In the World War II D-Day thriller Saving Private Ryan, Private Jackson, a Scripture-quoting sniper, believes he can single-handedly end the war in Europe.
"If you was to put me with this here sniper rifle anywhere up to and including one mile from Adolf Hitler ... with a clean line of sight — well, pack your bags boys. War's over," Jackson says with the can-do swagger associated with ordinary GIs of the fading "Greatest Generation."
Smite the head, and the beast — Nazism — will die.
In the case of Nazi Germany, that may or may not have been literally true.
Killing Hitler, who terrorized a continent and launched a global world war of massed armies, might not have ended the war in Europe as quickly as Jackson wished. But there was little doubt it would have accelerated what had begun to look inevitable in 1944, when the Nazis were in retreat across France, Belgium and Holland. That a single soldier believed he could have such an impact distinguished his generation's world war from this one's.
There were clear lines of victory in World War II. There was a clear way home.
There's no such clarity in the shadow war against terrorism. The beast is hydra-headed. al-Qaeda is, in the words of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a "network of networks." There are figureheads and a few killers especially adept at killing innocents, but no dictators. There are insurgent cells to root out, but no armies to defeat. There is an ideology — built, like Nazism, around an especially violent strain of fundamentalism and intolerance — but no state to sponsor it.
But make no mistake — this is a world war every bit as consequential as the defeat of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. If you didn't believe that before the past week, events around the globe should have retired all your doubt.
These two events were wrapped around the news of the death of terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi:
The breakup of a terrorist plot in neighboring Canada, where people with no direct ties to al-Qaeda reportedly planned to blow up government buildings and capture and behead that country's prime minister.
The rise of fundamentalist Islamic militias in Somalia, potentially a new breeding ground to export terrorism. Somalia is the lawless African frontier made infamous through "Black Hawk Down," the account of the brutal ambush of American soldiers in Mogadishu.
Make no mistake, the news that al-Zarqawi was killed by two, 500-pound American bombs was important and the first major piece of positive military news since the capture of Saddam Hussein. Taking this man out of the human race was a victory for humanity. His earthly deeds included killing innocent celebrants at a Jordanian wedding and the beheading of helpless captives. He posted those beheadings on the Internet to pique the bloodlust of fellow believers.
Critics like to belittle President Bush for calling such people "evildoers," but the label seemed especially suited to al-Zarqawi.
Yet unlike World War II, when allied airmen would scribble personal messages to Hitler on their bombs, it is folly to personalize victory and defeat in a war of ideologies. Bush learned that soon after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when he said he wanted Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."
Killing people like Zarqawi — and even killing or capturing Osama bin Laden — will not likely end the clash between civilization and a belief system that Rumsfeld described as "dark, sadistic and medieval." Since the days after 9/11, Bush has mostly downplayed the significance of bin Laden and other al-Qaeda figures, so when they are captured or killed the political impact at home is blunted.
This is a war of information, propaganda, doctrine, and acts both on and off the battlefield. It can't be decided by a couple of bombs or a sniper's bullet.
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