For most Americans, the truth is that the war on terrorism hardly touches their lives. For the few that have friends or relatives in the armed services, there may be some personal connection. But it isn't like there is a draft or the prospect of significant American military casualties, even in a full-fledged war with Iraq. The economy may be in the toilet, but it is not because of war shortages or changes in industrial production driven by war needs. It is not like there is going to be rationing. Travel has been inconvenienced and tourism disrupted. But in no way are these the dark days of either World War II or the nuclear arms race during the Cold War, when the survival of America was at stake.

So on the one hand, the warfare label is appropriate because wars come in more than one flavor and the debate over whether this is or isn't war seems so, well, academic. But on the other, the label leads the administration to think that it doesn't have to explain, and that it can take enormous liberties with American freedoms. As a war in Iraq looms, it appears that the Bush team is caught between an old-fashioned concept of warfare and a response that is appropriate both to the threat and to our day.

On the one hand, it mounts a multi-dimensional civilian effort in response to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida that favors law enforcement methods, financial warfare and worldwide CIA covert actions. On the other, it has thousands of Army and Marine Corps troops stuck in Afghanistan, spending more time feeding and guarding themselves than "fighting." On the one hand, Rumsfeld and company employs U.S. special forces in modern quick strikes, while at the same time they construct a network of bases and military support installations in the Middle East and Central Asia, a network that does more to sustain itself and create diplomatic headaches and animosities and future threats for America that it does to kill a single terrorist.

Meanwhile, the Bush team postures that it understands al-Qaida and the difference between old and new war by saying that bin Laden and his followers are engaged in a new era of "asymmetrical" warfare, that they have found some inhumane super weapon and could deliver a knockout blow if we fail to be vigilant enough or martial enough in our response to hatred and fundamentalism. If we go to war against Iraq, we will win. No question about it.

But shouldn't we also ponder the implications of the lopsided military victories that the United States has achieved when it has employed force in the last 12 years? I am not arguing that we need to place ourselves in a position to die in the name of an image of chivalry that comes from the Middle ages. We need, however, to recognize that our use of the remote instrument of air power and modern warfare, our magnificent ability to largely remain above the battlefield and the enemy, now coupled with our seeming arrogance towards the rest of the world, and our tendency to fall back upon secrecy and government control, all feeds a distrust and contempt in our adversaries and potential adversaries.

The next generation of terrorist is being spawned today because of these attributes. The asymmetric strikes of terrorists are spawned at Khobar Towers and USS Coles and World Trade Centers because of the very fact that no terrorist organization or military or state can hope to successfully confront us on our battlefield, a battlefield which is modern and networked and decentralized and chaotic and in space and in the air. Instead they have to use our modernity, our networked society, our media, our openness and exposure, to hurt us.

In our superiority, there is thus a special burden, one that challenges our values and our humanity. If we doggedly hue to the position that we will "win," that we always win, that we are doing what is right, that we are pursuing our interests, that we will act unilaterally regardless of what the rest of the world thinks, we also are missing the fact that there is intrinsically some spiritual damage done in our action, and by our very greatness, and by the very mode of warfare we engage in. Pursuing interests and pursuing values are two different things.

When we cozied up to Iraq during the 1980s we sacrificed our values and pursued our interests. When we tolerate the Gulf kingdoms and the oil autocracies, we do the same thing. When we look the other way about human rights or treaty obligations or two-faced double dealings, we not only compromise ourselves in the process, but we convey the wrong message, which is that we have no values, that we are for sale, even in the minds of many in the Arab world that we work on behalf of others.

Finally, with regards to our friends, there is real reason for alarm that we are just merely creating a world of permanent confrontation. Bush and company call the war on terror open ended. Such a characterization reveals a lack of ability to foresee an outcome and betrays a muddled sense of strategy, strategy that is based on American values and our aesthetic and our way of life. It is for that reason that they need help in seeing what they are doing. They hardly have all of the answers.

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