President Bush ceaselessly reiterates that winning the war in Iraq is essential to winning the “War on Terror.” Good luck with that. The BBC sums it up nicely: “The Americans control the air, but they’ve never properly controlled the ground, and thus they’re losing the war.” And as for the “surge strategy”, we “may have found the right tactic…but if so…it’s at least two years too late.” That’s pretty much Iraq in a nutshell. Vietnam with sand.

     More to the point, Bush and his advisors are labouring under a basic misapprehension  of the nature of terrorism and how to combat it. They associate terrorism with nation states, and specific religious and political groups. They assume that you can fight terrorism the way you would prosecute any other war, by invading nations, bombing stationary targets, and suppressing specific political and religious organizations in those nation states. Wrong. Fighting terrorists the way you’d fight a nation state with clearly defined boundaries accomplishes nothing. The terrorists simply melt away and reform elsewhere, while the United States has overextended all its resources in a global game of ‘whack-a-mole.’ Hit ‘em all you want, the little buggers just keep popping back up. The only thing invading Iraq has accomplished is to destabilize the entire Middle East, and hand Al Qaeda (stronger than ever, according to recent government reports) a handy battlefield from which to train and recruit. Even Bill Clinton wasn’t that stupid. We left tyrannical ‘ol Saddam Hussein alone for decades because frankly, toppling him would have caused exactly the problems we are currently facing with Iran…who just happens to control the straights through which we ship most of the world’s oil supply. Not to mention the fact that Al Qaeda was never tolerated in Iraq in the first place, because, frankly, Saddam didn’t want the competition. And right now, Al Qaeda is cosily ensconced between Afghanistan and Pakistan in a geographic area that has defeated every army from the British to the Soviets. President Bush has completely missed the boat in the “War on Terror” because HE DOES NOT UNDERSTAND THE NATURE OF TERRORISM.

      The nature of terrorism is this: THERE IS ALWAYS ONE. There is always one grade A number one NIMROD who thinks blowing stuff up will make things better. And there is ALWAYS one direction we weren’t looking, one group that slid under our radar. Always. Terrorists are like Doritos; crunch all you want, they’ll make more. Terrorism is best understood as a lighting strike, a force of nature, an unalterable fact of human nature. Just when you think you’ve eradicated it, up pops another nut with a grievance and explosives. Or a dirty bomb. Or God forbid, a vial of smallpox. How’s that vaccination program going, Senator? We’ve been through all this in the seventies; that was the last time the United States vowed to wipe out terrorism. Here’s a fact: it can’t be done. You cannot always see ‘em coming; while you’re looking at ‘persons of interest’ and bombing some small Iraqi village, there will always be one you don’t see coming in from left field.

    So the best place for the U.S. to put its money and resources is NOT in an uncontrolled global offensive with incalculable “blowback”, as the CIA likes to say. The best way to defend Americans from terrorism is to put our money in DEFENSE. Our government should be blowing the budget out on  airport scanners, container cargo scanners, freight car security, vaccination programs, response plans, and first responders with the right equipment to save lives and limit damage. It only takes one mislabeled cargo container from China with a dirty bomb inside to ruin a port city’s day. And how about a national health system that’s actually equipped to deal with the inevitable biological outbreak?

      Bottom line, you don’t want to be the one with your #### hanging out, praying for the rescue that didn’t come because our government took the sucker’s bet that they could stop a terrorist attack ahead of time-and missed covering the sure thing. Think about it. All that money, and all those lives spent attempting to ‘stabilize’ the Middle East. The Israelis have been trying for fifty years. Ain’t gonna happen, folks. Besides, the attack will come from some other direction-as usual. Say, a disaffected former Russian satellite country. Or a crazed Chinese worker who slips a vial of smallpox into a cargo container of rubber ducks. Or what if it’s not political? What if there is no ‘cause’, no sleeper cell, no one to tail or eavesdrop on? What if terrorism goes ‘Columbine’? Come on, spin that wheel. And know, that Knute Rockne notwithstanding, the best defense…is a good defense.