The War on Terror: A Tragedy of Errors - Why It's Time to Cut Our Losses and Run

This is the truth about the War on Terror as I understand it: There really is no such thing as a "war on terror."

Terrorism is not the sort of thing that you can fight a war against. Wars are generally waged between two or more nations to settle a dispute over the ownership of resources or to resolve ideological conflicts. National leaders send armies to fight to the death or until the leaders decide to call it quits. Then one side formally admits defeat, the terms of surrender are negotiated, a peace treaty is signed, everyone shakes hands, and the fighting comes to an abrupt halt. Unlike in a video game, however, none of the soldiers who died in the preceding days, months, or years are restored to life at the end of the war. Lost and mangled limbs remain lost and mangled, and the nightmarish memories of war's horrors are not erased from the survivors' minds before they are returned in damaged condition to their families.

Terrorists, of course, do not play according to the rules of civilized warfare. Their game plan is to create terror in the hearts and minds of their enemies by blowing up unsuspecting civilians as they go about trying to live their everyday lives. As a rule, terrorists do not wear uniforms, do not confront the enemy on isolated battlefields, do not answer to any central authority, and do not necessarily cease their acts of terror when politicial leaders finally agree to sign their treaties of peace. They are not the sort of enemies who can be defeated by conventional warfare. This is because a "war on terror" is not a real war at all; rather, it is war in a metaphorical sense. We fight a war against terror in the sense that we seek to render terrorists inoperative and ineffectual, but it's silly to think we can achieve that goal by sending battalions of soldiers overseas to combat terrorists as if they were an opposing army. Terror is a strategy and a tactic, not a corporeal entity. It is a deadly weapon wielded by desperate and devious individuals, not an organized army that can be overpowered by massive firepower. As we have seen time and again, highly trained soldiers cannot necessarily defend against the deadly deeds of a single dedicated terrorist.

Sadly, our president is a literalist who doesn't understand the nature of metaphors. He's probably heard of the Civil War and the two World Wars and the war in Vietnam, so when someone tells him, "We have to fight a war on terror," he thinks that means we have to send an army to Iraq to force the terrorists to surrender. In reality, of course, such a war makes no sense. Terrorists don't reside in any one country, they have no organized leadership authorized to surrender, and their numbers are potentially limitless. The only way such a war can end is for our side to acknowledge the war's futility, cut our losses, and bring the troops back home.

Will there be chaos in Iraq when the American troops withdraw? Of course there will! There was chaos there before, there's chaos there now, and there will probably be chaos there for centuries to come. The local sects that are struggling for dominance will probably go on hating and killing each other until they find some way of resolving their differences. This will be true whether American troops are present or not. The only difference that the withdrawal of our troops will make is that more young Americans won't have to die far from home while the Iraqi people battle it out.

Does this mean that the American troops who have died or been maimed in Iraq over the past four years will have lost their lives and limbs for no good reason? Sadly, yes. But killing and crippling another thousand young Americans isn't going to undo those deaths or render them more meaningful. Sorry, but that's the way wars generally work. The politicians stay home and give patriotic speeches while the young people are sent away to kill and be killed. Eventually, treaties are signed, our enemies suddenly become our friends, and the dead invariably stay dead.

It would almost be funny if it weren't the saddest thing in the world.

In an ideal world, of course, people wouldn't feel the need to blow each other up in the name of God and ethnic pride. Here in the real world, however, perhaps our best defense against terrorism is to try protecting our borders and beefing up security in the kinds of places that terrorists seem most likely to attack. Of course, that would require billions of dollars and a dedicated army of patriotic volunteers willing to risk life and limb to protect their country. But where could we find so much money and so many brave men and women?

Oh, wait. Maybe if we brought the troops home from Iraq and stopped spending billions of dollars trying to keep the Iraqis from killing each other, we could mobilize all those wasted human and financial resources to enhance our own homeland security. Perhaps there might even be a few billion dollars left in the budget to build some new schools and highways and hospitals and homeless shelters for the folks here at home.

If we're really lucky, no one will remember that the United States staged a pre-emptive attack on Iraq with flagrant disregard for world opinion in order to overthrow a ruthless leader whom we suspected of harboring weapons of mass destruction that UN inspectors were in the process of searching for and were unable to find. Imagine being the ruthless leader of a nation that actual possessed such destructive weapons and had already demonstrated a willingness to use them regardless of world opinion. Wouldn't you be afraid that some other nation would consider it well within their rights to stage a pre-emptive attack on your country and attempt to topple your corrupt and reckless government?

If I were President Bush, I'd be shaking in my cowboy boots.