How much is that Sarin in the window?

Early reports indicate that a recent roadside bomb in Iraq included an artillery shell containing Sarin gas.

Convenient timing for the war apologists, who, no doubt tired of equating torture with fraternity hazing or calling for the extermination of every living thing in Fallujah, have pounced. (See here, here and here for starters.)

Now ordinarily, I would take umbrage and go algebraic on their ass, and say something like: Ooh, .25 milliliters of sarin precursor per dead soldier! What a bargain!

But I’m feeling generous tonight. So let’s grant the other side their precious WMD. Let’s say that, contrary to all available evidence, there are large undiscovered stockpiles of working chemical and biological arms in Iraq; that Saddam had active programs of WMD development; that he was building more WMD right up until the tanks rolled into his house.

Granted all that, it would still be the case that the Iraq war and its aftermath have made us all far less safe. Every child shot in the street, every picture of an American torturing an Iraqi, every bomb that hits a mosque grows a new bin Laden. And we can’t kill them all. Indeed: we are a civilized nation, and if we want to remain such, we must not imagine that we can or might or should kill them all. So, if we want to win this so-called war on terror, all we can do is stop making enemies.

That of course does not mean that we should in any way give in to those we have already got, nor does it mean that I have the slightest sympathy for Islamic fundamentalism—nor any other kind of fundamentalism. What it means is in fact the exact opposite. We must make the fundamentalists and the would-be theocrats more like us, not become more like them. Sell them Coke and iPods. Get them reading our books. Read theirs.

To be absolutely clear: I am not advocating pacifism in the face of terror. I am advocating outwitting the motherfuckers. Bin Laden wants a clash of civilizations. Let’s not give him one. Let’s give every suicide bomber he wants to recruit something to live for, instead. Let’s export the American dream, not American military power.

Unfortunately, this advice comes a year or so too late for this generation. The disaster of Iraq has wiped out any hope that we will be free of terror in the next ten or twenty years. In the eyes of much of the Arab world, we’ve done nothing there but prove bin Laden right and justify whatever foul acts may be done to us in his name. Beyond the nearly 800 young Americans dead, beyond the thousands of wounded, beyond the thousands of Iraqis dead—men, women, children, innocent people just like you who wanted nothing but to live a decent life in peace—and beyond the billions of dollars spent, that is the price we have paid.

And what did we get for it? A couple liters of Sarin in a 20-year-old shell. Maybe. What a bargain!

Filed under: politics/war