War on Terror: Oh, the Doublespeak of It All!

We have entered a new era in geopolitics, the United States has won the cold war and has won world control or at least the most practical form of world control — economic and most of the world's political decisions.

Now we are faced with the threat of Non-State Organizations (NSOs) attacking the US. The particularly challenging development is the enemy can poke at us with a stick and we cannot seemingly strike back. Sure we can move all the rocks in Afghanistan around and we can parade our tank armadas across the deserts and swamps of Iraq; but neither action has diffused "the Terrorist Threat" to the United States, instead it has probably only made it easier for Terrorists to provoke rage and sympathy among the civilians who have had their homes destroyed as their local rocks were rearranged.

I would like to take a moment to point out that we do not have the heads of Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden.

I first propose that we recognize that it would actually be an act of insanity to engage the United States in openly declared conventional warfare, biological or nuclear, as a state in our times. Once you accept that premise, then it follows that if one would have a grudge against the US and could not achieve its goals through diplomatic, economic, political or other peaceful means then warfare remains as the diplomatic tool of last resort for everyone else — not just the US.

Now we have to come up with why in the world would anyone not like the United States? Actually I will just set that ball of joy on the side and let's just take it for granted that perhaps not everyone is as pleased with Americana as we would like to think. We should also take it for granted that there are evil, selfish, power-seeking people on this planet who wouldn't mind using propaganda that vilifies another people in order to create a standing enemy to focus its people's angst and wrath against (hey it's a great job if you can get it).

Okay if you are with me so far, then you admit that people are not going to attack the US conventionally and openly and that some people might actually want to attack the US. Great.

Now let's talk about words and the meaning of words: "War on Terrorism." This is a War you cannot win, the more and more you smack the dusty desert ground the more and more the red ants just buzz about and more and more mysteriously show up. Sure you could drop a nuclear bomb down their hole and blow up a whole colony, but there will be more unless you are prepared to kill 2 to 3 billion of the people on this planet to achieve your goal of peace. So I postulate that the current War on Terrorism just will not work, it is instead great for right-wing leaders and power holders of both sides of this conflict for it keeps them in with job security and in fact more wealth and power as they confiscate that power from their people to wage this impossible war.

So here is what I propose — we drop that damn Terrorism word. That's right, we just drop it off at the nearest bus stop. We are in the middle of a war. Now, isn't that a lot clearer? Now we do not have an impossible demon called Terror that cannot be subdued, instead we have just a war — we have had plenty of them before. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were certainly respectable and powerful opponents; certainly our opponents today do not stand up to those opponents especially considering relative power.

By removing the Terror word we can stop our government from practicing Orwellian Doublespeak with constantly rising federal budgets, dwindling state and civil rights for Americans.

Let's just get the score card out, hunker down and see how we will fight our way out of this. Why did Saudi Arabia attack the United States on 9-11? Do you know that our fabulously literate, democratic, wealthy and supposedly informed public believes in overwhelming numbers that Iraq was behind 9-11 and NOT Saudi Arabia? That is exactly what I mean by the dangers of Doublespeak and the word Terrorism. This is our generation's bugaboo word like the 1950s use of Communism. The US government at the time was able to expand its federal powers and do anything it wanted to its own people let alone the rest of the world by simply holding up the word Communism.

Should we have attacked Iraq — I think so, Saddam Hussein was a bad guy certainly, but I think we have our priorities way out of line. We should have followed up the 9-11 attacks to the very bitter end, we traced the money all the way back to the royal Saudi family. We should have demanded extradition and trial for the Saudi family members who committed this act of war.

Most of all we should have been prepared to pay any price for a barrel of oil in order to pursue the right thing. For it appears that our current administration is hopelessly entangled between its personal financial interests, the financial interests of Texas, Russia, Venezuela, Alaska and Great Britain and the world's economy being stabilized.

In other words, I believe that the current administration decided that we would be happier to wage a low-grade continual war with the occasional deaths of US civilians and soldiers in exchange for a stable price of oil — and hence stable world economy.

If they would have asked me, I would have bought a hybrid. Or accepted a war with Saudi if it had to be, instead of attacking a more convenient target. Or even, gasp, what's it called, use, um, less uh, gas.

The only true way to end this war is to accept the short term need for some warfare (because we are simply pregnant) but demand a medium and long-term plan for a true defusing of the reasons for animosity between the US and the Islamic nations.

Let's all start to demand real information and discussion from our government instead of 3-word political haiku.

-Erik