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When my brother was eight and I was nine, we collected tin foil—from chewing gum wrappers and cigarette packs mostly.  When the balls of foil were the size of baseballs, we turned them in at a store near our home.  Every other kid we knew did likewise.  It was 1943, and there was a war on.  I have never heard it suggested that this activity had a decisive effect on war production, but I think our leaders were wise to sponsor it.  War is about pain.  Groups injure each other.  One wins when the other can no longer take it.  It's easier to bear pain when others share it.  It's harder to quit when you're letting others down.  In war it's wise to involve as many of your people as possible.  Today, however, the president, with no complaint from the opposition leadership, asks us to pretend things are normal and go about our private business.  When the next attack comes, we are liable to react as isolated and helpless individuals rather than as a determined nation.  A very competent commission established by the Council on Foreign Relations tells us we are no better prepared now than we were a year ago.  The commission's report http://www.cfr.org/publication.php?id=5099 is worth reading, but the newspapers are alarming enough.  Al Qaeda, its leadership still at large, is back on the offensive.  Whoever attacked us last fall with a biological weapon remains free to do so again if he or she cares to.  And a malcontent of no special gifts or training, terrorized our capital for weeks and would still be at it had he not grown bored with how easy it was and began giving the police hints.  One wonders, do our leaders take the war seriously?  Have they realized we could lose? As a nation we have had our idea of war muddled through irresponsible use of language.  President Johnson declared a "war" on poverty.  President Nixon declared a "war" on drugs.  The point in both cases was to attach the seriousness of warfare to the need to solve a social problem, but in neither case are we anywhere near a solution.  Instead of making us take poverty and drugs seriously, the metaphors made war seem frivolous..

Francis Bacon, central panel of Three Studies for a Crucifixtion 1962.  Francis Bacon was an Anglo-Irish painter whose paintings of screaming popes and mangled figures shocked the post WWII art world.  Many will remember his work from the opening credits of Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris. Bacon became part of the art scene that developed in Tangiers, Morroco in the 1950s, though he painted in London.  In Tangiers, he befriended Jane Bowles, William Burroughs and Tennessee Williams.  He died in 1992 in Madrid, Spain at the age of 83.

Things are muddled further with the sudden introduction of a new doctrine of “pre-emptive” war against states which have not attacked us but might in the future, along with a proposal to invade Iraq, alone if necessary, to install a new government.  The doctrine departs from a policy as old as the country itself of not initiating warfare, a policy that emanates from and conforms to our national self-image.  Teddy Roosevelt advised us to “carry a big stick”, but first he admonished us to “walk softly.”  The proposed invasion worries admirals and generals as being liable to provoke a general war in the region and is certain to divert resources from our effort to deal with those who have already attacked us and will surely attack us again.  And while our war against Al Qaeda drew unhesitating and valuable support from every quarter of the globe, these new schemes have turned almost every state against us.

Irresponsible leaders got us into a war in Vietnam that caused great suffering and grave damage to our national institutions yet turned out to have been needless:  we lost, and the enemy won, yet nothing bad happened.  Others led us to military victory in Iraq, then irresponsibly refused to win politically, leaving the tyrant in power and sitting by while he murdered thousands who had risen against him in response to our call.  We can no longer afford irresponsibility at the top.  The war we’re in now is different.  We have to fight, and we have to win.  Here are some responsible steps to strengthen us at home and in the world community.

Alternative energy sources:  We Americans are prone to substance abuse problems.  Our worst is oil.  It makes us the world's worst polluter—a big reason why not everyone beyond our borders loves us.  It also makes us dependent on the Middle East, restricting our policy choices with regard to the region.  Responsible leaders would have begun the quest for alternative energy sources years before anyone heard of Osama bin Laden.  That our current leaders still haven’t got around to it is shameful if not criminal.  The effort should begin at once, accompanied by a drive to save gasoline.

National service:  This is overdue also—18 months or two years of service for every young person in the country after high school or on turning eighteen, with military service one of many options.  Another should be service in auxiliary units to support police, fire and public health services. 

"I was born in Dublin, in 1909, but that was in a nursing home: the place where we lived was a house called Canny Court, near a small town called Kilcullen in County Kildare...And I lived for a time with my grandmother, who married the Commissioner of Police for Kildare, and we lived in a sandbagged house and, as I went out, these ditches were dug across the road for a car or horse-and-cart or anything like that to fall into, and there would be snipers waiting on the edges". Francis Bacon

American citizenship is one of the world's most valuable commodities, yet people tend to undervalue what they get for nothing.  Nothing will strengthen us more than fostering the idea that each of us owes a debt to our country, while nothing will benefit our young people more than having something larger than themselves to sacrifice for. Taxes:  War is expensive.  Since September 11th we have necessarily increased military and security spending massively.  Fiscal responsibility demands that these expenditures be offset.  Fortunately, we may not have to impose new taxes if we instead rescind the tax voted last year but due to take effect in years to come, largely to the benefit of the wealthy.  It weakens our country for the rich to get tax breaks while the sons and daughters of working people defend them.  Those who complain should be asked if they think they are suffering more than the families of service members overseas, or people who lost loved ones on September 11th.  Incompetent commanders:  General Tommy Franks should have been relieved of command on the first night of the war in Afghanistan.  A Predator drone had a bead on Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader.  The decision to fire lay with General Franks in Tampa.  He consulted a legal officer and on the lawyer’s advice let Mulla Omar get away.  What General Franks was thinking of is beyond conjecture, but he was certainly not thinking of his fellow Americans forced by flames to leap from the twin towers, or of his fellow soldiers incinerated at their desks in the Pentagon.  The commanders in charge at Tora Bora, and in other actions where the Al Qaeda leadership was allowed to escape, should be relieved also.  These officers assigned crucial battlefield roles to local forces lacking the training, motivation, or discipline of U.S. units and led by warlords of dubious loyalty.  Al Qaeda has attacked us with determination.  We owe it to our dead to respond with our best effort

The world community:  In recent months our country has withdrawn from the Kyoto agreement on the environment, refused to sign the treaty banning land mines, and opposed the establishment of an international tribunal, although all were originally American ideas. Similarly, the administration has shown little respect for the United Nations, although our country took the lead in founding that organization.  We cannot afford this disdain for the concerns and institutions of the world community, for we cannot defend ourselves against terrorists without the cooperation of other countries.

Follow through:  A lot remains to be done in Afghanistan, and we are not doing it.  Al Qaeda is in part our creation, born from our encouraging the Afghans to resist the Soviet Union and our neglect once that resistance succeeded.  Defeating Al Qaeda depends in significant measure on support for our war effort in the Islamic world, and the key here is for us to make our victories beneficial to the Islamic world as well as to ourselves.  A lawless, impoverished Afghanistan is not a good advertisement for us.

Focus:  We are rightly concerned about weapons of mass destruction, but only terrorists can get these to our population centers and hurt us badly enough to make us think of quitting.  We must focus on destroying Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups that may cooperate with them.  We must bring our intelligence and internal security services to the level of efficiency the war demands.  We must reestablish and preserve the broad coalition of support we enjoyed in the wake of September 11th.  Achieving these vital objectives will take all the resources and attention we can muster.  Sideshows, however briefly glorious and pleasant, are out of place now.  Our national existence is threatened.  We must behave accordingly.
 

R.M. Koster is the well-known author of the Tinieblas Trilogy. The first book of the Trilogy, The Prince, was nominated for the National Book Award and his other books have been translated into French, Spanish and Korean. His latest book is Glass Mountain. To read more about the author  - Click Here -

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