In one of my favorite pieces of stand-up comedy ever performed, Joe Rogan (I know, I know, but trust me: he's a good stand-up) tears into academic over-analysis of pornography and the adult entertainment industry.
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He says, in the character of a patron at a strip club, "The fact that I'm looking at you naked doesn't mean anything. It means I have a dollar and you have a bad job."
Looking at the terror attacks (although the media, if they had any objectivity, would refer to them as "attempted" attacks) in the UK over the weekend, I can't get Mr. Rogan's one-liner out of my head. Moments like these are usually moments of alarmism, evocative imagery, and grandiose pronouncements that This Is a Reminder of What We Are Up Against. Thinking specifically about the planned car bomb attacks (as opposed to the bizarre and seemingly pointless flaming-car-into-the-baggage-claim attack), anyone willing to be moderately reflective can see that it is a reminder of what we're up against. And why our current tactics are so utterly pointless.
Those car bombs, had they detonated (and Jonah Goldberg sure wishes they had!), would have killed many people. They would have caused fear, panic, anger, and suffering.
And what were they, really? A car (I think those are fairly easy to come by in most western societies), a hundred bucks worth of gasoline, some barbecue grill propane tanks, and some penny nails. That is a good reminder. Not a reminder that we need to Surge or Stay the Course or any of that other bullshit. It's a reminder that we can throw all the technology, money, and propaganda in the world at this problem, but as long as one pissed off person remains breathing we'll meet the same problems tomorrow that confront us today.
In the Cold War mindset (which all too many of the current administration still have in their DNA) we could outspend, outsmart, and outproduce our way to victory. The Russians have X ICBMs, so we build 2X. They develop a tank, we develop a better, more powerful one. But none of that matters here. We Americans are accustomed, in both private and public life, to buying our way out of tight spots. When all else fails, our economic might carries the day (see: WWII). Here we are confronted with an enemy that has no physical form, no high-value targets to be aerially bombarded, no armor, no formations, and no uniform. We can't even identify the enemy let alone destroy it.
We can talk about taking out "important" leaders in Al Qaeda, but that supports the delusion that terrorists need Al Qaeda in order to function. The terrorists in London needed nothing. They needed seething anger and about $100. And every other person who wishes to do us harm can do exactly the same – no "network" or "training camps" or "experts" required. In about 10 seconds of google searching, even the most idiotic person could figure out how to make something that will explode and hurt people.
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So we've fallen back into the trap that led to our biggest Cold War-era failures. We did just fine when we defined our objective as opposing the Communists (i.e. the Soviets). When we decided that our enemy was not the Communists but instead Communism, we failed (see: Vietnam, Africa, Central/South America, Korea, etc). And so it goes here. We've not declared war on terrorists, we've declared war on terrorism.
Wars are fought against enemies, not ideas. Enemies can be killed, and you can negotiate with them.
Ideas are indestructible. The next terror attack in the west might be committed by someone who, at this very moment, is not a terrorist. But once that idea, the idea we can't destroy, gets into his or her head, a new enemy might be born. Because ideas are both intangible and persistent, we fruitlessly run around killing today's enemy while the idea silently creates tomorrow's.
