We are traveling blindly. Perhaps our nation's leaders know what the future holds; perhaps they have everything mapped out like a grand game of chess. Perhaps they expected Iran's reaction to our attacks on Afghanistan. Perhaps they knew exactly where anti-U.S. rallies would begin in Pakistan and, certainly, they are counting on Pakistan military leader General Pervez Musharraf keeping it all under wraps. Perhaps coincidentally, we cannot possibly know, a few days before we began bombing Afghanistan, Musharraf put a leading pro-Taliban cleric under house arrest. He is watching his back pretty closely, reordering the power structure in Pakistan, shuffling two generals that assisted in his 1999 coup and the head of the Pakistan's intelligence agency'all of whom have links to Islamic militant groups and the Taliban'into lesser roles.
President Bush and his war council, I perceive, know what they are doing, or at least assume they do. They have weighed the pros and cons, made their alliances against terrorism and now they have decided to strike back. CNN tells me as much: It's 'America Strikes Back,' they say. Complete with the return of green footage and pundits making the war all the more accessible, and all the more detached, like a sadistic Hollywood image.
Perhaps all we can do is hope.
Most of us really have no clue what is going on or what will happen next. Sure, we can read and watch all we want, take note of what Bush says, what newspapers say the world over. We can watch our cable news networks give us fast and furious images of the events and the briefings and watch as they broadcast us a chilling film of Osama bin Laden pronouncing that we will never have security, unless on his terms.
But, quite frighteningly, we are waiting and hoping.
Fighting an enigma will do that to you.
As I write this, our nation is assessing the success of Sunday's strikes as we begin Monday's round of explosions, with public opinion throughout the Middle East tilting against us.
Iran has condemned our actions, citing danger to civilians. Many may say, 'Who needs them? We haven't exactly been on the best of terms with them anyway.' But even in these times, Iran may dislike the Taliban even more than we do, and they have a heck of a lot more experience dealing with them and dealing with the politics of the region than we do.
The coalition against terrorism is intact, but for how long? A month? A year? 40 years? The question is as open-ended as the questions of when will we be satisfied and what will we do next?
Currently, patriotism is seething wildly and some 90 percent of the country favors our military actions'so much that true debate over our foreign policy has been pretty much suffocated. As we tend to do, the debate over what to do has become a yay or nay debate. Just as normally people are simplistically painted as liberal or conservative, regardless of the diversity of views that exist within either category, now we are painted as either patriots or apologists. Sigh.
What happens when the poll ratings start to go down? What happens when we have not seen any discernible gain from our actions after months or perhaps years? Of course, we will have to claim progress in perpetuity in order to keep the war fervor going and, of course, we will have no idea what is really going on.
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfield denies that we attacked Kabul. The Taliban denies that we destroyed anything of real significance. No one in his or her right mind would trust the proclamations of the Taliban, but given the circumstances, who is to say that we are going to get entirely honest information from any political leader?
Reading press releases from various politicians Sunday, the whole thing started reminding me of 1984. We are being asked to think monolithically to show our solidarity in fighting this enigma. What happens if we get bin Laden? Once upon a time we thought killing Pablo Escobar and breaking up the cartels would destroy the drug trade.
On the other hand, what happens if we do not go after him?
Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., told the Associated Press Sunday, 'They were coming at us either way, so we have only one alternative, and that is to try to destroy this organization and destroy these terrorists.'
Perhaps our actions will fan the flames of hatred and violence, and perhaps they will actually snuff out terrorism. Perhaps Pakistan will fall into civil war. Perhaps Israel and the Palestinians will fall deeper into the abyss, or perhaps we will actually prod them to reconciliation and peace. We simply do not know. The best that most of us can do is hope.
