The Ultimate Misnomer

Unless you've lived with your head buried in the sand for the last eight years, you've probably heard the phrase "The War on Terror". What I'm going to attempt to do in this post is deconstruct the myth surrounding the term, showing how 1) The War on Terror is unwinnable and 2) Why it's really not a War on Terror.

Starting with the first goal: Terror is an idea. How do you fight an idea? Hasn't the Pentagon ever read any history? The first thing you learn very quickly is that you can destroy the person representing an idea, the faction that expresses it, but you cannot destroy the idea, no matter how hard you try and for how long. Take, for example, the idea of greed. In our 40,000 year history, we have yet to defeat that idea/emotion, and it looks to be quite some time before we ever do. If this really is a war on terror, then it is incapable of being won. Even if they manage to kill Bin Laden, vaporize all of Al Quaeda's leaders, kill every last insurgent and liberation fighter in Iraq, destroy the Muslim brotherhood in Egypt, and permanently establish a powerful counterterrorist unit, terror would still exist. With the exception of the first two, I hope none of them ever occur. That said, it is quite clear that the war on terror, if believed to still be winnable, will be going on for a very, very long time.

Yet, maybe that's what the war's planners wanted when they started it. Wars have this way with big business. The CEOs of massive corporations tend to reap massive benefits from the suffering of the world every time a war comes around. Since the beginning of the WOT, the profit margins of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Grumman, General Electric, Halliburton, and various other neocon-run murderers have done nothing but go up, despite the economic recession we now find ourselves in. The truth is, wars are always orchestrated by the powerful and wealthy, without failure, and those wars are always about wealth and power, without fail. To suggest that there is such thing as a "war started with a just cause" is both a fallacy and an absurdity.

With that in mind, let us move onto the second myth. Many will claim that the War on Terror is working, that we are bringing "freedom and democracy" to the Middle East. Really? Freedom? Democracy? Peace? Tell that to Razek al-Kazem al-Khafaji, who lost his mother, two brothers, both his parents, his wife and his six children when a "precision strike" hit his house during the firebombing of Baghdad. When reporters found the gruesome scene, his only comment was "God take our revenge on America" as he struggled to find the bodies of his loved ones. Is that freedom? Is that democracy? For having lost everyone he ever cared for, he shows remarkable restraint. Had that been me, I would have been the first one fighting back against the invader, ensuring that the bastards paid for what they'd done. Or howabout the mother who watched as the severed torso, then the head, of her daughter were pulled from a smoldering crater where four smart bombs had hit a restaurant were Saddam Hussein might have been. It ended up destroying three homes, killing fourteen people. A Research Group in London announched that anywhere from 6,806 to 7,797 Iraqi civilians died during the "precision-bombing" of Baghdad. Is that freedom? Is that democracy? We could also look at the War in Afghanistan, where our so-called noble efforts have resulted in the deaths of 30,000 civilians. Is that freedom?

This is not a war on terror. It is a war of terror.