The war on terror is not a war for cultural survival

“Vulnerable or not, the United States is too powerful compared to the rest of the world, and the nature of the “war” it is fighting is too diffuse and long-term, for Americans not to return to some degree of complacency — although they may never again reach the height of hubris that prevailed on September 10. Contrary to President Bush’s fighting words, this is not a war for existence or for survival; the “enemies of freedom” that he referred to in his eloquent September 20 speech to Congress are not the Germans or the Japanese after Pearl Harbor, powerful industrialized nations bent on challenging American hegemony; they are mere ragtag holdouts, tiny “cells” of misfits who failed even to seize power in their own small home countries. However dangerous it might be, this global war is more like a mop-up mission, courtesy of U.S. special forces, the CIA, and the FBI.”
–Michael Hirsch, reviewing David Halberstam’s War in a Time of Peace in Foreign Affairs, Nov.-Dec. 2001