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terror. It was a good response, and I'm glad he said it--but it did occur to me that the war profiteers had won again--because the only options that their language provides are war or war.
We're STILL STUCK in the "war on poverty" and "the war on drugs"--both became a war on the poor. The "war on poverty" became a class war under Reagan--and maybe it was never anything else, even under LBJ (although it was originally inspired by the Kennedys, and wasn't a war--it was programs like Vista and Head Start). Under Reagan, most of our Democratic representatives became millionaires, through the tax code re-rewrite (end of the progressive tax, beginning of placing the tax burden increasingly on the backs of the poor), and through the infusion of more and more and more money into our political campaign system, so that only millionaires can afford to run for office. And with Bushite corporations now (s)electing both who gets to run (in primaries) and who wins--using TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code in the new electronic voting systems--the power of the millionaires is locked in. And what most Democratic millionaires do is sit on their hands while Republican millionaires pass tax cut after tax cut for the rich, turning the War on Iraq into a "war on the poor" as well. They also treat us to MIND-BOGGLING SILENCE about the Diebold/ES&S millionaires-in-office perpetuation system.
As for the "war on drugs," that's what the "war on terror" is intended to supplement. Both are the means of brutalizing, oppressing and above all silencing the poor, including torturing and killing them in this country and abroad. Infuse scads and scads of money into the enforcement of unnecessary laws, and into the prison-industrial complex--money extorted from the poor and middle class--and create a culture of racism and class warfare within the police forces, with the goal of the leaders being to obtain more and more money for the instruments of oppression, and to keep more people incarcerated for petty crimes, and you've created a lucrative SUBSTITUTE for war, during times of "peace"--as well as a means of suppressing dissent when war and class war require this Darth Vader cop establishment for use against weaponless demonstrators and perfectly Innocent people protesting government policy. Add "terrorists" and you've got full scale funding --billions and billions and billions of dollars--to wage war on civilians.
The "war on terror" is a war on US. WE, the people, are the enemy. The multiple tax cuts for the super-rich tell you this, if nothing else does. The police and security establishment that has been larded with money around "the war on terror"--and the unlawful restrictions on civil rights that the Bush junta is asserting--are the enforcement end of the CLASS WAR that they are waging.
In a government intent on peace and justice--a legitimate government of the people, for the people, and by the people--"terrorism" would be a MINOR police problem. The HYSTERIA that the Bush junta has tried to stir up about "terrorism" is 100% motivated by greed--the greed of the Bushites to dominate all remaining oil fields that they can get their hands on--using our money, and our sons and daughters as cannon fodder--and the greed of war profiteers (including "fatherland security" war profiteers), re-enforced by the greed of the rich and the super-rich whom this "war on terror" is designed to defend. Defeating "terrorism" in a NORMAL context, with a GOOD government in place, would MOSTLY be a matter of COMMON SENSE. And you wouldn't find blockades against "terror" investigations all over the landscape, as you find with the Bushites. THEY DON'T WANT TO DEFEAT "TERRORISTS." THEY FEED OFF "TERRORISTS." THEY ARE DELIBERATELY CREATING "TERRORISTS" IN EVERYTHING THEY DO--from the looting of Baghdad to the bombing of Beirut.
When a GOOD Democratic politician--one elected by the old, reliable lever machines (that they still have in CT)--uses the phrase "war on terror," he has allowed the fascists to box him in. We either get a "war on Iraq" or we get a "war on US." I've no doubt that Ned Lamont means something entirely different by the "war on terror" then Cheney does. But the LANGUAGE of war has put him into a defensive position.
So, YES, we should DUMP THIS PHRASE. The "war on terror" is no more sincere than the "war on drugs," and will be no more effective than the "war on poverty."
What to call it when we mean effective police action against violence, and the use of COMMON SENSE in creating a peaceful and just society, and a peaceful and just world?
One more element in this discussion should be the cynical manipulation of the newsstream by the Bush fascists, who create phrases like "the war on terror" not to convince anybody, but to "explain" the foregone conclusion of stolen elections. It is also, of course, the phony justification for massive theft of the U.S. treasury, and horrible polices of torture and mass murder, which the American people overwhelmingly oppose. To counter the phrase "war on terror," you probably need to entirely shift the ground of the discussion.
We are not "at war" in the sense of WW II, where you had German U-boats decimating US shipping in the Atlantic, and the Japanese imperialists destroying the US fleet at Pearl Harbor, and everybody pulled together to do WHATEVER WAS NECESSARY TO STOP these massive threats. Although you could make a good case that western war profiteers stoked that situation to the point of war, there is no question that Hitler and the Japanese INTENDED war.
And where is the state-supported war machine TODAY that has declared war on US, and that has the capability to wage it? If you buy the official story of 9/11, ill intended persons can sneak into the U.S. and pull off a spectacular terrorist act, but how many times can they do that? And WHO are they? We can't even know that it was the CIA-created Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. With modern technology, "tapes" can be faked and plausibly distributed to point anywhere the government wants to point. No case has been made about WHO did that act. No one has been caught. No one prosecuted. And those whose malfeasance or complicity PERMITTED it to happen have not been properly investigated EITHER.
Really, to "stop terrorism," we would best begin with an investigation INSIDE our own government! Why did ALL measures against terrorist attack--including the famous NORAD protocols for hijacked airlines--ALL FAIL on THAT day, and that day only?
And I ask again, WHO are we at war with? All the supposed hijackers came from Saudi Arabia and Yemen! So did the money (and the Bushites did everything possible to STOP investigation of THAT money trail). The Bushites are good buds with the Saudi princes. If we were going to blow anybody off the face of the earth, after 9/11, it should have been Saudi Arabia. Home of Mecca, the supposed inspiration for this assault. Home of the bin Ladens, spawners of terrorists. Home of the hijackers. Source of the money. The Taliban were peons, by comparison. The Bushites went after the peons. That's who they killed. Then they switched to their real and long standing goal: the Iraq and Iran oil fields.
Did Iraq declare war on us--or do ANYTHING to prompt an attack? No. Did Iran? No. Why then are they targets? Iran is somewhat embroiled in the Israel/Palestine conflict, indirectly--but that is a LOCAL conflict, resolvable by DIPLOMACY. What on earth have they done to merit invasion by the U.S.? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! They didn't even have nuke ambitions until the Bushites started directly threatening them. With the U.S. backing Israel--and given the history of that vis a vis Iran (the US/Israel destroyed Iran's democracy in 1954, and installed the horrible Shah of Iran, who inflicted the Iranian people with 25 years of torture and oppression), they have REASON to be afraid!
Is THAT the "war on terror"? Giving Israel leave to steal Palestinian land and disrupt the entire region? Is it using that conflict to grab power over a resource that belongs to Middle Eastern people, and taking fascist measures at home (the "Patriot Act," the "unitary executive") to shut Americans up about it?
Arguably, yes. That's all the "war on terror" is. One great big, murderous, thieving lie.
Things are so distorted in this "war," we can't see reality any more. So the terms of the debate need to be radically changed. Also, the Bushites' mechanism for continuing in power--Diebold/ES&S election theft machines--must be attacked and defeated. As long as NON-TRANSPARENT elections are in place--secret vote "counting" by Bushite corporations--THEY will determine the terms of the debate, and it WILL be a "war on terror" (a war on US).
There is no easy substitution for "war on terror" (peace on terror? good police work on terror?). If you substitute war on US (the citizens of the United States), war on Iraq, or war on Iran--the three real targets--the whole concept collapses. Why are we at war with ourselves? Why do the Bushites have spy data on everyone in the country? Why are we torturing prisoners--prisoners plucked out of the Afghan war for merely holding a rifle and defending their government--and holding them indefinitely without charge? This is NOT a "war on terror." This is a "war to CREATE terrorists"!
Maybe THAT's how to turn this phrase around: Every time we go to say the "war on terror," we should instead say the "war to CREATE terrorists."
The "war on poverty" created poverty. The "war on drugs" created drug lords. The "war on terror" creates terrorists. We had best abandon war, and start waging peace on all these problems.
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