September 25th, 2006
President Bush’s comments on the state of the world last week at the United Nations raise some interesting thoughts about not only his own personal view but of America‘s collective view of the world around us.
To say that the mission of this government is to eradicate tyranny from the face of the Earth sounds great. It is the battle call of so many wars before, and yet it is almost a hollow message. In World War II the allies pulled their resources to combat a common external enemy. The campaign was costly but effective in removing true fascists from the grips of power around the globe. Storming cities across Europe and invading islands throughout the South and North Pacific were all tasks that in themselves created a culture of appreciation for the West. But this war on terror is not as simple.
The world we live in is a very complicated and often caustic world filled with hate and distrust for one another, not as nations but as people. William Arkin points this out rather eloquently in his blog posted today on The Washington Post website.
Bush has an incredible knack for saying things that are throw-backs to the WWII era, but never really delivers any substance that supports his rhetoric. Many people were completely surprised and shocked to hear Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez refer to Bush as the devil last week, but really if examine the root cause of this language we can see that Chavez is merely expounding the underlying feelings of many around the globe that find themselves pointed out as the enemy in increasingly generic language used by Bush. Our global war strategy in terms of WWII is no longer sufficient. Instead, we need to take notice of the historical definition of war back to the middle-centuries when wars were more tribal and the underlying cause of such wars was religion and moral values. The people that Bush calls “extremists fascists” are the same people who were slaughtered by the Spanish and Romans centuries before our continent even existed on the map. Centuries of hatred and distrust are bubbling to the surface, and those “warriors” fighting this war are well-learned in the historical purpose of their cause.
The enemy is not one country. The enemy is not even a public state that can be pin-pointed on a map. The enemy is something much more dangerous and elusive and deserves a different approach militarily and politically. As Americans we really need to understand the world a little better, and as citizens, we need to demand that our government take a much more diplomatic and constructive approach to squelching the volume on extremist groups and not annihilating entire societies to eradicate the few and ultimately creating more “extremists”.