Public Intellectual's role in the War Against Terror

Recent polls on public support of the war in Afghanistan show that the majority of American citizens oppose the United States efforts in Afghanistan; in August of 2009 the Washington Post reported that 51% of Americans polled say the war is not worth fighting. Despite this lack of public support, our military efforts in the region have almost doubled as the U.S. is pulling out of Iraq and shifting focus on Afghanistan as the battleground for the war against Terror. Opponents of the war rally behind the United States inability to capture Osama Bin Laden as the main reason that we should remove ourselves from Afghanistan. But the war in Afghanistan is not an effort to capture Bin Laden, but to bring stability to the region through the removal of terrorist forces, Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
It is a sad day when our public will look upon the events of September 11th with disregard and turn their backs on the United States’ efforts to combat the mindsets and ideologies that caused these events. Perhaps the blame for this does not rest on the shoulders of the public themselves but on those responsible for educating our public, the public intellectual. As blogger and public intellectual himself, Stephen Mack, points out in his essay, “The ‘Decline’ of Public Intellectuals?” that, “the best argument for democracy, is not that the people are “naturally” equipped for self-government—but that they need to become so, and, moreover, experience is the only teacher.” There-in lies the duty of the public intellectual, to provide the experience and to teach the people.
One public intellectual bent on raising public awareness and explaining the United States’ efforts to combat terrorism in Afghanistan as well as within the entire Middle East is Douglas Farah. Farah, who works in intelligence in Washington, writes for the Counterterrorism Blog, a website devoted to reporting overnight and breaking news and discussing continuing trends in counterterrorism. As public support for the war against terror fades, perhaps the writings of Farah and other contributors to the counterterrorism blog will stir some fervor in the American people to not only support our efforts but also to take an active role in educating themselves on our mission to combat terrorism.