Valin Posted September 23, 2014 Share Posted September 23, 2014 The Weekly Standard: Edmund Burke’s war on terror—and ours. GERTRUDE HIMMELFARB Sep 29, 2014, Vol. 20, No. 03 The war on terror is over, the president assured us a year ago. Now, we are told, that war is very much with us and will be pursued with all due diligence. The president was obviously responding to the polls reflecting the disapproval of the public, but also to critics in his own party. Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, sadly commented on his admission that he had “no strategy yet”: “I think I’ve learned one thing about this president, and that is: He’s very cautious—maybe in this instance too cautious.” Two centuries ago, in the midst of another “war on terror”—or so he thought of it—Edmund Burke rebuked his prime minister for a similar failing. He had admired William Pitt for his leadership in the war with France, but now, out of excessive caution, Pitt was seeking peace with that “regicide” regime. “There is a courageous wisdom,” Burke wrote in his “Letters on a Regicide Peace,” but “there is also a false reptile prudence, the result not of caution but of fear. Under misfortunes it often happens that the nerves of the understanding are so relaxed, the pressing peril of the hour so completely confounds all the faculties, that no future danger can be properly provided for, can be justly estimated, can be so much as fully seen.” (Snip) We are in a war of a peculiar nature. It is not with an ordinary community, which is hostile or friendly as passion or as interest may veer about; not with a State which makes war through wantonness, and abandons it through lassitude. We are at war with a system, which, by its essence, is inimical to all other Governments, and which makes peace or war, as peace and war may best contribute to their subversion. It is with an armed doctrine that we are at war. It has, by its essence, a faction of opinion, and of interest, and of enthusiasm, in every country. To us it is a Colossus which bestrides our channel. It has one foot on a foreign shore, the other upon the British soil. Burke’s words can be echoed almost exactly today, for it is just such a peculiar war we are waging against just such a peculiar enemy. The Islamic State is not an ordinary state with which we can negotiate or compromise, not a “manageable problem” we can resolve gradually and temperately, but an “armed doctrine,” a “system,” a “faction of opinion,” which knows no compromise and cannot be managed. With such an enemy, there cannot be a “red line” defining how far, and no further, we may go; a “no troops on the ground” policy, limiting our involvement in the war; an “end-of-war” strategy that prescribes at the outset when and how the war will be terminated. On the contrary, a war with such an enemy is a total war—and, Burke insisted, a “long war” (his italics). “I speak it emphatically, and with a desire that it should be marked, in a long war; because, without such a war, no experience has yet told us, that a dangerous power has ever been reduced to measure or to reason.” The purpose of the war must be nothing less than to “destroy that enemy” or it will “destroy all Europe,” and to do so “the force opposed to it should be made to bear some analogy and resemblance to the force and spirit which that system exerts.” (Snip) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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