Norman Solomon: Is Peace No Longer an Option?

[laststeamtrain]

Is Peace No Longer an Option?

By Norman Solomon
February 4, 2009

For the crimes against humanity committed on September 11, 2001, countless others are to follow, with huge conceits about technological "sophistication" and moral superiority. But if we scrape away the concrete of media truisms, we may reach substrata where some poets have dug.

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Early into the second year of the Afghanistan war, in November 2002, a retired US Army general, William Odom, appeared on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" program and told viewers: "Terrorism is not an enemy. It cannot be defeated. It's a tactic. It's about as sensible to say we declare war on night attacks and expect we're going to win that war. We're not going to win the war on terrorism."

<snip>

Early on, the writer Joan Didion saw the blotting of the horizon and said so: "We had seen, most importantly, the insistent use of Sept. 11 to justify the reconception of America's correct role in the world as one of initiating and waging virtually perpetual war."

There, in one sentence, an essayist and novelist had captured the essence of a historical moment that vast numbers of journalists had refused to recognize - or, at least, had refused to publicly acknowledge. Didion put to shame the array of self-important and widely lauded journalists at the likes of The New York Times, The Washington Post, PBS and National Public Radio.

<snip>

For anyone who believes that the war in Afghanistan makes sense, I recommend the Jan. 30 discussion on "Bill Moyers Journal" with historian Marilyn Young and former Pentagon official Pierre Sprey. A chilling antidote to illusions that fuel the war can be found in the transcript.

<more>

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/020309d.html

Moyers journal transcript: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/01302009/transcript3.html

[Igel]

1. Metonymy. Not a hard concept. n/t

[Martin Eden]

2. I read the Moyers transcript

It's disheartening that Obama is falling into a trap that could be avoided if only we would learn from history.