War On Terror And Bad History

It seems to be dawning on the Pentagon, the White House and at least a few Americans who pay attention that, in our war on terrorism, we are in for the long haul. AOL’s news blog recently ran a story headed, “War Without End?”
It happens. Especially it happens when you have an intractable enemy. The Pentagon is beginning to do its planning and its future weapons purchases based on a “war on terror” that is going to last a long, long time.
Americans are used to wars in which you go fight for five or fewer years, pound the other guy into the ground—and everybody goes home to cheers and parades. That’s one reason Vietnam has left such a scar on our national psyche. It went on and on and on and we couldn’t win it—not at least at a cost that was worth paying. (Obama owes much of his election momentum in 2008 to an instinctive American recoil at the thought of an endless war.)
Vietnam was just one small nation. Imagine a series of wars that stretch from the Atlantic, all across North Africa and the Middle East—take a break in India, Burma, Thailand and Vietnam—and pick up again when you reach Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.
Even if we conquered all that territory—do we have the manpower and resources to occupy it? Do we have the political will and stomach to do what Genghis Khan would have done in the face of too many people to hold down—kill them all?
A major reason why the prospect of a “war on terror” that might go on for decades and even centuries shocks Americans is that we really do not study history. Not even the people in our State Department waste their time on such things.
(I used to say that if you are a bad engineer and a building falls down, you may kill hundreds. If you rule a nation and are a bad historian, millions or even billions may die in the world—and with the weapons--of today. Americans are decent engineers, dreadful historians.)
As a result of not knowing any history we Americans find ourselves baffled at finding our troops still engaged in Iraq, ramping up their combat capabilities in Afghanistan and finding out that new Al Qaida training camps keep popping up all over. No end in sight.
What lack of historical knowledge prevents us from understanding is that this “war on terror” has gone on for 1300 years, basically non-stop. It took us over five centuries to push them back out of Spain. It took six centuries to push them out of the Balkans—leaving behind Muslim groups like the Bosnians and Albanians. It took over three centuries to stamp out piracy along the North African coast. We had warships in the Mediterranean for forty years, 1800-1840.
The reason we are so unaware of this very long war is that it wasn’t waged for most of the last century. In 1897 British troops crushed the last of the independent Muslim slave traders in Africa—and for the next sixty years or more nearly every Muslim nation on Earth was controlled by a European or American power. They could not attack us—as they had without surcease since the late Seventh Century-- because we had troops on the ground to prevent it.
When the European Empires fell apart in the middle of the Twentieth Century, the Muslim nations were suddenly free again. It took them until 1979 when Iran turned out the Shah to revert to their old practices and attitudes against the “Christian” West.
A war that has its roots in a millennium of past conflict isn’t likely to stop because we send 30,000 more troops to one Muslim country. It is, as the Pentagon is realizing, highly likely to go on for decades and even centuries more. The deep religious/ideological divide between East and West that sparked the original war is still there. They always knew it; we’re learning.
We may have to remember back to the Indian wars. We fought them, tribe by tribe, for nearly 300 years—non-stop, 1622 to 1890. Frontiersmen would have called those a “war on terror”. Welcome to our next edition.