War on US Soil

["Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

US attitude toward war has been influenced by its unique history.
Except for the Civil War,
American experience with war has been remote, being that all recent wars
were fought on distant foreign
soil or international waters.  This has given Americans a notion of war
being heroic and romantic and
not particularly terrifying.  Also Americans entertain an illusion that
its wars can be stopped by political
will, i.e., when Americans decided that they have had enough, they can
just pack up and go home to
find better things to do.  That was the experience with all US wars
after WWII.  The US might not
achieved victory, but it was never exposed to any danger of real defeat,
in the sense that Germany and
Japan experienced defeat and occupation.  Thus to Americans, war is a
controlled exercise, with
comfortable downsides, not much different than a long football game,
with a little more blood.  Lately
even the blood part has been eliminated.  The Gulf War produced less US
casaulties than any long
week-end on american highways.

With the globalization of violence through asymmetrical warfare, the
situation has changed.  Death and
destruction can rain on US soil, on US properties and citizens, without
the need of an organized military
machine, but only a handful of committed suicidal warriors.
Furthermore, the superior military strength
that the US has built up proves to be useless, because of lack of
symmetry. A technological army needs
another technological army to fulfill its full potential.  Bombers with
cruise missiles that cost millions are
useless without pricey targets.  Also, safe airports against terrorism
turn out to cost much more to
achieve than sophisticate missile defense systems, and even then full
security cannot be guaranteed.
The nature of terrorism is that the astronomical cost of hyper effeorts
to maintain high security is the
damage.  Yet this self-inflicted damage cannot stop, for that is when
terrorism will strike again. Thus
with zero cost, the opponent can drain US resources at an alarming
rate.  As the Reagan adminstration
pushed the USSR into financial bankruptcy and political dissolution by
forcing it to squander its
resources on Star War, the terrorists are doing the same to the US, by
forcing the US to self-destruct its
excessively sophisticated economy of maximum leverage and just-in-time
inventory.  It forces the US to
adopt redundancy which is the fatal enemy of productivity.  The fear of
another terrorist attack and the
cost of trying to prevent that possibility will be hundreds of times
more damaging than the attack itself.
In the end, the US would have to negotiate and sue for peace, because
counter terroism will prove more
costly than terroism itself, and retaliation will end up blowing up
empty tents and vacant caves with
million dollar missiles, not to mention the toll on civil liberty and
other life quality issues that the US
values.

Fighting terrorism with terror means to win is to lose.


Henry C.K. Liu