Choosing War

We as humans believe that we are rational and logical. We believe that our rational choices can control the outcome of our lives. We believe in this control because, in this world that seems so anarchic and chaotic, we could not operate or continue to exist without it. Without this control, or the illusion of control, our world, our individual lives would spin out of control. We would be nothing but drifting leaves reacting to every change of the wind instead of the winged bird choosing what breeze we will soar upon.

To this end, we make decisions every day that we believe helps us maintain control of this life and even those lives we interact with. We choose to drive certain cars because they have higher safety ratings or because they are less likely to be stolen. We choose to live in certain areas because the crime rate is lower or because the school system is better. We choose the houses we buy because we believe we will get a higher resale value. We choose not to drive in certain areas because the traffic is higher and accidents more likely. We avoid certain parts of town because we know that crime is higher. We choose not to know or hang out with certain people because we believe they live risky lives, take drugs, hang out with known criminals or are just likely to make bad choices with their lives and we do not want to be part of that. We choose not to speed, to wear our seatbelts or not to drink and drive because we believe it can reduce or eliminate the possibility of a deadly accident.

All of these things we do because we believe that it helps protect us. This is how we can control our lives.

So, when bad things happen to people, we examine their lives. We examine their movements and their choices. We are looking at every aspect because we believe we can determine when or what choices they made that led to that moment. We don't want to make those same mistakes. We want to believe that they had complete control of their lives so that we can believe that we have complete control of our lives.

We see this after every terrible incident. Even the victims re-examine every minute detail so they can determine the exact moment they made a wrong decision, so they can pretend that they were in control every moment. If they had left home two minutes earlier; if they had decided to take a different road, turn left instead of right; had they just stopped at that yellow light two streets back instead of going on, they would not have been at the red light on 9th Street when the man with a gun decided to put a gun in their face, steal their car and shoot them. Better yet, had they only listened to their brother and chose not to buy the Escalade in the first place, this man with a gun would not have wanted their car, not shot them or stolen their car.

It's all about our choices. It's all about us. As long as it is, we are always in control.

We never spend much time examining the choices of the "other". In fact, we usually disregard the "other". If we had to factor in the "other's" choices, then we would have to start recognizing that we were not completely in control; that we may not have changed the outcome, but would still be a victim of "chance". If we had to accept that, then we may not be able to live. We may become the agoraphobic who never leaves the house or the claustrophobic who never enters a building or stands in a crowd.

These same ideas plague us when we talk about war. Most people want to pretend that they control the entire outcome of the war. They control whether there is war. They control whether people will want to go to war with us. They believe that if they had changed something here or did something there, the situation where one or many wanted to harm us would not exist. With that in mind, they re-examine every point in history; from yesterday to two hundred years ago, we search diligently for that moment that changed this moment and brought us to war. In some cases, people believe that, once at war, it only takes one side to choose not to be at war in order for war to be mitigated and the harm to others or themselves would not exist.

We saw this same behavior directly after the attacks on 9/11. Within hours, people were talking about "why". Experts were trying to tell us about OUR actions that led to this moment. It was a natural response. Victims often do it after a violent crime because they could not control the violence or the damage done to them or their loved ones. Instead, they look at every action to see if they could have changed the outcome. If they could find that moment, that choice that led to this, they could know they were in control of the situation the whole time, that in the end, it was they who chose to be robbed or shot, it was they who chose the planes to be hi-jacked, the buildings to be destroyed, the thousands of dead; not the choice of the "other". They need that sense of control in order to gain back the ability, the confidence, to continue with their life. Thus the "other" rarely factors into it accept where we try to determine how our choices made them "react".

We rarely see the "other" as a sentient being who makes their own choices and cares little for our own. We do not see them as capable of interfering with our own control. If we have to believe that others control some aspect of our lives, we may lose all ability to function.

Reading the gruesome death of Atwar Bahjat, there will be many who examine her every movement up to the last and try to determine what choices Atwar Bahjat made that led to her death. They will wonder why she chose to be a journalist in a war torn country. They will wonder why she chose to cover the Samarra Shrine bombing. They will wonder why, if she felt uncomfortable, that she didn't leave earlier. They will think that Atwar chose her path and that she controlled her life. They will thing that, in the end, Atwar chose to be in a position where she was kidnapped and murdered. In fact, her decisions on what she spoke about, where she went and the people she met controlled who killed her and how they killed her. In this way we project our own insecurity onto her situation. We pretend that she had control so that we can pretend we have control. We want to pretend that we could make decisions that could keep this happening from us so she had the same ability.

Many will imagine that, in this war, had the war simply not existed, Atwar Bahjat would never die. The "others" would never have chosen to kidnap her or anyone else. The "others" would not have drilled holes in her face and arms. The "others" would not have partially slit her throat and pushed the blood from her by jumping on her stomach. The "others" would not have chosen to cut her head off or anyone else's head for that matter. If only we had not chosen war. That is the control we believe we have over the "others".

Every action has a reaction.

We have lived a life of science for so long that we have drilled it down to a simple equation. Because we can explain how the sun rises in the east and sets in the west; because we can explain how water evaporates and then condenses to form clouds that travel on the air currents to a location and then the clouds become heavy only to let down the water as rain again; because of this ability to deduce and determine, we believe that we can use logic and rationality to explain the actions of others, thus we can control them.

For the most part, we choose to ignore the actions and words of the others or tend to try to explain them in some concept that relates to our own lives and our own ability to choose and control. We don't imagine that the "others" can choose war and act upon it without our direct participation. If we choose not to participate, then it is not war. If we choose not to participate, the others will not choose war either.

So, these others who chose to torture and behead Atwar Bahjat, they were driven to it by the actions of others. They did not have free will in our world of control, they could only re-act to circumstances. But, if we use that logic, then we must determine that we too could be driven to cut off the head of a bound and crying woman. Then we must believe that we do not have control. But, we don't. We push the uncontrollable away and pretend it has no bearing on our lives and our decisions. Again, without our actions, there would be no reaction.

In truth, this premise is false because it acts as if the action/reaction paradigm only goes one way; that is to say that it is only our actions that control and require a reaction. Thus, we also want to believe that we can choose not to participate and this thing, this war, these "others" will not exist. That is the premise that people who demand a withdrawal from the war work upon. It is the premise of total control. It is the victims reaction to an uncontrollable situation; the need to believe that we are in control every moment, even as we or the people around us are being killed.

If we chose not to go to war, these men would not exist. False premise. If we chose not to go to war, Atwar Bahjat would never die at their hands. False premise. If we chose not to prop up the Egyptian government, the Muslim Brotherhood would not exist. If we chose not to kick Saddam out of Kuwait; if we chose not station soldiers in Saudi Arabia; if we chose not support sanctions against Iraq; if we chose not to support Israel against the Palestinians and other Arabs; if, if, if...

If we had not done these things then we believe that such people as Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri or Musab al Zarqawi or these two men or the entire Islamist movement would not have existed, would not have decided to attack us, would not have killed our people or be killing the Iraqis as we speak.

It is a false premise. It is based on the concept of control. It prepositions that, the United States as a super power, now the only super power, controls the actions and thoughts of all of those around us. It supposes that the history of Islam and the Middle East, alone and without the existence of the United States during much of its history, did not lead to or create this movement. It supposes that this is a new idea and concept in this region. It supposes that the terrible and torturous behavior of "others" there is solely a reaction brought on by this war and not a matter of historical record the behavior of peoples, cultures, states and religious followers in this region; nor is it the choice of the "others".

We want to believe that WE choose war, not the others. We control war, not the others. We control the "others".

It makes it easier to believe that we can choose to withdraw and not participate. The truth is that we do not control this war. We are not the only ones who choose. The "others" have chosen before we even realized that there was something to make a decision about. This decision was made long ago in the words of Qutb in 1955 when he wrote that the freedom of the West infiltrating the lands of Islam would bring about this crisis. This was long before we even considered the idea of Islamist terrorists or their dreams of war and domination. He wrote that, one day, the existence of Islam as they knew it would be demolished if Islam did not rise up and destroy the West or push every idea, product, book, or thought that was not from Islam out of Islam.

Yet, we still believe that it was only our choice, that WE choose war. To believe otherwise would mean we have to accept we have no control and that WE did not choose war but it was chosen for us. In other words, it is WE who react to an action, not the other way around.

We can choose to reject this, but it doesn't matter what we choose because the "others" still have a will of their own. They still have their own thoughts, desires and demands. In all of these things, we believe we can choose differently because we do not hold what we believe is the final prize, the "political objective" as Clausewitz once wrote, in the same high regard as the "others". We have deduced that this final objective is simply that we do not inflict our society on, set foot on, participate with governments, purchase products from or otherwise have any interaction with Arab, Persian or Islamic nations.

This deduction is based on the false ideas that 1) we control the "others"; 2) we control whether we are at war or not; 3) that what we hold has important are the same things that the "others" hold as important. Because we do not understand their aspirations or we choose to disregard them in an act of false control, we imagine that the war is over a specific piece of land within specific geographic boundaries. We choose, with all temerity, with total lack of rationality and logic, to disregard the words and actions of the "others". It is the same choice we have made so many times before. We have chosen to believe that an ideology and movement that espouses the idea of a global war against "infidels" and a desire to create a global Caliphate or Muslim world.

We laugh when we hear the "others" declare that the flag of Islam will fly above the White House or that France will be a Muslim state or that Spain will be taken back into this Empire. We imagine that these are simply bloviations from people who would be happy if we simply withdrew and allowed them to have the geographic area we believe is contested. We imagine that we can create some other energy source which will make it unnecessary to interact there so there will be no reason to have war. Others believe that we could abandon Israel and there would be no reason to have war.

We keep pretending we choose war alone and can choose not to have war alone. It simply rejects the "others" as anything but our own creation. It is this idea that believes that the arrest or death of Osama bin Laden or Zawahiri or Zarqawi will satisfy our need for justice so the war would be done. It ignores the ideology as an aberrant, subject solely to the existence of certain men or to our own actions. We choose not to believe that our existence depends on the destruction of an ideology. So, we have limited our "political objectives" to democracy for other nations or protection of national interests, like oil. Neither of these we find worthy of expending our blood and money. But, these limitations are solely of our own making because the "others" do not imagine that the objectives are so limited.

This is why they fight and continue to fight while we discuss withdrawing. It is not simply Iraq or Afghanistan. The "others" see these as simply campaigns in a greater war while we pretend these two are separate "wars" with nothing in common so we could and should abandon one or the other as we see fit because we alone choose to participate. Rejecting their idea of the war does not make it go away. It only means that we continue to be confused about the nature of the war and our responsibility. We will continue to reject this definition of war because we do not believe that it threatens our survival and it is only our survival that we believe is worth choosing war over.

The only question is, what act by the others, what thing that we cannot control will convince us that war has been chosen for us? Not by the Bush Administration or Wolfowitz, or some nefarious Jewish conspiracy or the military industrial complex or oil companies. None of these flew a plane into buildings or into a field in Pennsylvania. None of these tried to blow up the towers long ago nor blew up our embassies nor blew a hole in the USS Cole or flew planes into the towers. We must accept, as painful to the psyche as it is, that "others" have choices, too; that they choose war.

The murder of Atwar Bahjat is not a lone act that will never be repeated again if only we withdraw from Iraq. Men do not wake up one day, choose to cut off the head of a bound woman after torturing her unmercifully and then go home never to do it again. They made a choice and have committed to it. Something that we want to pretend cannot happen. We want to pretend that, if we were not there they would not have a reason to do it; that they would not choose to do it to another or to us. We need to pretend this or we must accept that we do not control our world. Our perception of invulnerability will be shaken, our world will be chaos and we will not know what to do next.

But, we do have a choice. Even if it is only a reaction to the choices of others, we can choose war. We can choose to fight and keep fighting until the “others” have chosen a different political objective that we can agree on short of world domination or until they have decided that Islamist ideology and the caliphate are dead. Or, we can choose to be Atwar Bahjat, bound, gagged and finally beheaded.

Choosing to do nothing means we surrender. It is not principle. It is not control. It is death, today or tomorrow when the killers of Atwar Bahjat finally choose us.