Becoming our worst enemy

The imperial mentality necessarily contains the seeds of its own destruction. One senior US intelligence official recently concluded that the Iraq invasion was "a gift of epic proportions to Osama Bin Laden," something which many Americans predicted BEFORE the war. Why? Because bin Laden's supporters now have more ammunition in "a spreading movement, powered by religion and also grounded in opposition to American policies." The Iraq war was fuel on the fire of anti-American rage, not water.

Americans should always remember that the Europeans made a conscious choice to get out of the Empire business because the costs far outweighed the benefits. And Europeans were far less uncomfortable with the fact of being imperial nations than Americans. Imperial wars in places like Kenya and Algeria were lost not because the European colonizers suffered overwhelming military defeats, but because the only methods available to defeat the nationalist insurgents were so repugnant so as to be unacceptable to the larger British and French societies.


In essay entitled "Becoming our own worst enemy" published at Public Newsroom, Rabbi Arnold E. Resnicoff echoes some of my thoughts in my essays The self-delusional nature of Exceptionalism and its followup 'We meant well' doesn't cut it anymore.

Resnicoff was a combat officer during Vietnam and recounts an experience: Serving in the Navy in the rivers of Vietnam, struggling against fear and rage, I had a commander who warned that we faced two enemies, not one. One external - there, the Viet Cong. One internal - the animal within, that war could unleash. Fight both enemies, he admonished, or we'd forget what we'd thought was worth fighting for. Fight both enemies, or no one could tell the players without a scorecard.

Fight both enemies, he concluded, or we'd be fighting neither - simply because he'd court-martial us and send us to the brig.

War is not only a danger to our lives; it is a danger to our humanity. So when we review words and documents to learn how things go wrong, we must not just ask what leaders said, but what they should have said but did not.

I've written several times that when you put people in extreme situations, they will react in extreme ways. Resnicoff concurs. We humans can do tremendous good or enormous evil. Native Americans teach that there are two wolves within our souls - one noble, one rabid - and which wins depends on which is fed. War can numb our sense of good and feed the beast within. The problem isn't that we don't have good people in uniform. The problem is that war can turn even the best into different people.

He notes that it's not the warmed-over 60s hippies but our own excesses give true aid and comfort to the enemy. Our enemies seek to expose our values as false. The war on terror is, in part, a war to defend an image of the US that gives hope to those who would be free. American values are our strength, and when they come under fire - as they most surely will - we must protect them as courageously as any other strategic stronghold we defend.

We condemn terrorism because we believe some actions cannot be justified, no matter what. But do we believe that claim, ourselves - and accept some limits even when innocent lives might be at stake? We must practice what we preach. The hard truth is that even tragic deaths are sometimes preferable to monstrous acts.

He concludes: Unless we understand the enemy within, then - as I learned long ago - we'll remember how to fight, but not what it was that was worth the fight. Neither Americans, nor their enemies, nor those they seek to help, will know the players without a scorecard. Then, even if we win the battles, we will lose the war.