Are we really serious about surviving?
I was making notes for a posting that I would entitle, "This is total war, and we'd best act like it." But then Peggy Noonan beat me to the punch. As with everything Peggy writes, I am tempted simply to say, "Read it," and trust you will. But instead, since her thoughts parallel mine (only she is more eloquent than I), allow me this excerpt:

There is nothing the madmen would rather do than take out or disable two of the biggest, most central entities that unite us in America, the seat of our financial institutions and power and the seat of our government.

Be dire. Imagine: On the same day, New York and Washington are, say, dirty-nuked. This will cause chaos, pain and horror of almost unimaginable proportions. And yet we must imagine.

We are living in a time when it is one's patriotic duty to be imaginative. And then to imagine what we can do, now, to keep The Second Terrible Thing from happening, or to help us all survive and struggle through The Second Terrible Thing.

We are not doing this.

We are in the middle of another systems failure.

We are busy for instance debating absurdities. Such as: In an era in which certain Arab and Muslim males roughly 18 to 40 years old are taking active steps to severely damage the United States and kill Americans, is it wrong to give added scrutiny to Arab and Muslim males 18 to 40 years old as they attempt to enter America, board planes, rent charter planes and ask for maps to the nearest nuclear power plant?

How absurd and clueless do you have to be to be having this debate? You have to have surrendered all common sense.

What we seem not to be unable to comprehend is not that the Terror War is different from all others we have fought, but how it is different. We are fighting an enemy whose fundamental motivations are different from all others we have ever fought.

In 1776, England fought not to destroy America (its colonies) but to preserve them, more accurately, its rule over them so it could continue to reap the economic benefit of colonial vassalage.

The War of 1812 was begun by mistakes on both sides with no real strategic advantages imagined or gained by its end. The Treaty of Ghent that ended the war was negotiated on the basis of the status quo ante bellum.

The war with Mexico was basically a land grab and Mexico retained its independence after US forces withdrew. We kept land that later became California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

The Civil War was fought for southern independence on one side and preservation of the Union on the other. It was long and brutal and ended with a harsh occupation of most of the South by the US Army, but in the end, all that was lost (other than lives and treasure) by the South was its dream of independence and retention of slavery.

The Spanish-American War was an imperial war by America fought for false causes, unquestionably (IMO) the least just war America has fought (The Navy has proved that USS Maine was not sabotaged in Havana harbor). But we never threatened Spain's existence nor even threatened a raid on Spanish soil. And Spain sure never threatened America.

Americans fought World War I on lands distant from them. Our homeland was intact.

Neither Japan nor Germany seriously attempted to bring warfare to the American homeland during WW II. Japan never even planned to invade Oahu. Germany tried to develop a long-range bomber to bomb New York, but failed. German submarines sank American ships literally within sight of the coastline and landed a sabotage team in America (who were quickly captured), but the threat to America itself was weak to the point of non-existence.

The Korean War was fought to protect South Korea, not America. The Vietnam War was fought to protect South Vietnam, not America. In neither case was America itself threatened.

The Gulf War was fought to protect American interests in the Persian Gulf and to restore Kuwaiti independence. America, again, was not itself threatened.

What makes the Terror War different was not that our enemies attacked our homeland. The Germans and the Japanese would have done it if they could. (Japan tried to do so with balloon bombs.) What makes this war different is the means and motivations of our enemies.

Ho Chi Minh, classical communist dictator that he was, never considered terrorism against America as a means to his end. He used terrorism against the South, but never against America itself. Neither did Japan, Germany, Spain, Mexico or England.

Of all the enemies America has faced, terrorism is uniquely the weapon of our present enemies. They didn't invent terrorism but they are the first foreign force to use it against us. And it is their only weapon.

That fact is related to their objectives. Since the Civil War, no combat occurred on American soil proper until Sept. 11. 2001. All the enemies America has faced before used violence to achieve goals well short of destruction of our country. Japan only wanted us out of the way for them to create the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Germany didn't want to fight America at all in either world war. Spain and Mexico were not the aggressors and never could challenge American power. The English, now our staunchest ally, were the only foreign power to wreak destruction upon American soil before last summer. And they did so to preserve the status quo, not simply to kill Americans.

The present enemy is different because they have no objective they hope to accomplish by killing us. Killing us is the objective itself. The aims of Osama bin Laden and his allies are an open book. They have made their objectives explicitly clear, over and over, in their interviews, their writings and their clerics' announcements: they want to kill as many Americans as possible and destroy as many structures as possible that are most valued by Americans. That is their goal - it is their only goal. Their murderous violence is not a means to another end. Destruction is itself their end. They have said so themselves. Intelligence services and diplomats of Arab states have made it clear that if and when the terrorists obtain atomic weapons, they absolutely will use them to kill Americans.

This war can end only when the terrorists no longer have the means to strike us. There is no concession that the United States can offer to pacify them. There is no foreign policy change we can make that will satisfy them. Those things are not the things that have caused them to raise the sword. It is quite impossible for us to placate them, because we cannot culturally internalize their fundamentalist Islamism.

That's the difference. This fight is a fight for survival, and we have never done that before.