The home front is the real battlefield

The Australian ^ | December 10, 2005 | Ibex

[Dundee]

The home front is the real battlefield

"Deserve Victory!" said a bulldog-jawed Winston Churchill in a famous World War II poster. Like the rest of his generation, he knew that societies, not armies, win wars.

The war on terrorism is no exception. In Iraq and elsewhere, troops are making progress against an elusive enemy in frightful conditions, but their success will be futile unless their societies prove strong enough to see the conflict through.

The military situation is broadly positive.

The US has now articulated a coherent Iraq strategy focused on winning over Sunnis, marginalising Ba'athist remnants and destroying terrorists. The strategy has political, economic and security tracks and a region-wide perspective. As counter-insurgency strategies go this is about as good as it gets.

Support for terrorists has dropped in Jordan, with angry demonstrations against Zarqawi. And in Indonesia, polls show declining support for Islamists after recent bombings and the beheading of three Christian schoolgirls.

Lebanon, Libya, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are tentatively democratising or cutting support for terrorists. That these are responses to US pressure is no criticism. Rather, it is evidence that such pressure works.

Terrorists are showing the energy of desperation. Zarqawi sends out his closest lieutenants as suicide bombers -- not much of a succession plan. Zawahiri calls for restraint, conscious that al-Qaida's violence is alienating former supporters. Azahari is dead, home-grown terrorists are being arrested, Islamist clerics are ducking for cover and Osama bin Laden hasn't been heard from for a year.

And this is against the lowest-ever friendly casualty rate in a major war. America's 2100 soldiers killed in Iraq are tragic but tiny losses in proportion to the troops committed, actions fought, and gains achieved.

So why is support for the war wavering? The answer lies at home.

The "war about the war" has some US politicians faltering while others scramble for an exit strategy, either from Iraq or from the whole war on terrorism. Isolationism is growing among Americans, according to a recent Pew poll. Fewer than 50 per cent now support the Iraq war.

Meanwhile, the media and commentariat are passive at best. The war on terrorism became the "so-called" war on terrorism, and some are now calling it "Washington's so-called war on terrorism", as if pretending the war is someone else's business could keep us safe. Tell that to the French, the Spanish or the Indonesians. This partly arises from political leaders' early over-confidence: if you tell people a war is going to be a push-over, those who believe you will naturally be cynical when it proves difficult. It also partly results from intelligence failures. Not the "intelligence" (actually policy) failure of seeing Iraqi WMD that weren't there but, more serious, the failure to see large-scale insurgency preparations that were there. And, more broadly, what the 9/11 commission called a "failure of imagination".

But fundamentally, fragile morale bespeaks a lack of robustness in our societies. The war touches few people directly, and demands no sacrifices whatsoever from the average civilian. So some people mistakenly think we can opt out of it.

And the pace of terrorism is slow. People forget the war between terrorist attacks, only to be jolted back to reality.

Thus the key problem right now is not in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere "out there" - but at home. It is not about how we got here, but about what to do next. And it is not a military problem but a political one.

This problem demands commitment from societies across the civilised world, and the realisation that this is not a war against anything so much as a war for the democratic nation-state and the rule of law.

We face determined enemies who know what they're fighting for. To win, we must deserve victory, and even the best armies in history can't do that for us: we must do it ourselves.

In Stanley Kubrick's Vietnam film Full Metal Jacket, a reporter asks a Marine his views on the war. "What do I think about the war?" he replies. "Well, I think we should win."

Churchill would have understood exactly what he meant.

- 'Ibex' (a pseudonym) has worked in the Middle East, South-East Asia, Europe and elsewhere as a counter-terrorism adviser and counter-insurgency specialist.

[Spiff]

"Deserve Victory!" said a bulldog-jawed Winston Churchill in a famous World War II poster. Like the rest of his generation, he knew that societies, not armies, win wars. The war on terrorism is no exception. In Iraq and elsewhere, troops are making progress against an elusive enemy in frightful conditions, but their success will be futile unless their societies prove strong enough to see the conflict through.

Wonderful statement. It is sad that this was published in an Australian paper first and that no major American newspaper has expressed this same sentiment. Given the seditious behavior of the media and one of the two major political parties in America, we don't now deserve the victory that our brave soldiers are shedding their blood to win for us. I'm truly disgusted at our national character, or lack thereof. What has happened to America?