“An Era of Persistent Conflict”

After 9/11, I decided to wear an American flag pin on my suit jacket until the war against terrorism was won.

I’m still wearing it, and it looks like I will not be taking it off for a good long time, if ever.

What’s worse, the definition of who the terrorists are has broadened. We are entering an “era of persistent conflict” (see the Washington Post story below).

At the beginning, it was (and still is) Al-Qaeda. Then it was militant Islam in general. Then Al Qaeda in Iraq. Now Al-Qaeda in Yemen, Somalia, the Horn of Africa, and beyond. And of course the Taliban, in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And fanatic Islamic Pakistanis, kidnapping and killing foreigners when they are not killing and kidnapping their own people.

Now we have a new band of terrorists who are at our southern border, killing and maiming in gruesome ways and piling up a death toll that is beginning to match that of the Korean and Vietnamese wars. I refer of course to the narco terrorists in Mexico.

The Wall Street Journal recently posted a front page story on the carnage in just one day in July:

“A little past midnight on a recent Friday, Manuel López, a 26-year-old lawyer, accidentally drives his beige Volkswagen Polo into a gun battle between rival drug gangs in the tourist resort of Acapulco. As bullets tear into his car, he hits the brakes and tries to run. He makes it less than a yard before falling dead.

Mr. López is the first victim of July 29, a hot summer day much like any other in Mexico's battle against powerful drug-trafficking gangs. Over the next 24 hours, at least 25 people die across Mexico in murders carrying the hallmarks of drug-gang hits.

Among the victims: three policemen, three 15-year-olds, one 14-year-old and a woman so thoroughly tortured that police can't estimate her age. The day ends in Ciudad Juárez with a 28-year-old woman holding the head of her younger brother as he bleeds to death outside their home.

Since President Felipe Calderón took office in December 2006, declaring war on traffickers, roughly 43,000 people have been killed in drug-related homicides here, according to government figures and newspaper estimates. The pace of killings is escalating. More than half the dead, 22,000, were killed in the past 18 months, a rate of one every 35 minutes.

In just one attack this past Thursday, 52 people were killed—mostly women playing bingo—when gunmen torched a casino in the business capital of Monterrey.

The conflict between gang members has descended into a contest of cruelty. One gang in Acapulco removes the faces of its victims. Another in Monterrey hangs victims upside down, and alive, from bridges, then shoots them from below.”

The Mexican drug war has reporters terrorized (they have been among the prime targets of the Mexican drug terrorists), and local officialdom as well. There does seem to be one out: if you fear for your life, take the bribe. But who gets the bribe can also be deadly as well – for rival gangs may mark the bribe receivers as opponents. Consider this from the Wall Street Journal of September 1, 2011: 

“MEXICO CITY—Mexican authorities initiated a wide-ranging corruption probe on Wednesday after a leading newspaper published photos and videos it claimed showed the brother of the mayor of Monterrey appearing to receive wads of money on three occasions at a casino.

One series of photos was taken just days before 52 people were killed in a casino fire that state investigators say appears to be the result of a botched extortion attempt by a drug gang. It is unclear whether this was the casino at which the photos were taken.

Rodrigo Medina, the governor of Nuevo Leon, whose capital is Monterrey, ordered a criminal investigation after the Reforma newspaper showed the images in its Wednesday edition.

"I think the images clearly show complicity and corruption," said Mr. Medina.”

Given that Afghanistan remains, even with our massive American military presence there, the world’s largest supplier of opium, you can see how this drug cartel terrorism and the Al Qaeda threat are, in their own perverse way, intertwined.

To quote from the New York Times background article on the Taliban:

“Estimates of the Taliban's annual revenue vary widely. Proceeds from the illicit drug trade alone range from $70 million to $400 million a year, according to Pentagon and United Nations officials. Despite efforts by the United States and its allies to cripple the Taliban's financing in 2009, using the military and intelligence, American officials acknowledge they barely made a dent.

American officials say they have been surprised to learn that foreign donations, rather than opium, are the single largest source of cash for the Taliban. The C.I.A. recently estimated in a classified report that Taliban leaders and their associates had received $106 million in 2009 from donors outside Afghanistan. Private citizens from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran and some Persian Gulf nations are the largest individual contributors, an American counterterrorism official said.”

Well, how is the war going for us? For that you probably have to ask the CIA and the Defense Department. This I do know thanks to the Washington Post.

We now have a world wide Army under the control of the CIA fighting a very dirty and ugly war against terrorism. It is, for the most part, not publicized, unless there’s a successful raid that takes out someone like Osama bin Laden.

The Post calls it “an era of endless war.”

“Today, radical religious ideologies, new technologies and cheap, powerful weapons have catapulted the world into “a period of persistent conflict,” according to the Pentagon’s last major assessment of global security. “No one should harbor the illusion that the developed world can win this conflict in the near future,” the document concludes.

By this logic, America’s wars are unending and any talk of peace is quixotic or naive. The new view of war and peace has brought about far-reaching changes in agencies such as the CIA, which is increasingly shifting its focus from gathering intelligence to targeting and killing terrorists. Within the military the shift has reshaped Army bases, spurred the creation of new commands and changed what it means to be a warrior.”

As I said, it looks like I’ll be wearing that American flag pin well into the foreseeable future. And the public discussion of this war, why we’re in it, how long it will last, whether our children and grandchildren will be called upon to fight in it -- tell me, have you heard President Obama deal with these questions in an address to the nation? Any in depth commentary from any of his Republican opponents (other than Ron Paul)? Is this “forever” war, for the President, a given? If he is in control of the CIA and the Pentagon, the answer would seem to be a firm “YES.”