Our War Of Terror

I did see the movie “Borat” and yes, I am stealing that joke for the title of this piece. Our ‘War of Terror’ is defined by the applause that backs it up during an event like the Republican primary debate in South Carolina, where the notion of feeling righteous because you are terrified of terrorists is the tie that binds everyone together as a team (minus Ron Paul of course, who is cruising for a trip behind the woodshed). Someone like me is then terrified, not of terrorists, but of my fellow citizens being terrified by terrorists. The genesis of this terror for me resides in the fact that anyone is terrified of anything in the first place.

Eager to be terrified, for the portion of our republic represented by folks who expect the rapture to take place soon, getting on board the 9/11 train and remaining in their seat forever is a piece of cake. Not to pick on the Revelations-enthusiasts out there, but to make a connection between the strategy employed by Republicans in securing the fear of their base, it is quite easy to identify the wisdom behind their strategy. Because just as a belief in the ‘end of days’ goes along nicely with the idea of ‘something much worse than 9/11’, so does the militaristic, no holds barred defiance of these abstract evils partner up exceptionally well with the ‘spiritual warrior’ persona that understands how strong of a grip Satan or al-Qaeda has on the majority of others, who will therefore never truly ‘get it’.

To perceive the world in those terms to begin with, you have to be driven by faith. When that is the fuel that powers your motor, it is much easier to accept things like torture, Guantanamo and the notion that we’re “making progress” in Iraq. The collateral damage that is rung up along the way is only pointed out and dwelt upon by those who don’t ‘get it’. And so the graphic mutilated fetus posters are co-opted and employed by the movement for the sake of terrifying those who do not ‘get it’ into feeling ashamed for simply disagreeing. How can that shame be forced to grow, so that the harvesting of it benefits the movement? Who or what can be used as an adequate lever to force this issue?

Democrats in Congress proved today that the military is a lever, and the war of terror waged against them centered around the notion that to cut off funding for the occupation of Iraq would mean that the military somehow suffers. Lest the Democratic Party have to take off the gloves and point the finger directly back at the President who remains responsible for the suffering of our military up till this point, I suppose the fear of being incapable of prevailing in that argument tells us all we need to know. Besides John Murtha scaring the Republicans right back by doing just that, who else within the leadership of either house is willing to get angry, point the finger right back at this President and get dirty on behalf of these same troops that everyone is supposedly so concerned about? Can the Republicans manage to terrify these Democrats into believing that it is only the party that sends the troops off to die in a lost war, shorts them on armor, equipment, recovery time, benefits and a strategy, that can then prevail in a battle over who really had their best interests at heart?

Besides a small contingent of loud and ignorant Republicans, most of whom never fought in a war, who will tell you that we could have won the war in Vietnam if we’d stayed longer, the vast majority of Americans aren’t second-guessing the wisdom of our withdrawal. Besides the millions of Americans who rightly protested for it to have happened years earlier than it eventually did, I don’t think you’re going to find many people today who are willing to pretend that the outcome wasn’t inevitable. Just as the specter of communism drove the faithful into a posture of righteous terrorization towards whoever doubted what the stated “cost of failure” in Vietnam would be, the specter of al-Qaeda is now the preferred catalyst of righteous terrorization agents bearing similar “cost of failure” warnings. That a Democratic member of congress would fall victim to either of these lazy and predictable constructs, is the only thing that has managed to terrify me since the day after the towers fell.

The very idea of this happening once the power to end the war was finally in our hands, had never entered my mind in such a way that my hope was entirely trounced. I’d doubted Harry Reid’s game for a while, and didn’t honestly know whether he was up to the historic challenge facing him. Even so, it wasn’t until today that I finally managed to ‘get the fear’ for the first time since the towers fell. Not until today did I officially fall victim to this war of terror.