Sunday, July 03, 2011

Nah! Can't Be That Easy

Via Instapundit, a worry that masks confusion:

[It’s] shocking that we’re in half a dozen kinetic military operations and your average American would be doing well to name three. Something’s not quite democratic about that.

Obviously, we're talking Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia.

But until our new, nuanced overlords told us it was simplisme to think of all these fights this way, we used to just call all of them the "global war on (Islamist) terror." Then, we didn't need to worry about where we found the bastards anywhere in the world. We just killed them. And it was easier to remember. We could find jihadis anywhere (and one front where we found the jihadis--the Philippines--is actually pretty much over) and fight them.

Now, our government sees no common thread to all these conflicts so we have to think of them as distinct wars. We forget what we are fighting.

I like the old way of thinking about all the fronts we are fighting on. It was easier to remember. And more accurate, simplistic though it may seem.