We’ve said before that Micro-Scripts can be a weapon of good or evil, depending on who’s holding the weapon. Al Qaeda’s most famous phrase to date may have been the ultimate summation in 9 words of what the civilized world has been facing with this breed of fanatics: “We love death as much as you love life.” Sums up what you’re dealing with in a hurry, doesn’t it?
Well I read another one just the other day, attributed to a Taliban. I’ve been saying for a while that fighting a war against a civilization from a different time warp may be an untenable propostion.Why? Because we want an end and want to go home someday. They don’t. Big difference. They’re already home in the dust, the mountains, the caves, the burkas and the 3rd century. Their expectation is not an end-point or a conventional “rational” form of victory (living vs. dying) which has defined Western Warfare since Biblical times. We want to go home someday soon. Even the Japanese on Iwo Jima harbored the hope of someday getting off that wretched island in the Pacific and returning to their homeland when the war was over. But our enemies in the Taliban are home. They’re going nowhere else, ever. And that is our ultimate strategic weakness and their ultimate strength. If you view your life story in a timeframe of thousands of years vs. decades, you can wait anything out–unless the other side is willing to man its forts in the Korengal forever, which they know we are not.
The anonymous Talib’s Micro-Script says it all in 9 words? “Americans: You have the watches. But we have the time.”
Chills to the bone. No gun, figher jet or smart bomb–and certainly no American kid– who wants someday to be home with his wife and family–trumps that.