December 27, 2005 - If we are engaged in a War on Terror as the President says then where is the battlefield; who is the enemy; and how will we know that we have won? The facile answers are that the battlefield is in Iraq and Afghanistan; that the enemies are Islamic Radical Terrorists and we will know that we have won when Afghanistan and Iraq are stable and secure democracies. The real answer is that the battlefield is in the recesses and interstices of our own minds; that the enemies are ourselves; and that we will know we have won when we no longer march to the cadence beaten out by the fear mongers. We are not engaged in a war on terror but we are engaged in at least two wars.

We are engaged in that forgotten war in Afghanistan. It is a continuation of the war that 19th Century slogan makers dubbed The Great Game. For almost two centuries first one European power and then another has sought to impose its own client government on the Afghani tribes. Imperial Britain and Imperial Russia contested the mountain passes and desolate plains of Afghanistan. At the end of the last century a decade of occupation sent the Soviet Union down the slide to history’s ash heap. Now, in the first decade of this century America has stepped to the wicket for its inning. Not since Alexander marched this way and gave his name to Kandahar has any foreign army successfully subjugated this tribal people. But it is not a war on terror. It is a war to deny Osama Bin Laden a sanctuary. Its mission cannot be accomplished without an imperial investment in a perpetual garrison stationed there. Only then will we last out our inning in the Great Game.

We are engaged in a war to control Iraq. As in Afghanistan we have sought to install in Baghdad a client regime; one that will march dutifully along to an Anglo-American beat. We have seen the Iraqi people proudly wave their purple fingers as symbols of their three elections under the American imposed constitution that is Paul Bremer’s legacy to the Iraqi people. If, as it appears, the new democratically selected government is dominated by a Shiite Theocratic majority more closely aligned with Iran rather than the United States what have we won? If, as it appears, Iraq dissolves into a tri-partite civil war pitting Shiite against Sunni against Kurd must we stay the course in the crossfire? Which side are we on? Do we favor the Shiite religious majority and make the Sunni Arabs of Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi, and the Gulf States into our adversaries? Do we support the Sunni minority and drive the Shiites into the embrace of Iran? Do we back an autonomous Kurdistan and shake the foundations of our relationship with the Turks? In none of these outcomes do we “win”.