Reply #142: Bush's Folly

[davekriss]

"The proper response would have been to track down the perpetrators and leave it at that. The 'war on terror' has created more terrorists than were ever out there."

I watched a Booknotes on CSPAN2 this weekend where the author (Jessica Stern?) speaks of the "three R's" motivating terrorism, i.e. retribution, revenge, and renown (iirc). According to the author a heads on "war on terror" using conventional weaponry and standing armies is the height of all folly, all it does is amplify the motives behind terrorism, expands the base from which the terrorists draw support and recruits, and ultimately will lose the war.

What she recommends is that, yes, we pursue the perpetrators as criminals, arrest and punish them, and of course pursue aggressive intelligence and counter-intelligence operations. But she also stresses (what for us here seems common sense) that the U.S. needs to win the hearts and minds, not of the disaffected terrorists, but the more moderate populations from which they draw support. What is the effect of a "shock and awe" campaign that devastates an innocent civilian population? Will they perceive the death of family and friends, and the diminution of their life chances, as justice or injustice? How about when we add Abu Ghraib, or train forces to execute the Salvadoran Solution (death squads), or pass the Miltary Commissions Act that leaves interpretation of the Geneva Convention to the Pretzeldent? Will they seek retribution and revenge? Will some seek renown? The answers are obvious.

Instead of driving a wedge between the terrorists and the moderate population, we've drawn them together. Instead of isolating the terrorists into relative impotence, we've emboldened the populations around them to hide, support, and fight for them.

Bush's War on Terror seems completely insane when judged on the stated objectives held up for their efforts. But it is not insane. I contend that the War on Terror has nothing to do with a defeat of terrorism, which like "communism" before serves as the lifeblood of the profit-making machine they seek to sustain. Terrorism is used to manufacture consent for actions that are the extreme opposite of altruism, but how many soldiers would brave danger and spill blood if they understood that they fight to improve profits at the transnational corporations backing state power? All else is clever theater. Bush has given them the necessary motivating narrative.

This War on Terror, like the War on Communism before it, is cover for a stark imperial agenda meant to further the advantages of the few. It is an external manifestation of class war, of which there have been many internal manifestations, the latest being pending law that allows the Pretzeldent to declare any of us to be unlawful enemy combatants, suspend habeas corpus, and detain us indefinately while tickling us with waterboards and rubber hoses.

There's that ol'Confuscian curse, "may you live in interesting times." Unfortunately, the times are interesting indeed!