Why We May Still Lose The War On Terror

A cursory examination of hard data on the ground makes it seem ludicrous to plant the axiom that the US could eventually lose our bid to democratic Iraq, Afghanistan and other authoritarian hellholes scattered throughout the Middle East. Our Marine Corps just finished demolishing the heart of the Al-Quaida-backed elements of the Iraqi resistance. The rapid and complete purging of Fallujah sent a message to our enemies.

Unfortunately, other actions on our part send them a message as well. That message reads that our front line military troops may prove indominatable in open battle, but that in many cases, the resolve to back their efforts does not exist back home across the ocean blue.

The Department of Defense has been served with a lawsuit that alleges that its use of stop-loss regulations to extend soldier enlistments violates the Constitutional rights of soldiers who get extended. This utterly defies reality. Anyone who dons the uniform of the US Army knows that they are not immediately cut loose at the end of their term of enlistment.

If they even get a set of retirement orders cut, they are placed in the Inactive Ready Reserve. Soldiers on this list are liable up to seven years after separation for call-up in the event of national necessity. In other words, if you sign on the line and put on a set of the BDUs, Uncle Sam owns an option contract on your butt anytime he seeks to exercise it.

If the soldiers suing the DOD didn't want to actually go to Iraq, they never should have signed on the bottom line. The Army exists to win America's wars, not provide social welfare or outdoor adventure to people who are underemployed or flat-out bored.

This basic moral logic didn't dissuade the plaintiffs. One of them issued the following statement to the press.

Army Specialist E-4 David W. Qualls said Monday that he had filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of himself and seven other soldiers protesting the Department of Defense's stop-loss policy that involuntarily extends tours of duty.

"What this boils down to, is a question of fairness," Qualls said. "I've served five months past my 1-year obligation -- and I feel it's time for us to be allowed to go back to our lives."

This lawsuit received immediate backing from others who's motives are far less simple and understandable than the desire to return home from a very bad place.

"This (case) is unique because (Qualls) volunteered for a specific time, " said James Klimanski, an attorney involved in the case. "There's nothing in (the Try One) contract -- even in the fine print -- that calls for the involuntary extension under this circumstance," he added, calling stop-loss "a backdoor draft that the Bush administration is imposing on American service members."

Apparantly Mr. Klimanski hasn't quite realized the election ended last month. He's still spreading the rumors of a backdoor draft. This, of course, is contemptible stupidity. You can't stop-loss an individual who hasn't enlisted to begin with.

James Lobel, attorney and vice president of the Center for Constitutional Rights agrees. "This case involves one of the fundamental values of our society -- honesty," Lobel said: "Our government has not been honest with Mr. Qualls and other plaintiffs. ... The courts should (not) tolerate such dishonesty."

Lobel attempts to mask his naked desire to undermine the war effort in higher motives. He's no more convincing to me than a horde of stoner college students demanding medicinal dime bags. The day our courts start deciding what military recruiting practices they will or will not deign to tolerate is the day the US should just take the flag down and surrender to the first bunch of suckers who would willingly take over The Land of The Free and The Home of The Litigous Ass-Hat.

What happened to SPC Qualls is very sad and was handled very poorly on the part of the Army. Should they have counseled him first that this would happen and let him at least tell his family? Absolutely. Finding out his contract had been re-upped from an LES statement was not professional, decent or even worthy.

However, SPC Qualls signed up for service and qualifies automatically for the Inactive Ready Reserve. The US Army had a viable and legal way to extend him without the chicanery. Qualls has no case except to his IG Representative. He's been treated shabbily, and maybe the Army needs to crack a few heads in someone's G-1 shop over this.

However, this should in no way proclude the military from exercising stop-loss as a way to keep qualifieds soldiers in until the war is over. Somewhere in Iraq, Iran, Syria or the wilds of Afghanistan, the leaders of the Whabbi movement read about this and gain hope. As they gain this hope, they gain recruits. SPC Qualls isn't saving any lives or ending the likelihood of further stop-loss orders. He's only making more carnage and a longer war more necessary.

We'll never WIN the war on terror, because we're fighting an ideology, a tactic, not a national center of gravity. By the same token, can we LOSE the war on terror?

What would a post-loss America be like? We pull out of Iraq, and the govt there is overthrown, let's say. OBL is never caught, and there are occasional suicide bombings in the US, just like England endured from the IRA for decades and Israel endures right now from the PLO. England never 'lost' their war, and Israel is making gains, thanks to the wall. But the killing goes on. How does that differ for LOSING the WOT?

Maybe it's like the War on Drugs. 20 millions incarcerations later, the price of street drugs is lower than ever and more available, and we continue throwing billions of dollars at it as we degrade liberty while telling ourselves we are, at least, not losing this war. Well, the drug war is lost. To lose the WOT may mean continuing to throw billions at the TSA, FBI, CIA and the DHS while embassies and troops are blown up abroad and liberty curtailed severely at home, telling ourselves we're winning.

In short, if a war by its nature cannot be won, there may be no way to differentiate between having won all you can win, and having lost all you can lose. Terrorists can never destroy and occupy America, neither can we eradicate terrorism.

By the tactics we permit ourselves to use, we can never eradicate terrorism. Neither can terrorism destroy and take pver the US.

Very easy. If we Lose the WOT, the killings happen in the US and on a regular and recurring basis. This effects the US in several spheres. I'll start with the most self-intrested impacts and then expand outward.

1) Our economy goes into the toilet. We cannot guarantee the safety of our food supply, transportation and information infrastructures. Every transaction involves a risk premium so that doing business in the US is like buying stuff on credit after you've gotten a couple of bad raps on your credit report. It will cost us, because no one believes they are entirely safe anymore when they deal with us.

2) Our country is a less free and exciting place to live. We lose freedoms involving movement, assembly, speech, firearm ownership and business activity all in the name of safety and Homeland Security.

3) We lose what few allies we really have. We become intimidated. We have to reward aggression and fork over the ransom to some modern version of Tamerlane rather than having another one of our skyscrapers dropped on our heads.

Other countries increasingly decide the right way to get money, trade and benefits out of the US is to slap us around a little so we pay up. They figure they we'll behave, once we've figured out who our daddy is.

4) The world becomes a lot worse and more Darwinistic than it already is. If the US can be slapped around and made to pay protection money, is there anyone who can't? The Chinese won't take it lying down, but does any other country in their right mind really want to see the world run by the Central Committee of The Chinese Communist Party?

Any country can saddle up the cavalry and level it's less powerful neighbor unless that country is so pathetic that it does not have a less powerful neighbor. Not many other countries out there will offer that defeated neighbor a Marshall Plan to help clear away the rubble.

If we win the WOT.

1) The world is temporarily improved because we've proved that crime doesn't really pay.

2) OPEC could possibly become a more enlightened and less militant cartel. They will still make the oil prices hurt, but they'll do it out of self-intrest rather than a sometimes self-destructive desire to stick it to the US and the rest of the developed world.

3) Over time, radical Islam will become as discredited as Marxism. You'd have to leave the Middle East and enroll in a US college to find it still in it's pure and toxic form.

4) At least 30 million people in at least 2 other countries are a lot better off than they were in the year 2000.

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