THE END OF TERRORISM
As the Bush administration fades into the sunset, so too should the use of the word pair "terrorism/terrorist".
These overworked words mean everything and they mean nothing.
They mean everything when your leaders desire to remake the Middle East in their image at the point of a six hundred billion dollar military juggernaught but lack a marketing campaign. The administration advertising writers were truly gifted by the 911 attacks and came up with "The War on Terrorism". The beauty of this slogan was that it allowed the administration to wage wage war anywhere, anytime they wished in its name. The targets of their warfare were reduced to either being terrorists or aiding terrorists. They could kidnap anyone around the world at will and have them tortured in torture-friendly lands simply by labeling them "suspected terrorists". They could set up the Gulag at Guantanamo to hold them endlessly without a shred of legal protection, which, if granted, would determine many were utterly "terror free". Some were simply sold to the American invaders by Afghan and Iraqi tribal chiefs under our "cash for terrorists" program.
The words mean nothing because they do not shed an iota of understanding to the complex world we inhabit. They mean nothing because they stifle real debate about the sanity and legality of our military ventures. They mean nothing because they could just as easily be applied to American administrations throughout history. The first terrorists? Weren't the Founding Fathers nothing but a bunch of terrorists in the eyes of British owners of the American colonies? Wasn't the American army that invaded Mexico in 1846 viewed as a terrorist horde by the folks who had Texas and a handful of other western states stolen from them? Oh, I forgot. That wasn't terrorism; merely Manifest Destiny. Those 300,000 Filipinos slaughtered after our conquest of Spain in 1898 weren't killed by terrorists. They were killed by the righteous American army in the name of liberation. That only takes us to end of the 19th century!
Terrorist and terrorism are words I have yet to hear the President Elect utter. That does not mean he will ignore real threats to America. It means he understands nuance.
Much as I am tempted, I must practice what I preach. I wouldn't even characterize the last day of the current administration as "The End of Terrorism".
Also published in Daily Herald, February 1, 2009
These overworked words mean everything and they mean nothing.
They mean everything when your leaders desire to remake the Middle East in their image at the point of a six hundred billion dollar military juggernaught but lack a marketing campaign. The administration advertising writers were truly gifted by the 911 attacks and came up with "The War on Terrorism". The beauty of this slogan was that it allowed the administration to wage wage war anywhere, anytime they wished in its name. The targets of their warfare were reduced to either being terrorists or aiding terrorists. They could kidnap anyone around the world at will and have them tortured in torture-friendly lands simply by labeling them "suspected terrorists". They could set up the Gulag at Guantanamo to hold them endlessly without a shred of legal protection, which, if granted, would determine many were utterly "terror free". Some were simply sold to the American invaders by Afghan and Iraqi tribal chiefs under our "cash for terrorists" program.
The words mean nothing because they do not shed an iota of understanding to the complex world we inhabit. They mean nothing because they stifle real debate about the sanity and legality of our military ventures. They mean nothing because they could just as easily be applied to American administrations throughout history. The first terrorists? Weren't the Founding Fathers nothing but a bunch of terrorists in the eyes of British owners of the American colonies? Wasn't the American army that invaded Mexico in 1846 viewed as a terrorist horde by the folks who had Texas and a handful of other western states stolen from them? Oh, I forgot. That wasn't terrorism; merely Manifest Destiny. Those 300,000 Filipinos slaughtered after our conquest of Spain in 1898 weren't killed by terrorists. They were killed by the righteous American army in the name of liberation. That only takes us to end of the 19th century!
Terrorist and terrorism are words I have yet to hear the President Elect utter. That does not mean he will ignore real threats to America. It means he understands nuance.
Much as I am tempted, I must practice what I preach. I wouldn't even characterize the last day of the current administration as "The End of Terrorism".
Also published in Daily Herald, February 1, 2009
posted by Walt Zlotow at 6:47 AM
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