I’ve argued for a long time that the single most important benefit of a forward strategy in the War on Terror is information. Being in hostile contact with the enemy, strange as it may seem, is an advantage in itself. It is normal to think that the object of being “at war” with radical Islam is to defeat them; but even if you don’t defeat them it has the considerable advantage of yielding a continuous stream of information. Back in the days before spy satellites, overhead recon, battlefield radar and electrooptics the way commanders developed information about the enemy was by sending small groups of men or cavalry forward to see what happened. These were called scouts. Disengaging from the enemy brought benefits, but it also meant you “broke contact” and “lost touch” — the old military historians actually used the phrases.

Now let’s imagine that three or four years from now a small nuclear device goes off in the US, or a dirty bomb, or weaponized smallpox or anthrax. Given what we know about how hard it was to pinpoint the sources of the 2001 anthrax attack how confident are we that when we retaliate we’ll hit back against the true perp? If we can’t definitively say who did the 2001 attacks why are we so sure than we can correctly identify a 2011 attack? It is fashionable to say we can discover “through forensics” the identity of anyone who dares launch a WMD attack on the US. But what are the odds we can do this within two weeks of the attack? Two months of the attack? Or is it more likely that in the aftermath there is really no viable alternative but to nuke the usual suspects?

You can make the argument that it is too dangerous to lose contact with the enemy even for a moment. Simply because if you take your eye of the ball things can come at you from out of the gap in the signal. Right now we are being tempted with a “peace dividend”. Iraq is won. Time to get back to diplomacy, to building the EU, to dust of the End of History project. But I fear turning away completely.

For in that sleep what dreams may come,
Must give vs pause …
The undiscovered country, from whose bourne
No traveler returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Then fly to others that we know not of.