Anxiety Disorder

Something I read recently didn't sit well with me but the reason for it didn't really leap out at me so I didn't mention it.

Somebody wrote (and sorry I don't know where I saw it--maybe Strategypage--I'll look and link later if I get the chance. UPDATE: Ah, it was Strategypage.) that the Iranians gave us real support in the campaign against the Taliban and al Qaeda in 2001 and that the Iranians were really hurt that they still made it into the Axis of Evil speech. They were upset that they got no credit for their help. The implication seemed to be that we missed an opportunity to have better relations.

But I have to ask why they should have expected us to think better of them? They helped us for their own reasons unrelated to wanting to be our friend. They still carry out far more actions related to nuclear weapons (and other WMD) and terrorism that are clearly hostile in nature. Add their mullah dictatorship that makes them an awful regime internally and I wonder why Iran should get any credit at all?

Iran is our enemy and the only question is how we deal with them. With luck, dealing with them will preserve the good will of the Iranian people while smashing the regime that deprives Iranians of freedom and works to harm us and our friends.

And I have to ask what if we did respond favorably to Iran because they helped us in Afghanistan? Would we really get credit for being sophisticated and nuanced? Don't we essentially do this with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, for example? They are hardly ideal friends but since they are of use in fighting al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and pumping oil, respectively, we give them a pass for now in how they run their governments. And consider that their support is not a one-time action but ongoing. We may want Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to do more but we push them quietly. And don't tell me you haven't noticed an awful lot of complaints about our easy treatment of these two allies.

I'm not here to argue that critics of the Long War are hypocrites. Rather, as long as we are at war, anything we do will have consequences that we can't see yet. So any action--even opposite actions--are unclear in their future results. And those prone to being anxious about the future--those who counsel studying any action for years to come up with the "perfect plan" that anticipates every possible contingency--will worry about anything we actually do without the perfect plan in place.

Of course the perfect plan is not possible. It never will be. You can study an issue for two decades and in the end you won't even fully understand the issue of two decades ago let alone the evolving issue as it exists at the end of your study.

For the anxious, action itself is anxiety provoking and they will worry about ramications. Recall all the warnings of ecological, health, and refugee disasters that would follow both the "good" Afghan campaign and the "bad" Iraq campaign. They never happened but many critics of action were absolutely positive they would follow our actions. They don't seem to comprehend that inaction on our part is a choice too and there are ramifications for doing nothing. (I mean, wasn't that the whole point of administration critics who demanded to know why dots weren't connected prior to 9/11?)

People need to calm down. No action will be perfect just as no inaction will be perfect. And at least by taking action we keep the initiative in the Long War. We have a lot of strengths to bring to bear in the Long War and if we don't panic at every little setback and interpret them as signs of absolute failure we will move forward and win.

When? I don't know. It may be comforting to the anxious among us to want to go back to a day when we were unaware of the threats to us (but they were there nonetheless). In those supposedly happy days of normalcy we did not have to make imperfect choices about what to do. We should have made those decisions, but we did not. And our essential decision to do nothing had consequences as we all know now (or do we all? Is 9/11 distant history now?) But I do know that we have enemies who want us dead and there is no negotiating with them. We can't split the difference and agree to be a little bit dead.

Kill our enemies. Discourage the supporters of our enemies who kill. Encourage the enemies of the killers to fight with us. Support our friends who wish to reform the society that spawns the killers. And have patience at home to carry out all these things at once.

We are in a Long War. Act like it. And maybe if you really believe deep down that our society is better than our enemy's and that we deserve to win this Long War, you won't be so anxious about waging it.