How Do You Actually Win a War on Terror?

“For we are attempting to conquer Sauron with the Ring. And we shall (it seems) succeed. But the penalty is, as you will know, to breed new Saurons, and slowly turn Men and Elves into Orcs.” – J.R.R. Tolkien to his son, Christopher, May 1944, who was in the RAF and stationed in South Africa as quoted in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien



Tomorrow the reigns of power will once again peacefully transition from one President to the next. One will enter Washington in the atmosphere of a conquering hero. The other will quietly slip out the back door and move into his new home in suburban Dallas and presumably begin to write his memoirs. For all the rhetoric of change that is common fare in American politics, certain things, however, will remain the same come tomorrow evening. Among them the ongoing “War on Terror” that was declared following the horrible events of September 11, 2001. Eight years later the battles of that war still rage and, in fact, are heating up in Afghanistan. When will it end? How do you actually win a “War on Terror”? Is it when every last bad guy is dead or incarcerated? Is it when we bring in Osama bin Laden dead or alive and declare ourselves winners? How do you know which cough is the last gasp of the Taliban in the end?

In 2003, then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield announced with customary bravado that the coming invasion of Iraq would best be characterized as “shock and awe”. And it was. Though was anyone really surprised that we rolled over Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guards as easily as we did? If this had been a movie, then certainly the falling of Saddam’s statue in Firdos Square in Baghdad a month later would have been an excellent backdrop for the credits to roll. But that was not the end of it. It wasn’t even the end of the beginning of it. How many lives have been affected since that time on all sides of the conflict? And are we even closer to its desired conclusion? And do we even know what that looks like?

I have no degrees in international relations. I know personally only two Muslims. But overcoming terror by inflicting terror savagely on those who would seek to hinder our peace-seeking efforts in both those countries seems like using a hammer to solve a problem that requires far more skill and expertise. And time. Hatred cannot be healed or overcome by the use of blunt force alone. You may indeed have the bigger hammer and subdue your foe – for the time being. But in time he will return with friends.

This is no criticism of our soldiers or their conduct in the current conflict. Good soldiers in every war do the best they can to fulfill their mission within the hostile circumstances that are forced upon them. But it seems to me what is needed most in the long run are boots on the ground. And not regulation issued ones either. Where are the sons of God in Iraq and Afghanistan right now? “Blessed are the peacemakers,” Jesus said, “for they will be called sons of God” (Matthew 5:9). Where are those who are willing to go the extra mile, to give the shirt off their back, to love him who feels committed to kill the other? My guess is that they are there already but in numbers too small to be recognized at this safe distance between me and the war that rages half a world away.

The War on Terror as we are fighting it is un-winable because it assumes that ultimately we will kill all the bad guys and gone will be the threat they pose to our society. But for every father we take out, for every brother who is killed accidentally in the crossfire of urban warfare, for every mother or daughter who is terrorized, what’s to say that we haven’t bred already another generation of individuals who hate us and are prepared to seek the revenge they crave?

In The Kingdom (2007), director Peter Berg underscores this point in the closing scene of the movie. This fictional story is about FBI agents working together with Saudi Arabian military personnel to capture the man responsible for killing Americans living in a housing compound in Riyadh. At movie’s end, there is a flashback to one of the opening scenes of the story when lead investigator Ronald Fleury (played by Jaimee Fox) is comforting the widow of his best friend who was killed in the bombing. When we see it the first time, we don’t hear what he tells her. But this time we do. He’s asked by his colleague, “Tell me what you whispered to Janet, in the briefing…before we even got airborne. What’d you stay to her?” At the same time, we see the grandson of the terrorist who had perpetrated the bombing being asked the same question by his aunt. “What did your grandfather whisper in your ear before he died?” Chillingly, they answer the same way:

Ronald Fleury: I told her we were gonna kill 'em all.
15-Year-Old Grandson: Don't fear them, my child. We are going to kill them all.

The only weapons that are powerful enough to overcome such hate are sacrificial love and forgiveness. Only these things have the virility to absorb whatever bitterness may throw at them and transform it into real peace.

I’m sure I’m speaking nonsense to those who know Arab culture or who have a far better grasp of the history of that particular region of the world than I do. But it begs the question, are Jesus’ words about loving our enemies and praying for those who do us wrong only words we use around a camp fire while on retreat or the very means to overcoming evil, wherever it rears its ugly head, with good?