As December 7th passes on our calendars, I cannot help but compare the surprise attack of Pearl Harbor to 9/11 just a little bit. Both resulted in a declaration of war but the results could not be more catastrophically different. America extracted its blood and guts from Pearl Harbor in a matter of five years. The suffering was enormous but the lines of the good guys versus the bad guys and why we were fighting were clearly marked. Yes, mistakes were made on the home front with the American Japanese, as has been recognized. But as for the support of the nation -- that was never in question. If ever there was a war where the lines between good and evil and right and wrong were clearly defined, it was World War II.
But then the war was over and the soldiers came home and America thrived. In fact, America entered its Golden Years. Pearl Harbor was not forgotten -- hardly -- but it was not a trauma continually thrust into the forefront of the American people day after day. Americans got even and it was over. My father fought in the Pacific theater including the nightmare of Guadalcanal and several other island invasions. I grew up surrounded by Marines who simply wanted to get on with the business of life after the war.
As the war in Afghanistan moves into its ninth year, support on the home front wanes weekly. Never mind the confusion in the Congress -- it's the confusion in the nation that is just as problematic. Few people feel comfortable when their nation is at war. But most citizens will support their nation going to war when the cause and the enemy are clearly defined. This is a war, however, that has fallen down the Rabbit Hole. It has absurdity written all over it, from the war beginning in a cesspool of Bush/Cheney lies to this escalation of 30,000 soldiers being sent into a desert to fight who exactly? Ghosts in caves and human bombs -- is this the new face of war?
Listening to President Obama announce his decision to pour more billions if not a trillion dollars into this scheme to get the Afghan people and the Pakistanis to succumb to a Christian democracy in eighteen months, the image of Osama bin Laden leaped into my mind. Perhaps he, too, was listening to the president, maybe from a cave or the unthinkable -- a comfortable hidden mansion somewhere in Pakistan. Eighteen months is the time line we are giving these essentially tribal people to get their acts together to become high functioning, trustworthy soldiers, armed to the teeth with American weaponry, who promise to be more loyal to Christian invaders than to their brother Muslims, regardless of whether they are members of the Taliban or Jehovah's Witnesses or Druid converts. Let's face it -- blood, and especially tribal blood, is thicker than water, especially while having an invaders gun pointed at you.
As President Obama spoke the other day, memories of a taped message that bin Laden sent out in the early days of this war ran through my mind. He promised that he would break America financially just as he did to the Russians when they invaded Afghanistan. Sure their bombs and bullets killed and maimed thousands but in the end, the Russians left Afghanistan having spent billions of dollars and accomplishing nothing. I imagine bin Laden emailing instructions to his minions that go something like this, "Okay team, suit up for the next eighteen months in your best western wear. Look cooperative because the U.S. is about to pour even more money into our coffers. They just don't get how we work, who we are, and how we really think -- and that foolishness is our best defense. As soon as this next infusion of cash is done, get out your militant wardrobe, pull out those burkas for your women and get this country back just the way it always was -- ours."
Reports are that there are but 100 Al Qaeda militants left in the whole of Afghanistan, at least that was the statistic offered during the past days as the debate regarding the president's decision continues. Escalating a war while the home nation disintegrates has, historically, done in more than one world leader. Every leader needs the support of his or her nation when that nation is at war. Equally important is that the people of that nation need to understand who and where the enemy is and not be fed a continual line of spin as to why our soldiers and our resources are being evaporated in a vast wasteland while the home front is left to listen to Congressional has-beens like McCain spout off about what the president should be doing. That's just what we need -- more Republican "experts" who do nothing but babble. If McCain was a real patriot and not just an angry, raging, jealous bitter man that he is, he would be doing all he could to unite the Republican Party. He of all people knows how dangerous it is for a nation to endure a nearly decade long war.
So here we are, nine years later, still pouring our soldiers and resources into this war, still using 9/11 as our battle cry, and all the while our own nation is on an economic and psychic respirator. What are we thinking? Is this what winning a war looks like? Seems to me that our nation has paid and is continuing to pay a price for 9/11. Perhaps there are other reasons for the ongoing war that have nothing to do with terrorism or 9/11 -- oil, perhaps? And if that's so -- if it turns out that oil interests are even a small part of why this nightmare has been extended for almost a decade -- how shall we respond to that as Americans, especially if the previous administration as well as this one used 9/11 as their battle cry for support. Is it any wonder why the politics of our nation have that "Alice in Wonderland" quality to them?
If we really wanted to "get even" for 9/11, would it not be to our benefit to pour that money into us and not them? Would it not benefit us more if those endless financial resources went to rebuilding this nation and not that one? Seems to me that if all those billions were directed toward assisting new businesses, educational aid, repairing bridges, streets, and other disintegrating infrastructures, and all seriously launching green technology, we could rise out the ashes of 9/11 and get on with the business of life again. Granted nothing is that simple but even the simplest of us can see how foolish it is to escalate a war that will only continue to shatter an already broken nation.