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And so it appears that we have a new name for the War on Terror. The new term used to describe what we’re doing is known as the “Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism”. Apparently the boys down in marketing crunched the numbers and finally figured out that the American people have a difficult time rallying around wars that target concepts and metaphors. Oh sure, they can support them for a while in theory, but much like the War on Drugs or the War on Poverty, we all soon realize that whenever we declare war on something conceptual, it means that it’s never going to end. This sentiment has crept into the national mindset regarding the War on Terror.
That’s the problem with fighting an idea instead of an army – you never know when you’ve won, and you can’t even measure your level of progress. Sure, we may have killed a lot of the bad guys, but our killing of innocents (as well as our refusal to recognize the true cause of aggression against us) will ensure that there will always be at least as many terrorists created as we kill.
Perhaps the biggest lie fed to the American people to justify the War on Terror is that the terrorists “hate freedom”, “hate liberty and democracy”, and “hate our way of life”. This may or may not be true, but it’s not the reason that radical Islamists committed the atrocities of 9/11 and the later bombings in Spain and London. They did it because they see the western world (and the United States in particular) as a political and religious threat to their way of life, not a cultural one. Our longstanding policy of supporting Israel (for good or bad) has been a source of anger for decades.
But the real reason behind most of the aggression against the United States in the War on Terror has been our use of military force in the Middle East, usually so that we have open and inexpensive access to their oil supplies. A popular belief of many Arabs is that we have a covert strategy to eventually take over the entire region and exploit it for our purposes. After the first Gulf War, we built a permanent military base in Saudi Arabia. This act alone has resulted in more anger toward us than anything, as it has fueled these fears.
There has been and never will be any rational justification for an act of terrorism. Those who commit terror as well as those who support it are beyond reproach and should be dealt with using the swiftest and harshest measures possible. Having said that, how would you feel if an Arab country – let’s say Iran – came over here and built a permanent military base outside of Washington DC? My guess is that you’d be upset enough to want to organize and do something to get that base out of this country. It might not involve killing thousands of people in Tehran, but you’d likely think of something creative.
The problem with the concept of a War on Terror is that we aren’t even primarily fighting against the same people who attacked us four years ago. After 9/11, we invaded Afghanistan to wipe out the Taliban, who were supporting and harboring Osama Bin Laden. Even most of those in the Arab world could justify our aggression in this endeavor. However, before we could finish the job, we pulled most of our troops, intelligence, and other resources out of Afghanistan and let Bin Laden get away. Why? So that we could invade Iraq, a country that had never attacked us and was no threat to our security. They did, however, have one of the largest untapped oil reserves in the world. And instead of letting this energy source pay for our attack or even benefit the now occupied Iraqi people, we’ve let the American taxpayer foot the bill, and allowed several large businesses reap record profits in the process.
Let’s go back to our example of the Iranian military base in Washington DC. What would you do if the forces in control of that base invaded Texas, and took all of the oil out of the area and brought it back to the Middle East? Regardless of your current sentiments about Texas, you'd likely be pretty full of rage. And would you be further upset if they killed 100,000 Texans (over 30 times the number of people who died on 9/11) in the process? I bet you’d hate the people and the government that would do such a thing to us, especially if we never even threatened them in the first place.
Of course the example isn’t the cleanest analogy to the current situation. But before you question my patriotism (which is likely your gut reaction), ask yourself honestly if it’s all that far off the mark. Our troops didn't ask for this - neither did the top military leaders. But yet here we are.
So the War on Terror is over. Now it’s a “struggle”. Unfortunately, the implementation of a new catch-phrase is completely without meaning unless we change the course of our current actions. When the administration decides to have a serious and honest discussion with both the Arab world as well as us here in the U.S., we might see something change. When we take actual and tangible steps to assuage the fears of those in the Arab world that we have no interest in occupying or further attacking that region, you’ll see things calm down a bit.
However, merely changing the title of your actions without changing the action itself does nothing abroad. It also does nothing here at home, except to make yourself slightly more acceptable to those who have already accepted you in the first place. For the rest of us, it’s only another in a long series of insults to our collective intelligence.
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