On February 20 many Americans observed “Presidents’ Day,” one of those artificial holidays created by Congress in 1968. Officially, the observance is for Washington’s birthday (February 22), but in many states Lincoln’s birthday (February 12) has been folded into the observance. Now, some suggest aggregating all 43 presidents – good, bad, indifferent – and honoring them in the aggregate on Presidents’ Day,
Historians usually wait a few years before categorizing administrations, with the more cautious avoiding “good” and “bad” (suggesting moral judgments) and relying on “effective” or “efficient” (rare unless accompanied by “ruthlessly”) or “imperious” or “disastrous” (more common).
Some critics unwilling to wait for history’s evaluation describe as “disastrous” the Bush administration’s “global war on terror” (GWOT) and its localized manifestations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Opponents point to the approaching third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq and the sixth GWOT supplemental funding request for $72.4 billion as evidence validating their criticism.
Sensing rising public disapproval of how they are handling Iraq and national security in general, top defense officials – including the commander in chief – went on the rhetorical offensive. On February 17, President Bush visited Tampa and U.S. Central Command; Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was in New York at the Council on Foreign Relations; and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Peter Pace, was at the Washington, DC National Press Club. Bush defended the war as “just and necessary,” two very different concepts insofar as one is a moral judgment and the other is political. Rumsfeld quoted Dwight Eisenhower’s 1961 departing address to the country to make the point that, like the Cold War battle with communism (“a hostile ideology global in scope…ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method”), the fight against transnational terror networks would be inter-generational.
It was left to the highest ranking military person, however, to define and give context for the Pentagon’s latest phrase for the GWOT: the short, simple, inclusive, ambiguous and open-ended “long war.”
Two short, solid Anglo-Saxon words, the first unmistakably vague – just the kind of crispness the military likes. In terms of time, “long” in the history of modern insurgencies runs between 10 and 30 years, according to General Pace. On the high side, that’s two-thirds the length of the Cold War, which at the time Ike spoke had run only 15 of its eventual 45 years. Korea was long over, but Ike was handing the new president a quasi-military attempt to “liberate” Cuba. And every week that passed seemed to draw the U.S. inexorably into Vietnam’s civil war.
As a dimension of space, “long” retains the idea of “global” from GWOT – which dovetails with the Pentagon’s new strategy paper (Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR)) that has the U.S. running the world’s security show. The QDR says: ‘The U.S. will work to insure that all major and emerging powers are integrated as constructive actors and stakeholders into the international system.”
The plan is audacious if nothing else. The problem is that it won’t work because not every country is willing to obey Washington. Even the “rising democracy” that Bush hopes Iraq becomes had to be reminded by the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, that the U.S. could pull the economic plug if Iraqi politicians cannot cobble together a government of national unity. One might ask, given the deep divisions in the U.S., on what basis the U.S. demands Iraqi inclusiveness.
And what of the second word – “war”? If “long” is ambiguous, “war” has been so misused and overused that it has become meaningless – except when the real world of lives lost and treasure spent finally breaks into public consciousness. When that breakthrough becomes a breakthrough into conscience, it becomes possible to search for and disaggregate fundamental meanings, determine good from bad, and declare that neither permanent, long , nor any war or armed conflict is the answer to settling disputes.
This article was first printed in MinutemandMedia.org
