America's War on Terror

According to ProCon.org, the "War On Terror" is "a campaign initiated by the US government under President George W. Bush which includes various military, political, and legal actions taken to "curb the spread of terrorism," following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States".

This seems to be accurate since we first heard the phrase "War On Terror" while G. W. Bush was sitting in the Oval Office.

The reality is, unfortunately, that terrorists and terrorism have been around since the world of man came into existence and it will not, can not, be eradicated in our lifetimes. The "War On Terror", in fact, is no more than political rhetoric. You can not conceivably win a war on terror, and for that reason we need to ask ourselves why we would want to use this rhetoric as a rallying cry for a goal that is humanly impossible to attain? I do not understand why anyone would want to set themselves up for guaranteed failure and it is unconscionable that our government would set up everyone in America to fail, yet the Bush administration did just that. The only Americans that take this rhetoric seriously are the extremist here in our own country. Radical action and ill thought rhetoric together only cause more upheaval and make us appear to be inflaming the reasons for terrorist attacks. The rhetoric needs to end, Cheney and Palin need to try a muzzle for a change and the radical ideologues in America need to stop making the situation worse.

The man who tried to blow up the plane on Christmas has the GOP up in arms about not being labeled as an "Enemy Combatant". Did this man NOT commit a crime by attempting to blow up an airplane full of people? I would like to see him be treated as a dangerous criminal, arrested and tried as he should be. There is absolutely no question or doubt in what he did so why label him as an "enemy combatant"? Shall we spirit him away and lock him up indefinitely without allowing him to visit the American Penal system as Timothy McVeigh did after blowing up the Murrow building? I think all of America should be allowed to see this process. After all, Cheney no longer has any authority to authorize water boarding in an undisclosed location.

The U. S. Department of Defense (DoD) defines terrorism as "the calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological." There are three key elements of the DoD definition - violence, fear and intimidation. Using this definition, the Ku Klux Klan, which has been a part of the American society since it's beginning in 1865 in Tennessee , falls under the umbrella of a group that has been involved in terrorism. Of course, some of the terrorism perpetrated on our society has been condoned in the past by those who carried similar ideologies.

The FBI version states; "Terrorism is the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives." The murders of doctors who perform abortion and abortion clinic bombings by the "Right To Life" Americans seem to qualify.

The U.S. State Department defines "terrorism" to be "premeditated politically-motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience. Timothy McVeigh had this one nailed when he blew up the Oklahoma City Federal building on April 19, 1995 .

In 1992, the United Nations came up with their own definition as; "An anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-) clandestine individual, group or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal or political reasons, whereby - in contrast to assassination - the direct targets of violence are not the main targets". Israel and America, along with Iraq (Saddam Hussein), Japan, China, Great Britain, Germany, Russia (former USSR) and most countries of the world have all been guilty of this.

It has been greatly noticed over the past few years that the only time we hear of the "War On Terror" is when we are speaking about primarily Muslim countries. America is beginning to look as if we are intentionally discriminating against any country that is not primarily Christian, and that is an insult to me as well as multitudes of other people. Christians are not better than Muslims by any means and, by purposely making it look as such, we are exacerbating the problem a thousand fold.

The rhetoric introduced by the Bush administration set us up for failure with a war that is humanly impossible to win. We were given an open ended excuse for killing with impunity in order for many to profit from war with no clear mission. We were also introduced to a new catch phrase (Enemy Combatant) that took away the criminal action of an individual, if there was one to begin with, and the authority to hold a person indefinitely with no legitimate reason, leaving that person in perpetual limbo to be tortured, abused or simply "ghosted" (disappeared without a trace).

America is better than that...or rather, we used to be. We do not need to send our troops or resources to other countries to fight a crusade. We should not want to sink to that level. America has stopped representing what we once stood for.

Whether you are talking about the 1973 Munich Olympics or Beirut bombings in 1981, terrorism has been around from the dawn of time and will exist as long as there are extremists of any kind. America's own policies cause many of these extremists to act on the ideology and if we are going to be honest we have to take part of the responsibility for breeding the precise conditions to cause the terrorism we claim to be fighting against.