaponry changed the nature of conflict during the First World War.

Al-Queda does not have a standing army but stands as the single greatest enemy of the United States. In response we pump billions of dollars into a missile defense system to defend Western Europe from attacks from Russia and China? This makes as much sense as moving all of our armies to the Canadian border were we to be attacked by Mexico. If anything this senseless build up has done nothing but provocate nations that currently pose no threat to global peace. Russia is undergoing an economic renaissance due to oil exploration and production. China is working to mend its image world-wide while building up one of the strongest economies of the 21st century. To what purpose would these emerging economic markets threaten their prosperity by aggression against Europe or the United States?

It is a by-product of Cold War thinking. Because we face an ideology rather than a nation as an enemy we turn to more comfortable and familiar posturing; we aim missiles and puff our chests.

And we give the world another reason to call us "bully."

Lessons of the past. We were accused by the global community of building an empire after our dominance in the Spanish-American War. We seized territories around the world and intended to keep them in our ever-lasting lust for expansion. The isolationism that followed during the Wilson years repaired our tyrannical image. Our magnanimity following the Second World War in the form of the Marshall Plan cemented our reputation as "knights in shining armor." After earning disdain for our face-saving reluctance to excise ourselves from Vietnam our place in the world remained tenuous. Ironically it was George HW Bush who repaired our profile by following his UN mandate to the letter when liberating Kuwait from the Iraqi incursion. He did not use it as a prelude to further aggression and America was seen once again as the peace-maker of the globe.

It is now the norm to claim to be Canadian while travelling abroad.

How far we've fallen while trying to "do the right thing." While it was justified to retaliate after the attacks on the World Trade Center, we did so in the fashion of nation against nation. And we haven't adjusted that mind-set thus far. We are fighting against an enemy that doesn't adhere to the same rules or principles of warfare that we do.

So like a young child who cannot successfully complete a level of play on a videogame, we yank the game and put in another, ignoring the fact that the old game will remain active and incomplete until we decide to face it again and go at it from a different angle.

Afghanistan to Iraq to ....

Barack Obama has been roundly criticized for proffering a dialogue with our enemies. These attacks from come from the far right, the never-back-down crowd. These ideologues are the same people who hold Ronald Reagan in god-like reverence. Ronald Reagan is the great Cold Warrior who faced down the Evil Empire and brought freedom and democracy to Eastern Europe...

...by talking to his enemy face to face.

Synonymous with "Republican", Richard Nixon was the one who held a dialogue with communist China. This was a nation of a billion people with the world's largest standing army, practitioners of an ideology anathema to democracy. It was a face to face dialogue that eased tensions and allowed the flourishing of economic expansion on a global scale that we see today.

There has been a lasting peace between Egypt and Israel for over 30 years because two sworn enemies sat down face to face and talked. Though not a perfect peace, it is a peace non-the-less and is an example of the power of inter locution.

We instinctively attack what we don't know and understand. New York was attacked because our actions in the Middle East are perceived as being only favorable toward Israel. The United States is seen as intolerant of Muslims and Islam. Our attacks on Iraq have only deepened that belief. Would a summit change any of that? How are we to know if we don't try. We've tried the belligerent militant way for seven years without success. If Senator Obama is to be decried for wanting to face his enemy off of the battlefield, then so, too, must Reagan and Nixon be denounced for their cowardly acts of attrition.

It is Memorial Day. I would rather see a future Memorial Day when we remember finding a lasting peace. Until the players change, the game will remain the same.