Why We Fight

originally published October 3, 2001

In America's New War we face a cunning and deadly enemy, but that's nothing new. The Germans in both wars and the Japanese, Koreans and Vietnamese pushed us to the limits, as did the Russians all through the Cold War. The terrorists are more sinister because they have the proven ability to hit us at home, and, as guerrillas do, they turn our strengths against us. Let us remind ourselves that at the beginning of World War Two we were unprepared and were caught napping, but we came together as a nation and responded with courage and tenacity to win a two-front war. Thank goodness we have so far resisted the Clintonian response of just "bombing the hell" out of somebody and then going back to our preoccupation with interns.

As our nation assimilates our shock and grief and looks toward a response to the deadly attacks, we are naturally focused on how to hit back at the fanatical enemy. When somebody hits you unexpectedly, you don't stand there asking yourself what you did wrong, and little time has been given on the talk shows to an examination of our national aims. This is a bad time for such reflections, but tomorrow will be worse, and we'll go on with our new war without assessing weaknesses that hamper our efforts.

We can fight this new war better if we're clear about what we're fighting for. Our leaders naturally tend to describe this as a fight of good against evil - and clearly the attacks on the World Trade Center are evil - but let's not blind ourselves to evils of our own.

If, for instance, our primary national interest in the Middle East is unlimited access to cheap oil, we should as a nation face that fact and own up to it. We cannot successfully wage America's New War against religious fanatics if we don't understand our own war aims. They think we are evil and believe God rewards them for killing us. If we think they are evil and believe God rewards us for killing them, all we can do is slug it out in a holy war that compels us both to kill each other by any means and with any "collateral damage" justified.

If we can get past the rhetoric of good vs. evil and concentrate on our national interests, we can fight much more realistically. If we're asking American kids to risk dying in the desert not for good vs. evil but for oil, then we'll want to take a look at our dependence on oil, because we now can see our consumption of petroleum as a life or death matter. In that regard anything we can do to lessen consumption will give us more flexibility as we adjust to the winds of war and the control of oil in foreign hands.

Of course we'll have to take another look at developing our domestic supply. This could mean the destruction of the Alaskan wilderness and any other wilderness with oil under it. This could also mean that our coastal states will be further ringed with oil platforms and our beaches increasingly smeared with the attendant spills.

If we can get past the rhetoric of good vs. evil and concentrate on our national interests, we can fight much more realistically.

It could also mean that accelerated development of the high-tech solar energy cells we already use on spacecraft might become an attractive alternative to an oil-driven foreign policy. In that same light, since the gas shortages of an earlier generation, our automobiles and trucks have been inching ever upward in fuel consumption. Driving a big V-8 could be seen as an unpatriotic act if we understood the real cost in human lives.

The same goes for our city planning. In recent years, our citizens have increasingly wanted to put the brakes on automobile-driven sprawl and return to some semblance of protecting neighborhoods and centering residential areas near shopping, school and work. Our own citizens here in Athens-Clarke County clearly demonstrated their desire to follow such a model only to see our Commission cave in to developers locked into the profits of sprawl. Companies like Wal-Mart continue to build gigantic stores removed from urban centers so that every customer who walks in the front door has driven a considerable distance to get there.

America's New War forces us all, whether we want to or not, to re-think not only our war aims, but our way of living, so that we are not hampering our fighting stance with our lifestyle. World War Two, that storied time of heroism and victory, imposed incredible sacrifice at home: gasoline and food rationing, no new automobiles, little travel, Victory gardens. As we gear up for our new war, one thing we can do here at home is look with renewed seriousness toward making our community less automobile dependent, which our citizens have already said they want. Barnett Shoals Road presented a chance to make it easier for people to walk to the stores and restaurants on the East Side; converting unused rail beds to bicycle-pedestrian trails lessens petroleum dependence; so does providing bicycle access to our main streets and roads and encouraging the location of stores, shops and restaurants near people instead of where they're accessible only by automobile.

War has always speeded technological development; this one may force us back toward some basic principles. Riding a bicycle may turn out to be a good way to fight evil.