H RES 861: the United States will (never) prevail in the Global War on Terror
Last week the US Congress voted to Declare that the United States will prevail in the Global War on Terror, the struggle to protect freedom from the terrorist adversary.
Unfortunately the bill doesn't define "prevail". At what point can it be said that we've prevailed against Terror? The 2006 QDR defines the "four priorities [of] the focus of the QDR" which are not achievable objectives but ongoing processes. The United States will *never* prevail in the Global War on Terror because the objectives we have defined in this war are, by their nature, unachievable. Unless "prevail" doesn't mean "win" but means "to gain ascendancy through strength or superiority", in which case I wonder why they'd use the future tense to describe a condition which has existed since the 1930s.
You don't get to declare the future. We're doing all this fighting and intelligence collecting precisely because the outcome *isn't* certain. The worst human failures happen when everyone is so overconfident in their inevitable success that they don't actually make the sacrifices and take the actions required to achieve that success. Four years later this country doesn't need statements of intent, we need objective measures of progress.
Unfortunately the bill doesn't define "prevail". At what point can it be said that we've prevailed against Terror? The 2006 QDR defines the "four priorities [of] the focus of the QDR" which are not achievable objectives but ongoing processes. The United States will *never* prevail in the Global War on Terror because the objectives we have defined in this war are, by their nature, unachievable. Unless "prevail" doesn't mean "win" but means "to gain ascendancy through strength or superiority", in which case I wonder why they'd use the future tense to describe a condition which has existed since the 1930s.
You don't get to declare the future. We're doing all this fighting and intelligence collecting precisely because the outcome *isn't* certain. The worst human failures happen when everyone is so overconfident in their inevitable success that they don't actually make the sacrifices and take the actions required to achieve that success. Four years later this country doesn't need statements of intent, we need objective measures of progress.