Friday, January 07, 2005

Let's Talk About a Real War on Terror

The notion of a "war on terror" has always been misbegotten. Since terrorism is a technique of warfare rather than a flesh-and-blood enemy or even an ideology (like Communism or radical Islam), it's highly unclear what it means to be "at war with terror" and what "victory" in such a war would entail. How can "terror" be eliminated? Is it possible to prevent the technique of terrorism from ever being used again by any aggrieved or hostile group anywhere in the world? Answer: Of course it isn't. The best we can hope for is to reduce the incidence of terror to a level we can live with, as John Kerry was pilloried for saying.

The truth is that the Bush administration uses the locution "war on terror" as a way of obfuscating the reality of our current struggle. The US is fighting against concrete enemies, not an abstraction like "terror." These enemies include the members of al-Qaeda and allied groups of radical Islam that oppose the global influence of the US for all kinds of political, social, cultural, and economic reasons, along with selected Middle Eastern regimes (like that of Saddam Hussein) that have either supported the radical Islamists or have opposed US interests in other ways.

The administration prefers not to call this conflict by more accurate phrases like "the war on radical Islam" or "the war on Middle Eastern anti-Americanism" because of the theocratic and imperialist overtones they carry. The administration's squeamishness is a kind of backhanded tribute to the "political correctness" conservatives supposedly disdain.

The unreality of the notion of a "war on terror" is thoroughly exposed by today's news that Edgar Ray Killen, a 79-year-old preacher and longtime Ku Klux Klan leader in Mississippi, has finally been arrested for his alleged role in the notorious 1964 murder of civil rights leaders Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney.

As Killen's arrest reminds us, the United States has a long-standing native tradition of terrorism, embodied not only in the Klan but in other right-wing groups that have long used violence in a deliberate, explicit, and often successful attempt to terrorize Blacks, Jews, immigrants, gays, and other targeted groups. Although the Klan is relatively weak today, successor organizations like the militias of the Midwest and Rocky Mountain states, neo-Nazi organizations like Aryan Nations and the National Alliance, and an array of extremist "churches" carry on the tradition. The teachings of such groups helped spawn terrorists like Timothy McVeigh, whose bomb killed 168 people in Oklahoma City in 1995.

So terrorism--specifically, terrorism practiced by members of radical religious and ethnic cults who hate American values--is not the exclusive property of Islam or the Middle East. It has existed in the US for a long time, and still retains popular support in many American communities, as illustrated by the fact that it took four decades for a Mississippi grand jury to indict anyone for murder in the Schwerner/Goodman/Chaney case. (Seven men were convicted of "civil rights violations" three years after the killings. Killen, the current defendant, was acquitted at that time because of a jury holdout who "insisted she could never convict a preacher," according to the Times).

It's possible to imagine a US administration genuinely interested in waging a "war on terror." Such a war would be an all-out offensive against all ideologies and groups that promote bigotry, hatred, and violence based on racial or religious differences. It would couple aggressive law enforcement efforts against hate groups both here and abroad with positive efforts to break down ethnic and cultural barriers, improve the lot of marginalized peoples (from Afghanistan and Palestine to Mississippi), educate children about the need for tolerance, and respond vigorously to propaganda that inculcates bigotry.

Instead of which we get Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and the Patriot Act.
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