Bob's Links and Rants

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Saturday, May 20, 2006

End the "war on terror"

As a followup to yesterday's post about how the "war on terror" was just what the terrorists ordered, Chris Floyd explains in detail what I've been suggesting for years--the only way to "win" a "war on terror" is to stop fighting it. Excerpt:
Both sides need the other in this insane global conflict--but ironically, only one side can actually stop the "war." Only the United States can cease to respond with massive military force all over the world to provocations from criminals on the fringe. Only the United States can say, "We are not fighting a war; we are dealing with criminal actions as they arise--while working feverishly on the diplomatic, social, political, cultural and economic fronts to address the conditions in which the particular set of crimes known as 'terrorism' are apt to arise. It is a complicated business, to be sure: hard work, often unrewarding, full of pitfalls and reverses--but we are wise enough and strong enough as a nation to see it through."

But this course--the only sensible, and only genuinely effective response to criminal actions of extremist groups--will never be undertaken by the Bush Faction, no matter who heads it. Nor by anyone else, of whatever political stripe, who buys into the militarist philosophy of an American dominance imposed on the world by force (either directly or through the more subtly implied but ever-present threat of force favored by "liberal" advocates of "soft power").

As long as the Bush Regime--or some other permutation of "Bushism"--is in power, the "war on terror" will never end. It will go on spawning new wars, real wars, like the horror in Iraq, the continuing conflict in Afghanistan, and the proxy war now raging in Somalia--where Bush-backed warlords (the old downers of Black Hawks; yes, we've changed sides, again) are pitched against Islamic militias. This blood-dimmed tide will keep rising: thousands, perhaps millions (if the hard-Right's dream of nuking Iran comes true) will be struck down by death and grief, and we will all keep falling deeper into the pit of a lamed and brutal life.