"This Means War!"

[I dedicate this blog-entry to Sen. Robert Byrd who died at 3:00 AM this morning.  He staunchly stood up against going to war against Iraq in 2003.]

Have you ever noticed how easily we use the term “war” when confronting difficult, complex and recalcitrant issues in our nation?  The first thing we do is declare war: war on crime, war on drugs, war on poverty, war on illegal border crossings, to name a few.  We like the term.  It implies a clean cut and decisive ending: we will conquer, they will capitulate.  We Win they lose.  We triumph they surrender.  Victor verses the Vanquished and oh how sweet is the victory!  I wonder, are we not kidding ourselves?

Take our “War on Poverty.”  I was just a kid when President Lyndon B. Johnson declared this war.  It was January 8, 1964, during his State of the Union Address.  He and his administration were going to lead this nation into new levels of prosperity and gain.  Enough with poverty!  So, what did he do?  He declared war, unconditional war on poverty in America.  Furthermore, he assured us, “We shall not rest until that war is won.”  Tell me, did we win it?  How can such a war be won?  Apparently this nation had roughly a 20% poverty rate before Johnson’s 1964 declaration of war on poverty.  By 1973 the poverty rate was down to 11%.  Today it is about 12%.  But, 12% of 310 million people (2010) is actually not much less than 20% of 192 million people (1964): 37.2 million versus 38.4 million.  So, in terms of reducing the actual number of people in poverty, we’ve made no gain to speak of (2010 numbers compared to 1964 numbers).  That is to say that in pure “victor verses vanquished” terms, Poverty has NOT been defeated.  Poverty continues to wreak havoc in our society.  That “war” has been lost.  But was it best to approach the challenge of poverty in American in terms of “war” in the first place?  Perhaps not.

The same is true for our “War on Drugs.”  Will we ever win this one?  Realistically, no.  Not in terms of the language of “war,” that is.  A declaration of war usually means armed and fatal conflict, a fight to the death, between one Nation and another.  Two (or more) social, geo-political, and/or ethnic entities fight until one side is defeated or surrenders.  This could not and did not happen in the “War on Poverty,” nor will it happen in the “War on Drugs.”  There will always be drug addicts, drug dealers, and drug producers.  And there is no national, geo-political, or ethnic group that is in a position to say, “Stop!  We surrender.”  Nobody along the drug-producing and drug buying/selling chain will ever say, “Okay you win!  Stop all hostilities.  We will no longer push, deal, or take drugs.”  It’s just not going to happen.  I suggest we use a different model, paradigm if you will, to help us define, explain, and address our concern about drug trafficking and drug addiction in our country other than the war model.  We need to throw-out the catchy phrase, “war on drugs,” so as to become more effective in dealing with this social cancer.  But let’s not stop here.

Let us consider the two places of armed conflict that our nation is now engaged in, where the term “war” should make very good sense and seem quite applicable, Afghanistan and Iraq.  Here is where the term is most appropriate, is it not?  We are in armed conflict, it involves our military, and we are speaking of actual geo-political, well defined social, ethnic, or national people-groups.  No argument here.  However, look at it more carefully.  Who is fighting whom?  Is the U.S. at war with the nation of Iraq?  Are we at war with the nation of Afghanistan?  No, supposedly these two national entities are on our side.  We “won” the “national” conflict and are supposedly in partnership with the established governments of these two countries, are we not?  Who then are we fighting?  We are fighting insurgents.  What is an “insurgent”?  Insurgents are revolutionaries.  They are rebellious native citizens bringing armed resistance against their own established government.

Why are we having so much trouble, taking so much time (Years!) and resources (Billions!) to win these wars?  Because, it is not merely a question of brutal strength, power, and weaponry (do we get this yet?).  It is a war of values and vision, purpose and priorities, ideals and ideas.  How can we begin to win such a war when we can’t speak their language, don’t understand their history and culture, or have little deep appreciation for their own internal tribal conflicts that they themselves have little ability to master and control?  We are foreigners within a revolutionary, civil war, which we produced.  As far as Iraq is concerned, we now see how naïve it was for us to have gone in and taken out Saddam Hussein thinking that we’d be celebrated as liberators and everyone would hop-to in unison and help remake Iraq into a free, democratic, State that would resemble a little America and would reflect all the values, principles, ideals, and priorities that we have here in the U.S.  Believing and assuming that THAT was going to happen, was a great mistake on our part.

Have we learned any lessons from this?  I suggest that there are three lessons that we should have learned from these two wars, especially our war against Iraq:

First we defined war too simplistically.  We painted a childlike black and white picture of war.  “Good guys” versus “bad guys,” the good guys and bad guys would readily be identified and easily sighted and divided.  The good guy will capture and/or kill the bad guy, or the bad guy will surrender and give up all resistance.  And once the bad guys are taken out, peace and prosperity will be restored.  Hindsight being what it is, we can now say, “How naïve!”  The dynamics are just not that simple in either Afghanistan or Iraq.  It did not play out that way, and it’s not going to end that way.

Secondly we employed war too readily.  We neither realistically counted the cost, nor accurately assessed the actual state of affairs before we entered the war(s).  When we attacked Iraq in 2003, it is safe though sad to say that most Americans simply thought, “We’ll go in, take out Saddam, establish a new order, and Bing, Bang, Boom, mission accomplished and we’re out of there.”  Again, in hindsight we can now say, “How foolish was that idea?!”

Thirdly, we relied on war too trustingly.  We thought, “We have the power, means, and resources.  We can do this.”  We too easily assumed that superior power will automatically result in superior winnings, a clear and concise victory.  (By the way, did we not have this same mistaken idea when we expanded our engagement in the war in Vietnam?)  Brute force is not everything.  Ever heard of the saying, “You might capture or kill my body, but you’ll never have my heart and soul!”?  If anything, we Americans have lived this out in our own national experience, in our own Revolutionary War, in the Civil War, and in World Wars I and II.  It defines our own fighting spirit!  Our mistake however is that we think that we are the only nation, tribe, or people-group that embraces such a spirit of resistance.  We are greatly mistaken if we think so.

So before we declare war so readily, easily, and trustingly the next time around, let us keep in mind the following principles:

1.    War is easily started and most difficult to end.  And wars with “messy endings” never truly end; they simmer and smolder until ignited once again.
2.    War is complicated.  People, tribes, nations, and people-groups are complicated.  And so war always has negative results and consequences unanticipated.
3.    War is severely costly.  We pay a dear price, not only in terms of finances and material resources, but most especially in terms of people, lives and whole families, affecting more than one generation.
4.    War is the exercise of sheer power and force in the belief that it is the only means left to decide between two sides.  However, as in sports so in war, victory is not always to the Strong.
5.    Because of this, war should always be a last resort, never a first “preemptive” choice.

[My condolences to the Byrd family, friends, and colleagues who worked with him and knew him well.]