War to last, whatever its name
Thursday, September 29, 2005
am New York
What’s in a name? Before our current international conflict we had the "Cold War", a phrase tailor-made for headline-writers. For the past four years the media have been besotted with "War On Terror", but the tag has recently been revamped.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers (now uncomfortably famous as Uncle Dick to Homeland Security’s new but dubiously-qualified Immigration and Customs "enforcer", Julie Myers) has urged reporters to employ some more awkward but maybe more accurate phrasing - the "Struggle Against Violent Extremism".
Have acronym-fanciers, a group that embraces headline-writers, taken full notice that WOT (embarrassingly close to "What?") has to make way for SAVE, as in … maybe ... "save the world"?
Whatever it is called, a major question the conflict now raises is one of time. The Cold War, after all, had a finite lifespan -- say 48 years in the end. How long will SAVE go on, especially its subdivision which daily proceeds so bloodily in Iraq?
American journalism finds it a difficult question to address. Last weekend’s Washington march demanding "Bring the troops home NOW" was dwarfed by continuing coverage of Gulf Coast hurricane damage. The New York Times picked for its front-page picture the next day wranglers rescuing steers in neck-high water. Eye-catching certainly, but more important than the DC protest?
CURSORY MARCH REPORTS FOCUSED on the slain Army Specialist Casey Sheehan’s mother Cindy Sheehan, in succeeding days silenced in New York and then arrested with hundreds of others back in Washington. Her case throughout has simply been instant withdrawal.
President George W Bush’s point-man on public perception, Karl Rove – a man more used to leaking than being leaked – expressed his assessment of Ms Sheehan’s role at a confidential business-oriented event in Aspen, only to be quoted openly on Arianna Huffington’s weblog. With his customary delicacy, Rove said: "Cindy Sheehan is a clown".
What Rove lacks in ordinary human decencies he perhaps compensates for with political sharpness. Aspen attendees heard him also say: "No serious politician … would show his face at an anti-war rally". Prominent Democrats are undeniably circumspect about having the press quote them on withdrawal, or operational timelines.
POLITICIANS APART, PROJECTING THE COURSE of major conflicts is traditionally the province of grand strategic journals like Foreign Affairs, published by the Council on Foreign Relations. Possibly its most celebrated article ever remains the Cold War prophecy written in 1947 by diplomatic luminary George F. Keenan, under the pseudonym "X". He authoritatively prefigured the "Containment" policy that would keep communism in check worldwide - very effectively, in many observers’ eyes - until Moscow’s final 1991 defeat.
Foreign Affairs is again stirring things up with "How to Win in Iraq" by Andrew Krepinevich, director of Washington’s Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. He foresees a lengthy struggle, with US troop levels finally diminishing, but only if a strong and supple political strategy is adopted alongside military operations, and well-trained Iraqi troops can take up the security burden. Like many military analysts before him, Krepinevich looks to that rare success-story of an occupying force facing down a local insurgency – Britain’s Malayan Emergency of the 1950s.
So how long does this painstaking study predict for accomplishing success in Iraq? Quite flatly, the analyst stipulates "a decade of commitment".