The ‘Long War’ Fallacy
May 13, 2008 | 9:07 pm | by t-blender |Rate It:
laTimes: Donald Rumsfeld is today a discredited and widely reviled figure. Robert Gates, Rumsfeld’s successor as Defense secretary, is generally admired for manifesting qualities that Rumsfeld lacked — a willingness to listen not least among them. Yet on one crucial point, the two see eye to eye: Both believe that the United States has no alternative but to wage a global war likely to last decades.
In the wake of 9/11, Rumsfeld wasted no time in telling Americans what to expect. “Forget about ‘exit strategies,’ ” he said on Sept. 28, 2001, “we’re looking at a sustained engagement that carries no deadlines.” Speaking at West Point last month, Gates echoed his predecessor’s assessment: “There are no exit strategies,” he announced. Instead, Gates described a “generational campaign” entailing “many years of persistent, engaged combat all around the world.”
For the United States, the prospect of permanent war now beckons.
Well into the first decade of this generational struggle, Americans remained oddly confused about its purpose. Is the aim to ensure access to cheap and abundant oil? Spread democracy? Avert nuclear proliferation? Perpetuate the American empire? Preserve the American way of life? From the outset, the enterprise that Gates now calls the “Long War” has been about all of these things and more.
Back in September 2001, Rumsfeld put it this way: “We have a choice — either to change the way we live, which is unacceptable, or to change the way that they live; and we chose the latter.” In this context, “they” represent the billion or so Muslims inhabiting the greater Middle East.
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