THE NEXT WAR

The recent attacks in Paris tend to bring a murky problem into sharp relief. To quote my old Anatomy professor, “you don’t need a brain like Socrates” to know that the world has been embroiled in a kind of war since before the events of 9/11 in the U.S. It has been an unconventional war; an asymmetric war. The US has the most powerful military ever to have existed in the history of the world, but it has faltered because, as in Viet Nam, we can win every battle but still lose the war when each side is fighting a different war.

When France depended upon their Maginot Line to protect them from a German invasion in World War II, they were fighting the last war. They never accounted for aircraft, paratroopers and the German “blitzkrieg.” That error cost them a rapid loss, occupation and cost the rest of us a second world war.

When Al Qaeda attacked the US 14 years ago, our response was predictable. George W. Bush would play to the crowd and send huge numbers of troops first to Afghanistan to attack the Taliban (but still leave the people actually responsible for the attack to escape) and then to invade the country he wanted to have a war with all along, Iraq – a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. The outcome was easily predictable; he wasted thousands of American lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, and trillions of dollars so that he could have revenge on Saddam Hussein for taking a shot at his father, and allow Dick Cheney to make billions for Haliburton, all while making us less free in the name of a marginal increase in safety.

Because aircraft were used in the attack, we have had to spend hours in lines at airports going through security checks that don’t really keep us secure. We’re “fighting the last war” again, as some pundits are wont to express it. Now, with successful attacks in Paris killing and wounding hundreds of people, all following the downing of a Russian airliner over the Sinai and a deadly attack in Lebanon, we are again preparing to fight an asymmetric war against terrorists that will feel good, but accomplish nothing.

The new enemy is the so called “Islamic State,” also referred to as ISIS, ISIL or DAESH (which they hate). Unlike its forerunners, however, DAESH is not a geographically disparate group of extremists that are hard to find, it is a newly formed “state” with conquered land, oil as a financial resource, a population and an army that is drawing recruits both from its own land and others around the world. Their intentions have been made as clear as Hitler made his when he wrote “Mein Kompf.” They intend to take and hold the land to form their caliphate, and then expand it throughout the Muslim world, perhaps followed by the remainder of the world. This has raised the centuries-old antagonism between Sunni and Shiite sects of Islam to a new level, threatening to involve nearly one third of the world’s population. We need to ask ourselves a question; what would have happened if Hitler had been opposed by the world’s military power when he invaded Austria and before Germany reached its full power? Would there still have been a world war; a holocaust?

We are still fighting the last war(s), but we don’t have to. The world in general, but the US in particular has been left “war weary” after Afghanistan and Iraq. We have deep political divisions here in the US, and worry about dealing with aggression by Vladimir Putin in Europe and Asia, and China in the Pacific Rim. Now, all of these are real and important, but their importance pales next to the threat of DAESH returning much of the world to a 7^th century mentality.

What we need to do is clear, whether we or any other countries want to see it or not. Asia is not ready for the establishment of independent democracies. The people may want it, and they must have it at some point, but they are not yet ready. We need to take an overwhelming military force, preferably international and preferably including Russia and China into the area. We need to wipe out the Islamic State and take control of the territory that is out of control, from Iraq to Syria. Call it a colony, call it anything you like, but be prepared to occupy it for up to a hundred years before their culture is solid enough to stand on its own in the world without dissolving into chaos.

We can then rebuild towns and cities, or even build new ones, and allow refugees from all over the Islamic world to seek refuge there. There is even an outside chance that we could massage it in a way that solves the problem between Israel and the Palestinians. We must also, then, stop supporting the most regressive and brutal despots in the area such as the house of Saud (Saudi Arabia). We know the king is a great friend of the Bush family (hence the Gulf Wars), but we need to stop supporting them and, since we really don’t need their oil anymore, we can do it.

There you have it:

1.        A major military campaign to remove the Islamic State from its currently possessed territory, and replace it with a stable, increasingly democratic state that we control and operate until it is ready to stand on its own.
2.        Create an atmosphere where the Syrian refugees and others from the area can come to build or rebuild their lives in peace and prosperity. Not only would such a state be good on its own, but it would keep the remainder of the area from bubbling over.
3.        Bring jobs, and the seduction of a consumer based economy to the area along with education, so that the people will one day be able to take their peaceful place among the nations of the world.

Unfortunately, all the other solutions have been tried and found wanting. We don’t need the oil anymore, but we do need the peace.

WELCOME TO THE FUTURE

A famous quote from a comic strip was, "we have met the enemy, and he is us." Perhaps the best way to begin this blog is to say we have gazed into the future and it is not only more amazing than we thought, but much closer than we could have imagined. Ray Kurzweil, in his 2005 book, "The Singularity is Near," posits a merging of Man and Machine beginning around 2050. Look around; I think he was looking too far out.

Let's begin, then, with an observation and one of many questions whose answers we did not think would be needed for a long time, but whose need is rapidly approaching. We are on the threshold (i.e. 2-5 years) of being able to grow new organs in a tissue culture on a matrix and implant them. They will be from the individual's own cells, so there will be no rejection or need for immuno-suppressive drugs. Urinary bladders have already been done, and we're moving on to hearts, lungs, etc. When we attain the ability to do the same thing with the brain and transfer or restore knowledge, memories and experiences, will the individual with the transferred information still be us? Are we more than the sum of our knowledge and experience? We're closer than we think to finding out.