The Price of Freedom

This editorial by Jonah Goldberg makes two good points, summarizing well the enemy we face today with the Islamists. Click the link on the title above to read the whole story.

"...let me make two simple points. First, the Cold War was a conflict in which the actions of our enemies were essentially rational. The spoiled secular aristocrats who ran the Soviet Union didn't want to get incinerated in a nuclear war. Their tactics and ambitions reflected this, particularly in the second half of the conflict. The Politburo became, essentially, small-c conservative: evil and tyrannical, but pretty darn cautious about not doing anything to lose their dachas.

Our current enemy is the complete and total opposite. Where the Soviets were rational and bent on self-preservation, the Islamists are irrational and relatively comfortable with suicide. Where the Soviets were dependent on conventional armaments and interested in diplomatic routes, the Islamists must use non-traditional, barbaric terrorism. Where the Soviets had defined borders and interests, the Islamists merely have a vast sea of people and nations to roam, their interests and assets submerged in shadowy webs and networks that mostly exist below the radar of the legal economy.

But most important: The Soviets could be deterred; the Islamists cannot be. It is the difference between fighting a bastard of a neighbor who's got a home and family to defend and fighting a Charles Manson cult that wanders into town. I don't mean to downplay the institutionalized evil that was the Soviet Union; I still think we blew it when we didn't knock out Stalin in 1946. That was a blunder that makes not cleaning out Fallujah look like forgetting to put the garbage out. But, as a foreign-policy challenge, diplomacy with the Soviets was often practical and, needless to say, possible.

There simply is no diplomacy with the enemy today. So, that means going on offense. That means taking the fight to them. That means, in the short term, "creating" more extremists and terrorists by fighting on their home turf. But the point isn't merely to fight them, it's to pull the rug out from under them. The ultimate goal is democracy, of course. But the interim goal is to rationalize the Middle East so that, while it may still produce enemies, they will be ones we can deal with around a table, not a crater. And the short-term goal is to kill lots of them where they live, instead of them doing the same to us.

So sure, Bush hasn't done everything right — never mind perfectly — in Iraq. Churchill didn't conduct World War II perfectly every time either. Dunkirk wasn't the sort of thing that happens when the war goes swimmingly. But Bush gets all of this. John Kerry doesn't, in my opinion. Or, to be more accurate, John Kerry "gets" everything and therefore nothing. If the choice were between Bush and a better commander-in-chief, I might not vote for Bush. But that's not the choice, now is it?

Hat tip: Blogs of War