The Library Annex

“Hello political laymen and ignorant ideologist. This is Bob Woodward. Here’s what’s going on”.

Bob Woodward‘s account of the political and military conduct during the wars on terror is captivating, even for those of us with little war-time governing acumen. The book is strikingly nonpartisan in its approach, which is to be expected from the likes of Woodward; though the account is not without its sympathies or specific player perspectives. And the narrative is so thorough that it leaves virtually no space for readers to insert their own skeptical assumptions and “common sense” prejudices.

This understandably anti-climactic drama unveils a government at odds with itself. In the center ring is Pentagon vs. White House; a monumental battle royale. The fighters come meet, pound their gloves together, and, to the surprise of everyone in the arena, simultaneously turn to face the same outside crisis. They swing mercilessly, and seemingly aimlessly, at the seminal threat a world away while sparingly dispensing jabs at one another.

The book unveils a setting outside of political pop culture; beyond the television ads, town hall meetings, debates, talk shows, etc. While reading, I hardly imagined these people as the characters selling domestic policy issues to the American public. These people cranked the machine, a cold machine, without sweeping poetics and political rhetoric.

I found myself thinking not about the redundant strategic meetings in the Situation Room, the hard-nosed positions of the uniformed and political advisers ironically isolating Obama to decide how to proceed in the AfPak region, the spineless “options”, but rather about the nature of the conflict they were trying to fight.

When Obama took office, it seemed that no one knew what the objectives were in Afghanistan, how Pakistan was involved, and most importantly how to wage war on a terrorist enemy. Like Vietnam, not only in its potentially interminable escalations, the fight in Afghanistan was against an enemy who didn’t follow “civilized” rules of engagement. Woodward described a one-on-one conversation he had with President Obama’s National Security Adviser, retired General James L. Jones, U.S. Marine Corps:

During an hour-long conversation mid-flight, he laid out his theory of the war. First, Jones said, the United States could not lose the war or be seen as losing the war.

‘If we’re not successful here,’ Jones said, ‘you’ll have a staging base for global terrorism all over the world. People will say the terrorists won. And you’ll see expressions of these kinds of things in Africa, South America, you name it. Any developing country is going to say, this is the way we beat [the United States], and we’re going to have a bigger problem.’ A setback or loss for the United States would be ‘a tremendous boost for jihadist extremists, fundamentalists all over the world’ and provide ‘a global infusion of morale and energy, and these people don’t need much.’

Jones went on, using the kind of rhetoric that Obama had shied away from, ‘It’s certainly a clash of civilizations. It’s a clash of religions. It’s a clash of almost concepts of how to live.’ The conflict is that deep, he said. ‘So I think if you don’t succeed in Afghanistan, you will be fighting in more places.

‘Second, if we don’t succeed here, organizations like NATO, by association the European Union, and the United Nations might be relegated to the dustbin of history.’

Third, ‘I say, be careful you don’t over-Americanize the war. I know that we’re going to do a large part of it,’ but it was essential to get active, increased participation by the other 41 nations, get their buy-in and make them feel they have ownership in the outcome.

Fourth, he said that there had been way too much emphasis on the military, almost an overmilitarization of the war. The key to leaving a somewhat stable Afghanistan in a reasonable time frame was improving governance and the rule of law, in order to reduce corruption. There also needed to be economic development and more participation by the Afghan security forces.

It sounded like a good case, but I wondered if everyone on the American side had the same understanding of our goals. What was meant by victory? For that matter, what constituted not losing? And when might that happen? Could there be a deadline?

I think about other countries which have lived under the ominous threat of terror for decades. As modern technology progresses, terrorism is no longer tribal, national, regional…it’s becoming global. Obama is in a position, as Bush was, to either watch America be enveloped into that global union of terror-stricken nations, or to lead the fight against it. But his enemy is not a person or government; it’s a world, an idea. The enemy in the ring manifests itself as a phantom; a freezing, cancerous mist of horror. It’s little wonder that these men and women running the American government can’t seem to agree, compromise or even describe the same enemy!

Unfortunately, if we are to learn from the mistakes of history, someone has to make those mistakes from which we learn. I fear that the novelty of fundamental extremism permeating the modern, global world will test President Obama’s resolve and, more importantly, the American people’s ability to understand the real issues.