Unity in the Fight Against Terror

I love that euphemism, fight against terror. My mother once had to fight against terror - I was terrified of the monster under the bed after having seen some silly vampire movie. She fought against terror with the truth: There are no vampires. To attempt to fight physically against terror is a ridiculous premise: One can't wage a war against an emotional state.

Know your enemy, Sun Tsu writes, and know yourself and you will never be defeated. Our problem to start is that we don't know our enemy. It is not terror: Terror is an emotional state and not an enemy. The enemy are not cowards. It takes greater courage to fly an aircraft into a building than to release a bomb from an F-16 ten miles from an unsuspecting target. I don't seek to praise terrorists, the actual enemy, but if we're to fight them we need to know them and the picture we have of them does not fit the actuality.

As to knowing ourselves, I don't believe we are accurate in that respect either. Rumsfeld encourages unity in the war against terrorism even as the Coalition of the Duped unravels. We lose faith in a prevaricating president and a misnamed Defense Department (if the Defense Department exists to defend us, why do we need a Department of Homeland Security?). Our occupied allies in Iraq are now openly calling their war a civil war and it will continue to worsen with us in the middle. We do not know ourselves, either.

How do we intend to prevail? Stay the course is not a strategy either, Mr. President. Nor is hope. The insurgents can wait longer than we can and the terrorists aren't under a time schedule. Know your enemy, Mr. Bush. They can outwait us.