THE BOGUS WAR ON TERRORISM

THE BOGUS WAR ON TERRORISM

If you were to ask the leaders of either the Democratic or Republican parties which one could do a better job in winning the war on terror both would assure you that either could do a better job than the other.

“We can, and we have to, win the war on terror.”

- Howard Dean, December 2005

“In The Four Years Since September 11th, The United States And The World Have Been Committed To Winning The War On Terror.”

- George W. Bush, October 2005

What we have here, of course, is a contest between the Democrats and Republicans to see which one might best pummel the Islamic world into submission; it seems that neither actually understands how success in this endeavor can be measured in any tangible way, how victory can be achieved decisively, or how long the war will go on. Mr. Bush and his wife have generously explained what will not happen: there will be no formal surrender, no peace treaty, and no boundaries. Mr. Kerry campaigned in 2004 with solemn pledges to continue the brutal twin occupations of Iraq and Palestine. Neither he nor any of the Democrats have done anything at all to explain how the war will be or can be “won.”

The U.S. “war on terror” is nothing more than an ideological justification for the aggressive projection of U.S. imperial power abroad -- and a clampdown on any serious challenge to the system at home. Islamophobic diatribes are a means of providing a cover to this reality.

It is not my aim to reshape the U.S. war on terror but to oppose it.

Make no mistake about this: Terrorism is the enemy of all civilized nations and civilized beings. However, civility requires self-examination. Because the terrorists employ indiscriminate violence against innocent civilians does not mean that they have no cause. They have attacked our people; our brothers and sisters, and it is not shameful to admit that they caused us harm. To see the innocent killed and bloodied arouses our passion, our rage, our instinctive need for vindication but when the rage subsides, we must bow our heads, mourn our losses, and finally take account.

If we are indeed a righteous people, we will recognize that our government has also brought great harm, death and destruction to people who are no less innocent than the people of New York, London and Madrid. The rage, the passion and the deep sense of loss is not lessened because they are inflicted by missiles and invading armies.

The “war on terror” has nothing to do with the idea that the Arabs “hate us because of our freedoms”, the fairy tale that President Bush likes to use to frighten the ignorant among us. It just may have something to do with the Arabs not getting the memo on how truly great we really are.

Of course, the real problem is that the Arabs understand America’s motivations and behavior abroad all too well. If they ever needed any reminding, the tortured inmates of Abu Ghraib, coupled with the resounding failure to implement any significant reconstruction of a society shattered to pieces by our bombs of benevolence, have served quite nicely in that capacity. As the chief of the US Army 3rd Corps Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz admitted, “As much as I would love the Iraqis to love me, and my doctrine tells me I want to win the hearts and minds, I know I’m not going to do that.” One need not ask what he knows he is going to do.

There just seems to be no peaceful way to convince 300 million Arabs and 1.2 billion Muslims to submit willingly to constant dehumanization, humiliation, torture, killing, bombing and bulldozing. They will not simply yield, in Iraq for instance, all their oil, their assets, their riches, to private American firms and attendant mercenaries (euphemistically called “contractors”) who are all too eager to collect the spoils of a war which they have not only failed to win but are quite clearly losing.

Childish rhetoric about taking the fight to the enemy cannot mask the reality on the ground. The number of “terrorists” is not finite, their energies not split or splintered by armed American presence on multiple fronts. Rather, it is clearly the American armed forces which are tired, demoralized, and stretched beyond their limits by their deployment, the very existence of which produces a groundswell of armed resistance among previously non-hostile populations.

In this bogus war on terror, young Americans in their teenage years and twenties now die needlessly in foreign desert sands far away from their homes and families. Spouses and children at home suffer from near poverty as soldiers are forced to remain in the field far beyond their contract and receive only a pittance for their patriotism, quite unlike the handsomely paid mercenaries/contractors assigned to secure sabotaged oil lines and unpopular political puppets. Many soldiers who return home are driven to depression, anger, and even suicide. For those who do not return, the pain among grieving relatives can be overbearing, such as that of the father who set himself ablaze after learning his 20 year-old son was killed in Iraq.

These are losses incurred not in the name of any clearly defined goals, but only the vaguest objectives whose rationale keeps morphing in accordance with the whims and schemes of this or that “expert” or government official. Is this then, the full, sorry scope of the war “we must win” as Howard Dean demands?

Not quite. The truth is that the grand enterprise known as the “war on terror” does not have clear progress markers, decisive battles, concrete timetables, or geographical limits for one reason and one reason alone: it is a two-front war, and the people of the United States are the other front.

An atmosphere of fear, paranoia, insecurity, and racial hatred grinds down oppressively upon the American public, pulverizing goodwill, dissent and radicalism with ten times the efficiency of any cluster-bomb or laser-guided missile. That the war abroad is to go on in perpetuum against a “shadowy” and “dark” enemy is no accident or blunder. What better method of keeping the populace timid and tame for as long as is desired? What better way to dismiss the pressing needs of the underpaid, the unemployed, the medically uninsured - the neglected? What stronger toxin to poison minds and hearts that burn and beat with similar needs, passions, desires, and dreams; to set them against each other for myriad petty reasons so that a select few may profit and accrue power and privilege?

The “war on terror” is an absolute fraud. It is a war designed specifically to mask the injustices and inequalities which afflict millions of Americans by aggravating and amplifying the injustices and inequalities inflicted upon millions of non-Americans. Its very existence represents continuous and ever-expanding victory for only the most vicious, opportunistic, and hateful elements among humanity, who will impose upon us tragedy upon tragedy, and terror upon terror, until we break cleanly and completely from the rotted chains of mindless fealty to false national leaders and forge links with those abroad whose friendships we have forgone for far too long.