COLUMN: This Doesn't Totally Make Sense, but What Does?

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By Tobin Barnes
If you’ve been following my columns the last couple weeks—heck, maybe you gave up—I wrote a couple harangues on the War on Terror, a topic, admittedly, very well out of my league. But I’ve got opinions just like anyone else, so I gave them.

Today, I’ll finish up my viewpoints with my last geopolitical rant. (I think I can hear “Thank goodness!” collectively rising from my dwindling audience. “It’s about time, Barnes. Go back to those light, slice-of-life-type things instead, like dealing with a new puppy and that kind of powder-puff stuff.”)

Uh huh, thanks for the vote of confidence. Now is your chance to escape because here I go again for one last time:

My basic premise is this: We should fight the War on Terror from outside third-world countries rather than in them. The war should be fought from a position of strength instead of chasing around foreign countries, losing precious lives and using borrowed resources, stirring up resentment but little gratitude, and never knowing when we’re finally done.

I said we should cut off (quarantine) these troublesome countries with our global reach and influence and let them work out their own problems in their own good time—starting from whatever century they’re currently living in—until these countries are ready to become contributing members of the world community. Pressure from without would be much more effective than pressure from within.

Yeah, I know it’s a mouthful, and by stating it that simply, I also realize it sounds naïve and filled with gaps a battleship could steam through.

But let’s consider some arguments against my weakest points.

For example, quarantining “bad” countries didn’t work prior to World War II.

True, but we were trying to quarantine territorially aggressive military superpowers that had the power to grab whatever they wanted. The present third-world trouble-spots have difficulty ruling within their own borders.

Next weak point: Don’t we have a humanitarian obligation to these countries?

Yes, two-thirds of the world could use our help, so, as with the rest, we should give the trouble spots aid and instruction where it is wanted and is effective, but we shouldn’t hold their hands. It’s insulting. They themselves have to do the heavy lifting, or improvements will never take hold.

Then how about this? Many of those trouble spots have resources (let’s go ahead and call it oil) that we want and need.

Granted, but we tend to forget that third-world countries, oil rich nations such as Saudi Arabia included, need us as much or probably more than we need them. Their pugnacious attitudes may change once we have cut off relations and trade with them. If not, they can enjoy all that oil amongst themselves.

But our way of life will fall apart if we can’t access the oil and/or other essential resources we must have.

Well, maybe this is where the real War on Terror needs to be fought. Maybe we should spread the burden of war around to everybody instead of hefting it solely on the shoulders of our patriotic young people who are willing to fight for our country. Our war should be a war on foreign energy dependence with all citizens doing their parts as we re-gear our energy infrastructure for a greener future.

This will necessarily require sacrifice from all our citizenry, as well as some economic dislocations, but this is the war we really need to fight. And in the long run, it will be much cheaper as technological energy efficiency will spur job creation through a burgeoning economy that will leave a better world for future generations.

Okay, even if we buy that overly-optimistic scenario, Barnes, how about the nuclear threat?

If we had forces trying to regulate every benighted country in the world, it still wouldn’t eliminate the chance of some disaffected group successfully touching off the big one. There will never be a total guarantee against that.

And what will more likely continue to ignite terrorist fervor, our forces rampaging through every trouble-spot that pops up in a virtually infinite stream, or just allowing these wild-eyed fanatics to fester in isolation until their own people come up with their own solutions to their violent agendas?

So there. That’s my two cents worth even if it’s worth only two cents.