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The great thing about video war games - besides the realistic graphics and head-pounding sound effects - is no matter how many gunshots your helmeted avatar takes to the head, you always live to fight another day. That seems to be the operating philosophy for Obama and his Nerf Pentagon.
“Our technological advantage is a key to America's military dominance,” Obama declared. “…but our defense and military networks are under constant attacks. Al-Qaida and other terrorist groups have spoken of their desire to unleash a cyber attack on our country, attacks that are harder to detect and harder to defend against. Indeed, in today's world, acts of terror could come not only from a few extremists in suicide vests, but from a few keystrokes on the computer — a weapon of mass disruption.”
It’s odd that our president, who banned the term “war on terror” from the halls of official Washington, now gathers his paper-shuffling generals to prepare war plans to combat phantom enemies that are more likely to be pimple-faced teenagers hacking into government computers than al-Qaida suicide cultists. For Obama, it’s better to prepare for an imaginary war in cyberspace than get your hands dirty fighting a real war, against a real enemy, in the real world. Obama’s “just don’t do something, stand there” approach to combat could potentially frighten his anti-Bush paranoid followers.
Obama’s new Pentagon Cybercommand, like the Bush program to intercept telecommunications between al-Qaida and its operatives in the U.S., is partly in the hands of the National Security Agency (NSA). Understanding that the similarities between his and Bush’s program could prompt high-pith shrieks from his supporters, Obama reassured the press that his cyber warriors, “…will not – I repeat, will not – include monitoring private sector networks or Internet traffic.”
However, a source told the New York Times that, “There is simply no way to effectively conduct computer operations without entering networks inside the United States, where the military is prohibited from operating, or traveling electronic paths through countries that are not themselves American targets.”
Obama struggles to find a war America can win. What better place to fight and win than cyberspace. Xbox warriors will launch attacks against ruthless cyber foes while glorious martial music blares from the surround-sound speakers. On Obama’s virtual battlefield, the body count is high, but nobody gets hurt.
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