Go read VDH today:

We do have a grave problem in this country, but it is not the plan for Iraq, the neoconservatives, or targeting Saddam. Face it: This present generation of leaders at home would never have made it to Normandy Beach. They would instead have called off the advance to hold hearings on Pearl Harbor, cast around blame for the Japanese internment, sued over the light armor and guns of Sherman tanks, apologized for bombing German civilians, and recalled General Eisenhower to Washington to explain the rough treatment of Axis prisoners.

Just for the record - I think VDH it nuts. I enjoy a good rant, and there's no reason to let reality get in the way of a full head of steam, but really,... The WWII analogy to the conflict with extremist Islam is so bad that the only real point of contact is that it's really important we win. Seeing as how this is a war of ideas and perceptions, holding a little hearing now and then to show that we take little things like justice and truth seriously might not be a bad idea.

I wouldn't object to "holding a hearing now and then," nor do I suspect that VDH would, if the purpose were actually to do that, but they tend to instead turn into political bludgeons, and the weeks of self-flagellation over it, and apologies to despots, at some point become counterproductive to our supposed values.

The WWII analogy to the conflict with extremist Islam is so bad that the only real point of contact is that it's really important we win.

The key parallel to me, that many don't seem to recognize, is that we are at war with a fascistic totalitarian ideology. The weapons are different, as is the symmetry (or lack thereof), but we are in a war to the finish as we were then, and there doesn't seem to be that sense among many, particularly among the Dems. If we weren't at war, I'd be at least tempted to vote for Kerry (as long as I could be sure that the Republicans would hang on to the Hill), but he seems too profoundly unserious about our enemy for me to feel comfortable in doing so.

By the way, Andrew, you (and others) really should Read The Whole Thing, if you haven't, because my excerpt is a little misleading. It's actually not that much about WW II--that's just the part I excerpted.

The big difference is that in WWII the shape of victory was pretty damn clear - specific land was occupied, papers were publically signed, POW's turned over etc etc.

I've never heard a non-handwaving description of what 'winning' looks like in the War on Terror. Which is a bit of a problem with applying the whole 'war' paradigm to this case.

Duncan said: "I've never heard a non-handwaving description of what 'winning' looks like in the War on Terror. Which is a bit of a problem with applying the whole 'war' paradigm to this case."

And this lack of "symmetry" is one of the weapons of terrorists in this PC age. It's hard to fight as nation against an enemy with no base nation of its own, and doing so dredges up the label of "imperialist".

I did read the whole thing, which is why I think he's nuts :-)

I agree wholeheartedly with this bit:Historic forces of the ages are in play. If we can just keep our sanity a while longer, accept our undeniable mistakes, learn from them, and press on, Iraq really will emerge as the constitutional antithesis of Saddam Hussein, and that will be a good and noble thing — impossible without America and its most amazing military.

I don't want to spend forever on details, but suffice to say he's bitching about division while being extremely divisive himself. His presentation of the positions of opponents of the way the waris being conducted is inaccurate, giving him a handy straw man to knock down. The WWII comparison is the most egregious example, but it's not isolated.

He's not really nuts, just wrong. He has some good points, but they get buried in misdirection, distortions, and irrelevancies passed off as insight. He writes a good stem-winder, but it's entertainment, not information.

Duncan - winning looks like this:
No major terrorist acts accomplished
No major terrorist acts foiled
No major terrorist acts planned by people with the resources to carry them out
No major terrorist groups with significant resources, either private or state sponsored
No broad popular support of terrorism in any nation
No government sponsorship of terrorism through third parties or through their own military or intelligence services

Bonus points for:
Stability in the middle east
Double bonus points for:
Prosperous democratic arab regimes in the middle east.

I did read the whole thing, which is why I think he's nuts :-)

OK, just wanted to make sure.

No major terrorist acts planned by people with the resources to carry them out
No major terrorist groups with significant resources, either private or state sponsored

What do those look like?

Andrew,
Replace "major terrorist acts" with "drug use" in your list and you might see why I'm worried.

I concur with your take on VDH, though. His accusations relating to the word "neocon" is exactly the sort of strawman PC victimology rubbish that he would reject in any other circumstance.

His accusation is perfectly valid in the case of many commenters. To many, particularly in Europe (and at the Beeb) it's obvious that it's simply become a synonym for "Jew." Hitchens observed this a while ago.

Friday Afternoon + Interesting Blog conversation = not so much work done.

Me:
No major terrorist acts planned by people with the resources to carry them out
No major terrorist groups with significant resources, either private or state sponsored
Rand:
What do those look like?

I'm not 100% sure I understand the question, but what the heck:
Major terrorist acts are terrorist acts which have large social impact (casualties aren't the big deal - obviously it is if you lose someone you love, but terrorism is about terror, not casualties). The Madrid bombings were major. The routine molotov cocktail through the window of an abortion clinic isn't, and neither is the Animal Liberation Front type of vandalism. If nobody is driving policy through terrorism, then there are no major terrorist acts happening.

Major terrorist groups are terrorist groups capable of carrying out significant acts of terrorism. They may be of any size, and just being big and supporting terrorism isn't enough - there are large groups with terrorist sympathies who can be better dealt with through law enforcement (some of the more radical anti-abortion groups in the US, frex). The division seems to me to be between those threats which are appropriate to address militarily and those which are better handled through law enforcement. It's a fuzzy line, though.

To a certain extent it's like obscenity - ya know it when ya see it.

More to the point, the terrorism isn't the issue - it's a conflict with extremist islam, as you've pointed out elsewhere. I don't like the word 'war' in this context, because to a large extent this fight will be won be changing perceptions, not by bombing people. We'll really win when Jihadi clerics are having a hard time finding followers. The Jihadi clerics will never go away, though - but the point will come when the lure of economic prosperity beats the lure of martyrdom. At that point there will not be a possibility of constructing a major terrorist organization, because of the impossibility of finding sufficient recruits and resources.

What I mean by the question is that it's very obvious, even to the casual observer, when skyscrapers fall down, and it's obvious to the people who foil them when plots are foiled, but a world in which terrorist acts are planned, and in which terrorist groups making such plans exist, can look very much like one in which they don't (as we found out on September 11).

I guess a more clear way of phrasing it is, how do we get adequate intelligence to know that we aren't missing something?

I guess a more clear way of phrasing it is, how do we get adequate intelligence to know that we aren't missing something?

That's genuinely difficult. I don't have a pat answer that will fit in a blog comment, and I'm not really sure I could do it in a multi-page essay. I'll note that democracy alone isn't enough to ensure non-support of terrorism: citizens of the USA actively supported the IRA during its attacks on our ally, the UK. One of the major sources of IRA funds was Irish 'patriots' in the US. If we end up no worse off than the UK during the height of the IRA violence, we've lost the war. Incidentally, as a dual national of the US and UK, I have thought about this quite a bit, and concluded that the UK would have been justified in conducting assassinations on US soil in order to cut IRA funding. It wouldn't have been smart, but it would have been justified.

A free and democratic Iraq with room for political dissent would almost certainly include a large faction actively supporting Palestinian attacks on Israel. That is one reason dealing with Israel/Palestine is so important - even if we don't give a rat's ass about the safety of Israel (which I certainly do, for a variety of reasons), the mere existence of networks supporting the export of political violence is dangerous to a free state. They are quite likely to turn their attention from the enemy without to the enemy within - goodbye democracy.

The upshot is that there is no way to really be sure. The best we can do is work for a status quo which is generally perceived by all parties to be basically fair. There will always be bitching (after all, bitching is a sacrament of liberty :-) The success criterion is when bitching is only translated into violence in rare cases. There is no way to be sure other than long periods without attacks. Even so, since an attack can come out of the blue. there is no way to be certain. OBL gave a lot of warning that he was building up to something, though. It's not like 9/11 was a surprise in the sense that someone wanted to do something on that scale and had the resources to credibly attempt it. The details were a surprise, but not the intent or the capacity. By the mid 1990s it was clear that OBL was a major problem and had to be dealt with. Clinton's failure to do so is inexcusable. If we end up in a situation where Khobar Towers type attacks occur less than once every decade or so, followed by total eradication of their perpetrators and the networks supporting them, I'd call that victory.

I realize this isn't an answer, but perhaps it's a half-decent parametrization of the question. I'd be interested to hear your thought on the IRA analogy in particular.