How Many Enemies?

How can the United States defend itself in the future? Some learned minds are wrestling with this question as new forms of conflict take shape. In the past wars were fought on battlefields the way football is played in stadiums. International law worked out rules of engagement to which most governments subscribed most of the time.

"Alas," writes former undersecretary of defense Fred Ikle in the WALL STREET JOURNAL, "America's future enemies may not fight according to these Marquess of Queensbury rules." Mr. Ikle foresees the use of nuclear, chemical, and biological warfare "in that unanticipated region of warfare -- the United States itself." No force on earth can stand up to American military power on the battlefield, so we can expect future enemies to ignore the old codes. Some of these prospective enemies may not even be governments.

"Past experience with terrorism is a poor guide for such a contingency," Mr. Ikle observes. Indeed. Such tactics as killing or kidnapping a few civilians may someday seem as quaint as the 78 rpm phonograph.

What would happen if a nuclear device devastated the heart of Washington, D.C. -- and our surviving government officials didn't even know who had detonated it? That wouldn't be "terrorism," which is essentially a psychological tactic whose perpetrators usually claim responsibility; it would be a substantial act of war, by an enemy who might be impossible either to identify or locate.

The only sure result would be panic. There would be no point in surrendering; the damage would have been done, and a formal, Appomattox-style ceremony, with U.S. officials yielding to a tiny cell of expert bombers, would be absurd. But we can be certain that the official response would be a crackdown -- on the remaining liberties of U.S. citizens, the only people our government could control.

One reason it might be hard to pinpoint the enemy is that our government is making so many enemies. The United States dominates the globe, and many foreigners just can't comprehend that we are the good guys. In terms of their own cultures and interests, we may appear to them as the bad guys.

The narrow-minded Russians don't see why NATO should push up against their borders by including their neighbors, while excluding Russia itself. The pig-headed Arabs, Iranians, and others think the United States is making war on Islam. The self-centered Chinese consider us aggressive prigs who are muscling in on "their" part of the world. Small-minded Latin Americans think the United States is a bully.

Maybe all these people are wrong. And there are still many others around the world who like Americans. But the question is whether we can afford to antagonize so many people indefinitely. It's possible to be absolutely in the right and stupid at the same time.

If the people who hate us can't drive us out of their regions, some of them may want to bring the fight here. It would take only a sophisticated handful of weapons experts, out of several billion people. They wouldn't think of themselves as evildoers; they might see themselves as Luke Skywalker destroying the imperial Death Star.

The old European empires never had to worry about this, for the simple reason that most of their colonial peoples had only the most primitive weapons and no way to reach European capitals; retaliation was unimaginable.

When the white man had a monopoly of gunpowder, the odds were so lopsided that the Europeans hardly thought of their Asian, African, and American conquests as wars; "wars" were affairs between European states.

So far, Americans have paid for their empire only in the high taxes needed to sustain military forces that go far beyond any real defensive needs. Mr. Ikle doesn't use the word empire; he uses the customary formula, defense of American interests, which can cover anything, anywhere. But an empire it is, even if we prefer to call it world leadership, and the price could rise with stunning suddenness.

The best defense is not to make enemies in the first place. But this elementary prudence is now called "isolationism" (though it might better be called "multiculturalism"). If a big American city goes up in a mushroom cloud, isolationists will look like prophets.

Its a shame. Before 911, I used to consider Sobran an interesting thinker. But his fulminations against the War on Terror and his rabid anti-Americanism have left me scratching my head, wondering what I ever saw in the guy's stuff in the first place. Sobran, like all "Liberatarians", have been discombobulated by the war. They have no ideas about how to deal with the dangers presented by Moslem fanatics, only "bend over" and "take it slow". Anyone who wants to protect and defend their families can't take this kind of stuff seriously anymore.

For what its worth, I foresee an escalating level of violence as inevitable. The Moslems will kill more and more, and the retaliation will grow and grow, until some American city suffers an horrific attack (nuclear, biological, or chemical) on a scale sufficient to precipitate a nuclear strike. And that may finally get the "moderate" Moslems who don't want to die with their fanatical neighbors to rein in the worst elements of their own communities. Its something the Moslems have to do, not us. We can't do it for them. And it won't stop until they do it for themselves. Or they all die.

The US must defend itself from such terrorist threats and cannot do so by seeking UN sanctions, taking stock of world opinions and using diplomatic niceties. We are at war with an enemy bent not only on terrorizing our population but on ending western civilization and replacing it with an Islamic theocracy.

We should take a page or two from the Israeli play book and not flinch at assassinating terrorist leaders, making preemptive strikes and conducting full scale covert operations against our enemies. Captured terrorists should be promptly tried before military tribunals...none of this tying up the US courts with the likes of Mousoui or the Shoe Bomber. Convicted terrorists should suffer extreme consequences...prompt execution without fanfare or press releases. If terrorist leaders just disappeared never to be seen or heard from again or were taken out by roving missile armed drones, assassination squads or hidden bombs or booby traps, perhaps fewer would be willing to risk taking on the US.

But seeing as how this article (and other similar ones) were written before 9/11, before the War on Terror and before the Bush Presidency, I don't think he's much changed his position on this....and there is a lot to be said for this position

The scope of the American presence around the world, aside from the enormous costs of maintaining our national "defense", contributes to putting a bulls eye on the back of every American.

Back in the 1930's, the socialist internationalist FDR wanted to build an oil pipeline in Saudi Arabia (any Constitutional authority for that?)...and Nebraska Republican Congressman Buffet condemned the plan saying that:

it would terminate the inspiring period of America's history as a great nation not resorting to intercontinental imperialism. This venture would end the influence exercised by the United States as a government not participating in the exploitation of small lands and countries … It may be that the American people would rather forego the use of a questionable amount of gasoline at some time in the remote future than follow a foreign policy practically guaranteed to send many of their sons … to die in faraway places in defence of the trade of Standard Oil or the international dreams of our one-world planners.

None of this is a criticism of America or the American people...but it is a well-deserved criticism of American government, particularly since FDR...both Republican and Democrat...I don't think our foreign policy has done much to serve the interest of the American people...and like everything else wasteful government does...its been damn expensive...both in terms of lives and money

I, too, used to consider myself an isolationist. For many years I was against stationing American troops anywhere other than American soil. I was an advocate of relying on the US Navy, particularly the ballistic missile submarine fleet, and the US Air Force, with its bomber squadrons and missile silos, to project a defensive umbrella over America. I viewed the American military presence in foreign lands as wasteful and potentially harmful.

Then 911 happened. I now consider my earlier position as naive and dangerous. And cowardly!

In an NBC world riven with crazed Moslem fanatics willing to commit brutal and savage murder without compunction, it seems to me that the old idea of retreating to some sort of "Fortress America" won't work. These crazed killers of the innocent, crazed killers of young and old alike, won't be deterred by our retreat.

Further, I discovered that mad Moslems killers have always been a threat to the US. In fact, the first instance in history of American military involvement beyond our shores was the Decatur expedition conducted by the US Navy and US Marines against the Tripolitan Pirates, who were mad Moslems raping, pillaging, and killing Americans over two hundred years ago. Try reading some of Jefferson's and Adam's writings addressing this problem. Even they recognized the dangers to the newly created United States by these Moslem monsters. They're a real eye opener!

At that time, the US had no standing Army or Navy. There was no way Americans could be perceived as a threat to any nation. America stood for peaceful commerce only. Did that deter the mad Moslem killers of old? Not on your life! Those people continued to do what they've always done since Mohammad himself rode his camel out of the desert and started slaughtering Jews and Christians with abandon. And these people continue to do this to this very day!

I have come to the conclusion that the idea that our presence in foreign lands is somehow instigative to terror attacks, which is the basis of the Libertarian critique, is poppycock! It's got things exactly ass backwards. We're not in foreign lands to instigate trouble, we're in foreign lands precisely because of the trouble those foreigners have already delivered on the US. I may disagree with questions of military deployment and foreign policy approaches, but I completely concur with the position that we should be engaged, and deployed, in or near those foreign lands that present the greatest danger to the US.

We can debate forever the costs involved in this approach. But I firmly believe that we need to do this, whatever the costs, if we ever expect to continue on as a free republic, in relative safety, in this mad world.

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