RE: FW Noam Chomsky in The Guardian Sept. 9

[Karen Watters Cole]

I agree with you, Ed, that the chances of a clean military “surgical strike” are immature and there will be a huge and sustained backlash if victory is not quick and followed by key changes in the region.  Let’s hope we are wrong.  That’s why the stakes are so high in this adventure, and I for one am not confident that the Commander in Chief has a stable commitment to the long program.  From what I’ve read about him, forget dyslexia vs dysphasia, he has a short term attention span that is tied more to the business bottom line than the development of long term projects and that is exactly what scares our allies.   Iraq is not Kosovo, it is not a conglomeration of failing post-communist states, though there are some similarities.  Eastern Europe is not teeming in fundamentalist rants against the Great Satan.  They want to join the Great Satan in economic recovery and expanded personal opportunities.   While there are very good arguments for regime change in the Middle East, they have not been delivered by Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld in a way that makes it clear and unequivocal; what we know of their plans seem obtuse and haphazard, and there has been no visionary voice.  Bush is too encumbered by his Hamlet baggage to have the pure motives of a mythical hero and Americans are reluctant to mobilize without a righteous cause.  I don’t think we are ready to become Darth Vader when we still think of ourselves as Luke Skywalker.  A cynical aside: There has been so much attention paid to the widows and survivor families of the 9/11 attacks and such a sea change in popular culture about death and grief (largely due to the school shootings) that I speculate an aversion to body bags is not the worst claim to notoriety we might have in the annals of history.  We lost 300,000 in WW2, I believe, and there was not this glorifying culture of death about it, but following on the tremendous commercial success of The Greatest Generation (which is deserving) and its offspring, there may be media forces at work that are manipulating popular sentiment contrary to recent assumptions. Furthermore, I don’t buy this Us vs Them that is solely based on the oft-mentioned reasoning that “they hate us because we stand for liberty”.  That’s at best a half-answer, but primarily a wimpy distraction from the global historical record and the continuing oppression and dysfunction in many of the ME regimes.   Perhaps I’ve learned too much listening to panel discussions and interviews with voices from the Middle East on Lehrer Newshour, but IMHO it’s foolish to categorize the vague terrorist enemy as haters of liberty – the terrorists are very specific even in their myopic bellicose rantings.  They are tacticians, not visionaries, really.  Zakaria makes a good case in his Bin Laden’s Bad Bet piece that fundamentalism is undercut, at least as political powers, because they cannot have political power as long as they cannot say their own name out loud as international outlaws, and the street furor will die down as the mullahs are silenced.  That’s the key here, isn’t it?  Making sure we don’t give the mullahs another great opportunity to reignite the flames. ED wrote:  In general, Sir Michael Howard notwithstanding, there is no single specific adversary.  There are millions and perhaps potentially billions of them.  My fear about what Bush may be unleashing is something that will fester for centuries.  In a previous posting, I suggested that the US attack on Iraq will begin an endless chain of body bags.  Someone shot me down by saying no, no, no, the Americans will very quickly beat up on Husain.  I agree, but that will only be the first step in something that will go one for a very long time.    By the way, Time magazine has a good point-counterpoint dialogue in its Sept. 11 issue, between Andrew Sullivan and Michael Elliot about if America has really changed and then they’ve also posted commentary by author Philip Bobbitt, who seems to have been very influential within the Bush Administration, titled Get Ready for the Next Long War.   Sen. McCain also writes that we have to “fight for democracy everywhere.”  Is his the visionary voice?  Bush has not asked us to sacrifice for a worthy goal (yet), but McCain seems to relish his role of leading where others don’t yet want to go.  Sometimes, they call that leadership.  Will Bush meet that challenge?  Karen   Sullivan @ http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020909/asullivan.html Elliott @ http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020909/aelliott.html Bobbitt @ http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020909/abobbit.html