FEAR STRIKES OUT

I'm ready to be honest with a thought I've had for some time now.

The Global War On Terror is a fraud designed, or at least being used by the current administration, to change the face of America and the world.

There have been terrorist activities for as long as l have been alive. The periodic acts of various violent political groups have provided fodder for many films, from Black Sunday to True Lies. There was Baider-MeinhofOne by one, the groups faded from the national, and world, consciousness. Not until 9/11 did we let terrorism, and the threat of terrorism, change the way we live, think, and conduct our government. It's ironic that the Soviet threat, which was much greater, failed to change the way America thinks and acts, but that single act of Bin Laden's small, rootless group so frightened us that we have become a different nation, one heading for that which would be unrecognizable and unfathomable by the founding fathers.

Why the difference? I believe that, like so many things, it's a result of the leadership we had in place at the time of 9/11. Another president, another administration, would have led the nation in grieving but would have insisted that the country, and the world, vow that the acts of madmen and bad men will never dictate the course of our future. Instead, our faux cowboy president set out to remake our country in the very mold that is most likely to nurture more unrest, insecurity and ultimately terrorism. The fact that our costly misadventures are necessarily reducing our opportunities to enact needed reforms in healthcare, education, and environmental safety, and destabilizing our economy, is just an added benefit to an administration determined to secure an oligarchy of the wealthy and connected.

Never before in the entire history of the United States has a single presidential administration affected such abrupt alterations in our laws, attitudes, and discourse. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and their enablers are a poison that may take decades to eradicate from our brain food supply.

9/11 was a terrible, terrible day. The unthinkable happened. And I am not suggesting that it could not happen again. I AM suggesting that our course since then has not been designed to prevent another occurrence since, four years later, our borders are still unsecured; our intelligence and national law enforcement agencies are in disarray and prosecuting on the basis of public relations, not national security; the monies allotted to our states for anti-terrorism protection are distributed not by likelihood of attack but by the rules of pork; and our military is being destroyed by inept civilian leadership and an unrelated and disastrous ideological misadventure in the Middle East. Our government has used the excuse of 9/11 to curtail our civil liberties, divide our people, and advance economic policies that are further burdening the middle class and adding millions to the ranks of the poor while further enriching the uber-wealthy. Our people have experienced a series of bogus "terror alerts" that have raised national anxiety to a fever pitch.

At the very least, it's time for Democrats to declare the truth, that the War On Terror is a failure because it was bogus from the beginning. It's time for us to get truly macho again and say that America will continue to be America, that "We will not be moved."

Tags: Global War on Terror, Bush administration