By Clarence McConkey

The War on Terror, for all our efforts to win it, is a contest of ideas, philosophies, values and social systems which govern and inspire people. Never in the history of the world has anyone ever destroyed an idea with "... troop strength, hardware updates and a missile defense shield." If these methods had ever proved to overcome an idea, the British would have destroyed the idea of the American colonists that they ought to be free.

Our recent wars illustrate this in a clear and tragic way. In the Vietnam War, we possessed overwhelming power: ground, air, naval and chemical warfare (napalm). For all this power, we finally were reduced to fleeing for our lives from the top of the embassy compound in Saigon, leaving 55,000 dead soldiers behind. The Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, General David Monroe Shoup (1960-63), had bitterly opposed American involvement in Vietnam when the buildup began, argued against it during the war and stood face to face with Lyndon Johnson in denying the war was winnable, the end just ahead at the light at the end of the tunnel.

The second myth of Bresnahan's column is that, quoting Pat Flynn from that article, "I believe Iraq is the center of the war against al Qaeda." Iraq is no such thing! Every intelligence agency in the U.S. government, including the ex-Secretary of State, Colin Powell, acknowledges al Qaeda was nowhere in Iraq when we invaded that country, just as there were no weapons of mass destruction. Al Qaeda is a world movement of ideas and however reprehensible and dangerous those ideas are to us, it is still a movement of ideas. In its basic form, al Qaeda is simply a new appearance of the age old clash of cultures and values that go far back into history, back to the historic East versus West struggle of the Greeks and the Persians.

Bresnahan's column bemoans children, women and the handicapped being sent as human bombs to kill and maim. We all share that horror it is savage and heart-wrenching and causes us to cry out in rage. Of course, we react in consternation at 9/11 and vow "never again." Yet in our outrage, we remember there is in the arsenal of U.S. power the crime against humanity of waterboarding (Iraqi prisoners have drowned.) There is poison gas in our inventory, germ warfare (read Lab 257, M.C. Carroll, William Morrow, pub. 2004), techniques of assassination and a system for injecting a shot of instant death of ricin into the ear of an enemy walking down the sidewalk.

Ideas are ultimately fought with the weapons of ideas, not with the death in the ear. The early Christians learned this and they won out. The biblical Hebrews had learned it before that; it is a lesson we have to learn over and over again in every new age. The danger is not so much that we will learn it too slowly or inadequately, the danger is that we deny we have to learn it at all. To defend ourselves against aggression from any source and at any time is, of course, common sense. No one seriously questions our need to protect and preserve our way of life.

Yet if the incoming national administration continues the old, fatal philosophy of "being in Iraq for 100 years" (McCain), or resisting those who "have no regard for innocent human life" (Johanns), then perhaps we ought to remember that at this very moment, 86 American service personnel have been convicted, are awaiting trial, or are under investigation for "raping and killing" at least 348 innocent Iraqi children, girls, moms and dads (Amnesty International.) If we slough this off by saying these are unfortunate but unavoidable casualties of war, we will need to remember it is no such thing to a 12-year-old Iraqi girl, Mina Lonassri, who was on her way to school before being violated and killed.

If another 100 years in Iraq is the best we can do with our ideas, then we will admit defeat in this struggle for the preservation of humane values; of values, ideas and social systems that elevate and inspire. After all, isn't this what our military, our educational system, religion, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution are all about, rather than updated hardware and missile defense shields? There is no defense shield in the entire world or in the atmosphere above us that can ever destroy an incoming idea meant to dignify and enhance the whole human life.