Lessons of war: Military might can’t overcome ideologies

Sen. John McCain’s recent comment that the U.S. has never had a comprehensive strategic plan for the Middle East helps explain why our longest war may prove endless. But it also reveals how little national conversation we have had about the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan.

As our military presence expands in Africa and two defiantly unpredictable leaders, President Trump and Kim Jong-un, threaten to annihilate each other, it is clearly time to sort out what we have learned from our involvement in that precarious part of the world and why those wars interest us less than corporatetax rates or presidential tweeting.

In addition to the absence of a strategic plan, for me a key lesson of our post 9-11 world has been that military force can be successful against clearly defined physical targets but not the ideologies and beliefs fueling much of the world’s terrorism.

Like us, our technology, and even our bedbugs, terrorism evolves. As we play whack-amole pursuing ISIS fighters across the Middle East, their cancer metastasizes across the world into marathon bombers and lone-wolf killers. The only practical way to stop these new attacks seems to be a mass surveillance of all aspects of our lives, one that requires surrendering many of the freedoms our nation is built upon.

Or is it? Afghanistan and Iraq alone have cost us somewhere between $6 trillion and $8 trillion. Instead of raising that money directly through something like the World War II Victory Tax, we have buried it in the budget, either by borrowing money or shifting funds away from infrastructure, education, scientific research and health care. Why else would we be sending our astronauts to the International Space Station on Russian rockets?

What if we had devoted some of those trillions — or the trillion the Transportation Security Administration has spent in checking my shoes at Orlando International Airport — on education? Physical force will never completely defeat an ideology. But a better ideology should be able to overwhelm one that celebrates driving rental trucks into schoolchildren.

Imagine if we had offered full scholarships in Arabic to thousands of college students in exchange for their spending four years after college finding new ways to explain the value of democracy to youngsters throughout the Middle East. We could also use the money to train teachers and construction engineers to go around the world creating an education revolution, building technologically advanced homes for millions, and making sure every village on Earth had wells and clean water.

I suspect that we are not discussing any of this because we have outsourced and marginalized our military and wars. A tiny number of families and communities bear most of the sacrifice. It drags us away from Netflix, Facebook and Snapchat only when the president and a Gold Star widow argue.

If we are truly serious as citizens about accepting responsibility for our country’s actions in the world, we should discuss a national draft and a war tax. If every young man and woman face some kind of national service, they and their families will all think carefully about future military actions. And if we introduce a 2 percent tax on all income whenever we are at war, politicians will do all they can to find alternative solutions.

Perhaps then we can work toward a more responsible future with less fear and more hope, a nation worthy of our military and John McCain.