A WAR ON TERROR IS LIKE A WAR ON IGNORANCE

BENEATH THE SPIN    • ERIC L. WATTREE, SR.
     

A WAR ON TERROR IS LIKE A WAR ON IGNORANCE:
AS LONG AS THERE ARE PEOPLE, IT WILL NEVER BE WIPED OUT

On September 12, 2001, one day after Nine-Eleven, French writer, Jean-Marie Colombani said, “Today, we are all Americans.”  When he uttered those simple and endearing words, he seemed to speak for the entire world.  At no time in history had the United States seemed so loved and embraced by the people of this planet.  If Bush would have had the intelligence, common sense, or simple statesmanship to take advantage of that sentiment, not only would tens of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children be alive today, but, twenty-five hundred American families would still be enjoying the warm smiles of their now deceased loved ones. But instead, now less than five years later, a Pew poll has just been released that surveyed 17,000 people in 15 countries that cites the United States as the world’s biggest threat to world peace.  

That’s a sentiment that places you and your loved ones, indeed, the entire world, in serious danger. Now, due to the greed, ineptness, and colossal stupidity of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, as my fingers tremble against this keyboard, Iran is hard at work developing its nuclear capability.  And any day now, North Korea is about to test a missile with the capability of reaching American cities.  These are both countries filled with people who would consider it an act of glory to blowup this entire planet for what they believe.

This would be a grave situation under any circumstances, but what makes it particularly so in this case is that while we are rapidly moving toward another Cuban Missile Crisis, this time, instead of having the sound judgment and powerful intellect of a John Kennedy at the helm, we’re being led by a man who commands absolutely no respect in the world community, and has never confronted a problem that he didn’t make worse.  And further, his options are few—he’s stretched our military to the point of exhaustion in his pointless war in Iraq, and he’s allowed the nation’s treasury to be ravaged by his friends, cronies, and fellow war profiteers.  So now that we really need these resources, the cupboard is bare. Thus, the only options left to him is to either go to the United Nations with his hat in hand, or to bomb these countries—and he has serious obstacles to overcome with either option.

The problem with going to the U.N. Security Council has to do with the arrogance in which he dealt with the U.N. during the run up to the war in Iraq.  During that time he dealt with member countries of the Security Council, friend and foe alike, as though they were insignificant. So now, recognizing the weakness of the United State’s position, many of those same countries would love to see Bush, at least for a time, just twist in the wind.  But the problem with that is, as his “Bring it on” statement demonstrates, Bush is both intellectually shallow and emotionally immature, therefore, unpredictable.  Trying to figure out what Bush might do at any given moment is like trying to mount a chess strategy against an opponent who doesn’t know how to play chess—you can’t anticipate him, because his thinking is erratic.

China is also a wild card.  North Korea is a part of China’s sphere of influence, so bombing North Korea would be a slap in China’s face. It would be the same as if China decided to bomb England—the United States couldn’t allow that to happen.  Another thing that makes China a wild card is that China may feel that they will never see the United States this vulnerable, and with such inept leadership again, so now’s the time to assert itself.

This “War on Terror” was a foolhardy pursuit from its very conception.  It was never meant to either make America more safe, pursue Osama Bin Laden, or to wipeout terrorism—it was meant to justify Bush’s plan to place America in a perpetual, and never ending, state of war. That allowed Bush the freedom to corrupt the Constitution, circumvent the Bill of Rights, invade sovereign nations with impunity, and to pursue any policy that would keep Republicans in power, and enrich war profiteers like Halliburton, Bechtel, and their subcontractors.  After all, you cannot wage war against a frame of mind.

A war on terror is like a war on ignorance—as long as you have people, it can never be wiped out.  Bush was depending on that, and America followed blindly.  Now we must all pay the price of his corruption, since Gross Negligence is also a crime.

Eric L. Wattree, Sr.
eric@wattree.com

                                                                      

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