Winning the war
Oct. 12th, 2004 04:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jere7myBush slammed Kerry a couple of days ago for daring to say that our goal was to reduce terror to "nuisance levels." We must, sez our Prez, eradicate terrorism. We have to win the War on Terror. (All this despite saying, several weeks ago, that we probably couldn't win it. But never mind.)
Will somebody, somewhere, please step up and say Kerry was right? There's no way to "win the War on Terror." That's not defeatist; that's self-evident. Terrorism is not a dragon, which will die when you cut off its head; it's not even a hydra, which will die when you've cut off all its heads. Terrorism is self-generative: after fifty terror-free years, or five hundred, all it will take is a single frustrated kid building a pipe bomb in his basement, or a single oppressed minority to get fed up, and terrorism will live again. Anyone, anywhere, can reinvent terrorism. I could do it this afternoon.
Terrorism is an act, not an institution. Winning the War on Terror is as impossible as winning the War on Murder, or the War on Rape, or the War on Whelk-Pestering. We can work to create a world in which terrorism is rare, one where it's not seen as a viable solution (not that the Administration has achieved stage boo of this), but we can't Win. Not without Big Brother, universally applied.
(Oh, wait. I think I just figured out the Plan.)
Will somebody, somewhere, please step up and say Kerry was right? There's no way to "win the War on Terror." That's not defeatist; that's self-evident. Terrorism is not a dragon, which will die when you cut off its head; it's not even a hydra, which will die when you've cut off all its heads. Terrorism is self-generative: after fifty terror-free years, or five hundred, all it will take is a single frustrated kid building a pipe bomb in his basement, or a single oppressed minority to get fed up, and terrorism will live again. Anyone, anywhere, can reinvent terrorism. I could do it this afternoon.
Terrorism is an act, not an institution. Winning the War on Terror is as impossible as winning the War on Murder, or the War on Rape, or the War on Whelk-Pestering. We can work to create a world in which terrorism is rare, one where it's not seen as a viable solution (not that the Administration has achieved stage boo of this), but we can't Win. Not without Big Brother, universally applied.
(Oh, wait. I think I just figured out the Plan.)
