The Long War Ahead and The Short War Upon Us

The book The Long War Ahead and The Short War Upon Us is written by John C. Wohlstetter.  Mr. Wholstetter is senior fellow of the Discovery Institute and also the author of Letter From the Capitol blog.  When the publisher offered this book to me for review, he described the book briefly and I knew that it would be something Right Truth readers would appreciate.  However, I had no idea how timely The Long War Ahead and The Short War Upon Us would be.

With a new Democrat President Elect Barack Hussein Obama taking office within a few week, a Democrat majority in Congress and a rush to close Guantanamo, this book needs to be read by each and every American and politician in Washington.  The best way to convince you of the value of this book is Mr. Wohlstetter's own words.  So below are several excerpts.

In a what if scenario, an EMP hits the United States, and America, in effect, had in an instant been returned to what life was in many ways in 1875, but without nineteenth-century technologies such as wood stoves and hand-run pumps.  Everything as we know it today gone, including communications.  The perpetrator, Iran, has no problem telling the world that they have again harmed the Great Satan. 

Mr. Wholstetter points out that the CIA's latest estimate for an Iranian bomb is between 2010 and 2015;  Israeli intelligence predicts Iran will go nuclear by 2009; and the rest of the world has their own predictions.    So what?

...  Barring a miracle, a decision to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities will have to be taken with imperfect information.  Knowledge certain can come only if Iran detonates a device.  (pg 12)

...  America has faltered, and failed to invest enough material and human resources to ensure victory.  Thus, urgent corrective action, in the form of a major shift in strategy towards more assertive policies, in needed.  (pg 13)

Wholstetter is correct about the resources provided for this war.  We cannot even decide what to call this war.  War on Terrorism is not appropriate, war against Islam or Islamic terrorists isn't accurate either, if you consider North Korea a part of the threat to US safety and security.

For practical purposes, General John Abizaid, former chief of Central Command (which includes the Mideast), has offered the best label for the multi-generational struggle:  The Long War."  It emphasizes the near-certitude that we will be fighting this war against radical factions within -- and without -- the Islamic world for a very long time.  if the label is imprecise for want of naming a designated adversary, so was "Cold War" for the struggle against the Soviet Union and its "satellite" nations, from 1945 to 1991.  As "cold" conveyed the essence of the earlier conflict -- a war in which the main adversaries did not directly shoot at one another -- so "long" conveys the most important fact about this war, its multi-generational prospect.  The Long War is a civilizational war of values.  (pg  14)

...  America is not approaching this war as if it were a struggle for its national and civilizational survival.  We are nowhere near a true war footing.  We fight a war on the cheap, arguing about deficits and competing domestic priorities.  The urgency that attends a true national war effort is not in evidence.  (pg 18)

Unfortunately, I don't see any improvement with the new administration under Barack Hussein Obama and considering the financial state of the US and American businesses and a congress who knows no spending limits. 

No matter what our domestic situation, the terrorist groups are still out there, they are apocalyptic in orientation, their home countries observe tribal cultures based on warrior pride, and Americans have problems relating to such an enemy.  The appeasers in the US try to find a reason we are hated, they look to the Palestinian - Israeli boundary dispute.  As Mr. Wholstetter points out "Arab and Muslim states ardently desire a Mideast free of Jews entirely".

The Long War Ahead and The Short War Upon Us discusses Terrorism as a Law Enforcement Problem, which is taking place in American courts as I type this review.

The cost of misperceiving terrorism as a criminal matter is the butcher's bill we are now paying to fight a much larger, far longer multifaceted conflict -- one global in scope -- than would have been needed a generation ago, and thus we face substantially graver risk of suffering vast, even potentially catastrophic, harm.
(pg 43) 

An Emerging Danger:  High-Profile Trials of Terrorists. 
There is a fantasy, widely held, that were Osama bin Laden or his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, captured they should be put on trial.  it would, supporters of this idea believe, replicate the dramatic 1961 trial of Nazi butcher Adolf Eichmann in Israel, when his deeds were revealed in their full genocidal horror.  (pg 133)

[snip]  ... the media were four-square behind Eichmann's conviction; today, media in the West, let alone Arab media like al-Jazeera, will tilt to defendants, and obsess over whether defendants are getting a fair trial.  [snip]

Even a non-charasmatic defendant can turn the tables in a trial, as did al-qaeda terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui in the penalty phase of his terror trial, held after the defendant, ignoring advice from his lawyers, entered a guilty plea.  The trial was a farce, with the defendant telling the courthouse upon receiving a life sentence and not death:  "America you lost!  I won." 
(pg 134)

One thing I've learned since September 11, 2001, is that very few things in this life can be known with 100% accuracy -- except that there are people out there who want to destroy and kill America, Israel, the West in general and there are always useful idiots here in the US who will thwart common sense efforts to secure our safety.  You can count on that.  However, we can seldom be 100% sure that another nation or group has certain weapons, when or how they plan to use those weapons, ... and still, not knowing so many things, we must take action to protect ourselves from the unknown.

You must read this book, The Long War Ahead and The Short War Upon Us  written by John C. Wohlstetter.  Order your copy at Amazon.com today and send copies as Christmas presents to friends and family.

I highly recommend this book.

Comments

[Stormwarning]

Of course, I believe that it wa sthe 2006 DoD QDR that validated the term "long war."

http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/pdfs/QDR20060203.pdf

Both within it, and afterwards, it became capitalized and used as a label. As a matter of policy, whether called the Long War, or the Global War on Terrorism, I do not believe that even Obama will be able to avoid its realities.