One of the prominent mysteries of fourth-generation warfare tactics -- the practice of asymmetric warfare by non-state actors using unconventional target selection -- is why they became common only in the last third of the 20th century, and are mainly restricted to Third World societies resisting external or internal occupation. William Lind, a paleoconservative defense theorist who is highly critical of the Iraq misadventures, addresses this oddity in DNI this week:
As one of the founders of the concept of Fourth Generation war, I would like to take a stab at solving this riddle. The key to it, I think, is precisely “the triumphs of rationalism.” Rationalism, or more broadly modernity, believes in nothing. Belief is the opposite of rationalism. Fourth Generation war is triumphing over the products of rationalism because people who believe in something will always defeat people who believe in nothing at all.If we look at those who are fighting Fourth Generation war, America’s opponents in Iraq and elsewhere, one characteristic they share is that they believe very powerfully in something. The “something” varies; it may be a religion, a gang, a clan or tribe, a nation (outside the West, nationalism is still alive) or a culture. But it is something worth fighting for, worth killing for and worth dying for. The key element is not what they believe in, but belief itself. ...
The death of the Modern Age actually comes with World War I; in 1914, the West, which created modernity, put a gun to its head and blew its brains out. The ninety years since have merely been the thrashing of a corpse. The rise of Fourth Generation war, and its triumph over state armed forces in Iraq and elsewhere, mark the real beginning of the new century, a century that will be defined and dominated not by the West’s ghost, nor by the Brave New World that is that ghost’s final, Hellish spawn, but by people who believe.
I'm inclined to agree with Lind's assessment, at least in part. Al Qaeda is not an isolated terrorist network; it's a popular movement with broad, worldwide support. Belief, of course, is not sufficient to motivate a popular resistance; there must be concrete offenses (American support for tyrannical, un-Islamic governments, say) to provoke people to war. But belief provides an orientation against which certain decisions are made. It cushions the believer against uncertainty, and can provide moral comfort that soothes the anguish of bloodshed.
Now, some would say that belief in ideals is just as present in American culture. President Bush's inauguration speech offered plenty of ideals in which he says he believes. Today, addressing these, David Brooks becomes a kind of dialectical materialist in reverse as he opines:
If you want to understand America, I hope you were in Washington on Thursday. I hope you heard the high ideals of President Bush's inaugural address, and also saw the stretch Hummer limos heading to the balls in the evening. ... What you saw in Washington that day is what you see in America so often - this weird intermingling of high ideals with gross materialism, the lofty and the vulgar cheek to cheek.The people who detest America take a look at this odd conjunction and assume the materialistic America is the real America; the ideals are a sham. ... But of course they've got it exactly backward. It's the ideals that are real.
Brooks does not mention the other major feature of Washington on that day: a complete clampdown on the city, and a massive military presence. There were surface-to-air missiles on the Mall, secret command centers, helicopters flying overhead, and miles and miles of barbed wire. If our ideals of liberty and freedom are so real, why is our inauguration -- a day of national symbolism -- turned into an armed garrison? With no specific or credible threat, the display of militarism only served to underscore the contradiction between our lofty rhetoric of liberty and our base practice of imperial majesty. These contradictions were present in Bush's speech, as well: to invoke freedom in a city where everyone had to present special passes to get through the gates is the rankest hypocrisy. Even as his minions prevented protesters from crossing his path, Bush was intoning "there is no justice without freedom, and there can be no human rights without human liberty."
It's a long stretch to characterize ideals like this as "real". What is real is the cognitive dissonance that supporters of this rhetoric must experience. It's a kind of doublethink: the ability to believe two directly contradictory things, while experiencing no twinge of discomfort. Placed against those who fervently and thoroughly believe in their own internally consistent system, this belief amounts to no belief at all. That jarring difference between an ideal of liberty and a capital in lockdown is a sign that the corpse of rationalism is thrashing indeed. Up against contradictory and incoherent dogmas such as this, it's clear why a man of belief such as Osama bin Laden was able to put his finger on the jugular of American empire.
Posted by Chris at January 22, 2005 08:22 AM | TrackBack