If we had had the guts to face the fascists in the 20s and the 30s, perhaps we could have avoided World War II. If we keep the guts to confront Osama bin Laden and his very dangerous ideology today, perhaps we can avoid World War III.
-Gen. John P. Abizaid, commander, U.S. Central Command, in luncheon remarks to members of the Military Officers Association of America Nov. 18, 2006

This quote shows that Gen. Abizaid should be relieved. Now. Before he can further damage our national security.

Gen. Abazaid, I must confess, is a stud. He is a light infantry leader that has lived the Ranger Creed. His history of command is one of inspiration, of dedication, and I respect his service and his incredible military resume. He is a better officer than I could ever hope to be on my best day. This is not a "perfumed prince" like some generals are alleged to be. He sought out the toughest assignments and succeeded in them. He deserves respect. I respect him.

And he should be relieved of command.

Either he is in way over his head - or worse, he is a "yes-man" afraid of confrontation with his superiors. A history of physical courage is not an indicator of moral courage. They are different forms of bravery. He either does not understand the nature of the threat presented by Osama Bin Laden, or he does understand and prefers to support a course of action he knows to be wrong because his superiors want him to do so. Regardless, he needs to be relieved of command.

Whether or not we had the "guts" to face the fascists in the 20s and 30s is totally irrelevant to the threat from Osama today. The fascists were state actors. Because they were state actors they were deterrable - and because they were state actors they represented a threat to other state actors. That threat should have been, in hindsight, addressed earlier. Many, including Churchill, had the foresight to see the nature of the threat earlier. That is nothing at all like the threat posed by Osama and his fellow fanatics.

Osama and company do not control a single city, much less an entire nation. They had, and have, great influence in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but they do not control either, and in both of those nations they are hunted as criminals and must resort to ambush when fighting even the weak and very new Afghan army. They are stateless actors using the age-old, traditional weapon of the powerless - terrorism. It is not an "ism" like "fascism" or "communism," but is more in line with "anarchism" - both Osama and the anarchists that plagued the western world in the late 1800s used terrorism. A US president was assasinated by anarchists - along with six other heads of state murdered between 1881 and the assasination of Archduke Ferdinand in 1914. According to the excellent article in the NY Times Book Review, "Paris suffered bomb attacks no fewer than eleven times between 1892 and 1894." Then there were the Red Brigades in Europe in the 1970s, and the wave of hijackings of airliners in that same decade. Did Europe fall? Did the anarchists represent as great a threat as Hitler? No. Of course not. Neither does Osama - and he never will.

To conflate Osama into a threat as large as that represented by the Japanese militarists and Hitler, or even the threat to world peace represented by relatively-weak Mussolini of Italy, is an indication that somebody doesn't know what the hell they are talking about. It is like equating dental plaque to the fascists. If you don't have the guts to floss properly, well, you could face world war III. Really? I disagree. That does not mean I think we should all stop flossing or that I support tooth decay or wish success to the cavity creeps who want to destroy our way of life - or at least, our teeth. It means the threat from not flossing is not equivalent to the threat from Osama, and the threat from Osama is not one that rises to the level of the fascists of the 20s and 30s, much less one that risks world war three. What army would Osama command in that hypothetical war? What nation would he control? The mere comparison is so badly flawed that it should strike fear in our own hearts, to think that the head of Central Command is that poor a military scholar or that un-informed on important matters of national security.

There should not be a "war" on terror. Terror is merely a method. There should be an effort to track down and kill Osama and all who assist him, but there is no need for a "war" on a stateless actor any more than we should launch a "war on ambush" or "war on IEDs" or "war on any other tactic that we do not like." Think "war on kidnappers." Nobody likes kidnappers. They are bad guys. Many of them wish our nation ill. Would a "war on kidnappers" make any sense, though? And does our "failure" to launch a "war" against them mean we are ignoring kidnappers? Of course not. It certainly does not mean we lack "guts" to do so either. It means that using military force as the preferable weapon against kidnappers is stupid. And not using military force against kidnappers or child molestors or drug traffickers does not mean we risk world war three or that the threats will rise to the level of that presented by the fascists and/or communists of the last century. So it is with our "war on terror." And that is not appeasement, it does not represent a lack of "guts," it is just common sense. War is what you wage against a nation-state, not a bunch of fanatic individuals. That does not mean you ignore the individuals, it means they are not important enough to merit the title of "war" against them. Especially when it comes to terrorism.

When Manual Noriega declared war on the United States, we did not declare war back. We invaded, deposed him, and put him in prison on civilian charges of drug trafficking - all without a declaration of war. He declared war. We did not declare war on Panama in return, we simply went in and got the guy. Even today nobody refers to the events of December 1989 in Panama as a "war." It was a strike, perhaps an invasion, but hardly a war, and yet it involved a nation-state and fighting between armed and uniformed and organized opponents. Even so, it is not fitting to call it a "war." Manual Noriega controlled a larger force than Osama and his fellow fanatics do, or ever will. Noriega had control of an entire nation. Osama is hiding in a cave. That does not mean Osama is not a threat, it means Al Queda is not equivalent to a nation-state or the fascist parties of the 20s and 30s that sought to obtain control of their nations.

Osama declared war against the US prior to 9/11, struck us several times prior to 9/11, but then on 9/11 he hit us hard - and Bush responded by declaring war back. That helped Osama, it did not hurt him. A fanatic with a limited following was now an opponent of the world's most powerful nation. AQ had frightened the US so much that Bush declared "war" against it. Osama must have praised Allah when he heard that.

And now General Abazaid has equated Osama, a leader of a rag-tag group of stateless individuals - dangerous, but not powerful enough to hold even a single city much less a tiny nation - with the fascist parties of the 20s and 30s. He has warned of World War Three if we do not have the "guts" to "face" Osama and his allies. Osama could not seize control of Panama if he wanted to do so - and his Taliban allies barely controlled Afghanistan and fell quickly when pressed. Osama does not control an army and never will, much less a nation that is powerful enough to present any threat other than random attacks from hidden operatives. Osama and his allies are stateless actors. They will never become state actors - and if they do they are much more easily deterrable. Their use of terror is because they have no means to attack in any other way. That is not a threat akin to the Third Reich.

The general also uses the code word "fascist" in a transparent attempt to gain support from right-wing circles where the term "Islamofascism" is common (and used incorrectly: fascism by definition is a rabid form of nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism is not nationalistic). He even suggests that Osama's ideology, one that is not the official position or ideology of a single government in the world today - no, not even Iran or Syria or the Palestinian Authority - is one that might lead to "World War III."

Think about it this way: the 19 hijackers represented less than a platoon. Assume they are enemy special forces on a mission in enemy territory - they hijack four planes and kill approx. 3,000 people. Ok. They were still only 19 guys, and at the end of the day they did not hold any territory. In fact, they had to attack civilians because any attack on military forces would be much less likely to succeed. So half a platoon represents as great a threat as that presented by the Wehrmacht? By Mussolini's divisions? By the Empire of Japan? Even back in the early 1920s when fascism was on the rise, the threat from fascism required fascists to take over a state. Anybody think an AQ-controlled state likely? Even in Saudi Arabia, Osama's home, AQ can only mount occasional attacks, and they usually fail.

Any person that is so deluded as to think Osama and his fellow fanatics represents as great a threat as Hitler or Tojo or Stalin should not be in a position of influence over our national security. Our national security strategy should be rational and based on fact, not ideology or wishful thinking. The IRA does not present as great a threat to Britian as the fascists of the 20s and 30s did. The ETA Basque separatists do not present as great a threat to Spain as Hitler did to Spain through his support of Franco. The FARC in Columbia does not present as great a threat to the world as the fascist of the 20s and 30s. All of those groups are more powerful, with more fighters and more money and more organization, than Al Queda. And all are terrorists - arguably, Christian terrorists - no Muslims among them. Do we fear a world war three as a result of their actions? Of course not. It would be silly to suggest such a thing. Yet Gen. Abazaid makes that suggestion about a group not as powerful as any of those three groups - and I haven't mentioned many other "terrorist" groups that exist today. There are many of them. There always have been.

If Gen. Abazaid, a fine infantry officer, thinks that Osama's ideology risks world war three, he has risen too far and is incompetent. He should be relieved of command. A successful attack does not mean your enemy suddenly has more strength or has gained several divisions of infantry, it means, in the case of 9/11, nothing more than that our airport security was insufficient and that we had law-enforcement agencies that were not as efficient as they should be. It does not mean that 19 guys with boxcutters are part of a group capable of achieving world war three - or of taking and holding a local post office. They couldn't even get on the planes except by hiding their intentions - had they revealed themselves earlier the airport police would have shot them. Airport police. Powerful enemies wear uniforms and attack strongly, powerless ones strike from hiding using terrorism. We need not fear the powerless, we need only consider them a problem to be solved. We are not at "war" with terrorists. We have a terrorist problem that should be solved, much like a vermin infestation requires a solution but not a "war on vermin." There is a big difference between the powerful and the powerless, between a threat like that posed by the rise of fascism in the 20s and 30s and that posed by Osama and his fellow fanatics today. Gen. Abazaid should damn well know better. If he does not know better then he should be relieved. If he does know, he lied and should be relieved.

Hysteria and a lack of good judgment led us into Iraq, led us to respond poorly and often in a counter-productive way to the threat of terrorism posed by Osama and his allies, and in any case officers are expected to possess good judgment. Gen. Abazaid, for all his impressive and spectactular background in the Rangers, does not have the judgment needed to be in charge of Central Command.

He should go.