Existential Threats

After 9/11, a political cartoon was published that featured a rat which had plucked a single feather from an eagle. The rat was celebrating deliriously, blissfully unaware of the now-aroused eagle glaring down on him from above. The lesson, of course, was that 9/11 was, in the grand scheme, not a crushing blow to the United States or a mortal wound. Our ability to fight against terrorism was not in any way weakened. All that happened was they awakened a sleeping giant. And now they'd pay the price.

I bring up this cartoon for two reasons. First, because we need to resist all the comparisons that make the War on Terror akin to World War II or the Civil War or other existential threats to American security. It isn't. That isn't to say we shouldn't fight it. But in terms of what powers we grant our government, what information we give to the press, etc., there is a qualitative difference between those past wars and the current conflict. We didn't grant the government special powers because the Confederacy or Nazis were evil (although they were). We gave them because the very existence of the country was threatened. Terrorism can pose such a threat (in Iraq or Israel, perhaps), but it simply does not here and now. The al-Qaeda navy will not be blockading Charleston harbor. Islamist troops are not marching on Minneapolis. There is a limit to the military damage al-Qaeda can do to us, and it's not very high. So everyone who compares the NYT's disclosure of Bush's wiretapping program to code-disclosure in WWII, stop it. You're embarrassing yourselves.

The second point is that while al-Qaeda cannot truly hurt us directly, there are lots of ways it can hurt us indirectly. For example, as Tom Friedman noted, they can destroy the networks of trust and freedom that keep our country great. And that's the other thing: it seems some people's strategy for fighting terror is for America to systematically pluck out our own feathers and use them to suffocate the rat. It could work, but it's win-win in all the wrong ways: We succeed in defeating al-Qaeda, and they succeed in obliterating the rights and values that make our nation great. Frankly, I'd rather just stomp on the rat, or work with other eagles to kill the rat, or isolate and starve the rat to death, since none of those options involve metaphorical self-mutilation. Does not being able to torture detainees make our nation less safe from terrorism? Maybe yes, maybe no, but even if it does it's only in the same sense that not locking up every American male makes us less safe from crime. I know that we can win this conflict without giving up our soul, so I see very little point in sacrificing it simply to show how tough and manly we are.

Again, this isn't to say we should not fight the war on terror vigorously and with a will to win. It's merely saying that we should not give up our precious rights and privileges under false notions that we're in a do-or-die scenario. Somebody has to say it: al-Qaeda isn't worth these sacrifices, and too many people are far too eager to demolish the foundations of the nation for no reason at all.