WARS R US

If the mark of success is choosing one's battles wisely, we're in for another
abject failure.

Now, it's always possible for a U.S. president to whip America into a frenzy of
patriotic fervor by bombing the hell out of some second-rate Third World
nation. We're good at bombing, and we're even better at patriotic fervor.

Unfortunately, presidents these days aren't into easy, meaningless victories
like they were in the past. Today's wars have to have some kind of special
significance attached, some moral imperative, as if we were trying to make the
world a better place rather than simply getting some politician reelected.

That's where the trouble creeps in: There are very few ways of putting a
positive, moral spin on the unprovoked killing of massive numbers of civilians.
It becomes necessary to dissemble by presenting our military actions as part of
some grand, well-thought-out program. The end surely will justify the means.

The current war is neither grand nor well thought-out. It's hard to pinpoint
the exact moment when Iraq II stopped being a decisive victory and started
being a huge disaster. But we're stuck there, and everybody's miserable, and
people are dying every day. Now, the president may be put in the deliciously
humiliating situation of asking the French and the Germans for help. (Hint:
offer them some "freedom" fries!)

But maybe it's not as bad as all that. After all, the war in Iraq is but a
single battle in the big, overarching War on Terrorism. Perhaps we simply have
to keep our eyes on the big picture--we may be losing the battle, but we still
could win the war.

Unfortunately, nobody seems to agree on what winning that war would look like.
Sure, it would be a nice gesture for the United States to somehow rid the world
of terrorism. Think how popular we'd be then. But if we can't even get a handle
on the bomb freaks at home without imposing draconian, unconstitutional
measures, how can we ever hope to succeed abroad, where people don't even like
us?

The problem with these abstract so-called "wars" is that they're so open-ended.
In any war, before a victor can be declared, all parties must agree that the
war is indeed over.

At least LBJ knew when he was licked. The War on Poverty ended, and poverty
won. Unfortunately, Reagan's brain turned to Swiss cheese before he could wave
the white flag ending his ill-conceived drug war.

Speaking of which, is the War on Drugs over? If so, somebody forgot to tell the
DEA about it. Otherwise, if this administration thinks we can carry out
simultaneous wars against drugs, terrorism and Iraq, they must be smoking
crack.

In fact, the War on Drugs was never a real war but simply a slogan designed to
explain away all the moral difficulties inherent in killing South Americans and
inner-city U.S. citizens, as well as providing a convenient excuse for
mandatory minimum sentences. The drug war could never be won except in the
unlikely event that everybody, everywhere suddenly chose to stop using
psychoactive substances.

Likewise, the War on Terrorism can never be won until everybody in the world
realizes that violence never solves anything, and it's always best to engage
one's oppressors in rational discussion. When that happens, pigs will sprout
wings, and Beelzebub will sled to work.

Still, declaring a War on (fill in the blank) sounds cool. It's got "cojones."
If Bush the Elder had declared a War on High Gas Prices or a War on Unwed
Mothers, or something, he might have won a second term.