Has there ever been a time in human history in which a populace is less affected, more insulated from the horrors and ravages of war? Here we are – a nation at war, for 8+ years, with a stateless enemy on multiple, global fronts (the mountains of Afghanistan, the deserts of Iraq and Yemen, and in madrashes, mosques, dorms the world over). How can we measure success? Both Afghanistan and Iraq have held free, yet questionable public elections.
But with the news of three American service personnel killed today in Pakistan (yet another front, forever tied to Afghanistan) and scores more dead outside Karbala, Iraq from a female suicide bomber, where are we in our War on Terror?
In the movie Lions for Lambs, Tom Cruise’s character – US Senator Jasper Irving – presses Meryl Streep as a Washington reporter: Do you want to win the War on Terror or not?
Almost a decade into this distant, perilous fight, one wonders, “Will we ever win a war on an abstraction?”
Along with the three Americans killed in Pakistan, three school girls are dead. Three girls who were at school, trying to learn, in a country and region long hostile to women’s rights, are now among the hundreds of thousand innocent victims of this seemingly endless war.
The enemy can never be eradicated for he – the idea of unbridled, relentless fear – is a sad part of human existence. The enemy’s soldiers care not for our ideals, they care not for their fellow citizens, and they care not for this world. Death becomes them and that is why this war will never end until the forces of hate, fear, and intolerance run out of fodder.
