"War" on Terror a Dangerous Misnomer

As we come up on the anniversary of the September 11 attack, we should ask ourselves whether or not we are safer than we were 6 years ago. Seriously, we are less safe. The world was with us on September 12, 2001. We could have done so much then to curb terrorism, but we did not. Since then we have squandered that sympathy and support through very stupid policies.

The cynics in the White House have used "September 11" to justify some of the most shameful acts in modern American history. They used the excuse of "September 11" to start a needless war in Iraq. We all now know this was was based on a series of lies and these lies have lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. By our Middle East policies we have spit in the eyes of our best friends in that region, and have strengthened and emboldened our enemies. At home, the so-called "Patriot Act" has infringed our liberties with little positive impact on our security. Illegal domestic wiretapping has become commonplace. Our government now detains people (including U.S. citizens) indefinitely without charges or due process of law. Sometimes we torture those prisoners, by means that include sleep deprivation, near drowning ("water-boarding"), beatings, attack dogs, and grotesque sexual humiliation--and all the while government shills argue this is not "really" torture.

How did all this happen? The heart of the matter is how we think of September 11. Very quickly, the White House used the rhetoric of war to put a name on what happened to us. This kind of rhetoric leads people to think in terms of "us" and "them," which is wrong. They launched a "war on terror." This was a huge mistake. The September 11 attack was not another Pearl Harbor. It was not an act of war by a country. It was a criminal act, carried out by a criminal gang. True, it had the support of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and this justified military action there. We are not, however, at "war"with terror because we cannot be at war with an idea or a tactic. As such the tools of war are the wrong tools for the job. If you need to drill a hole, you use a drill, not a saw. The tools of law enforcement are not the tools of war, and by using the tools of war we have only made matters worse. We have behaved like we are fighting the Nazis, whereas in fact we are fighting an international mafia.

The sooner we recognize this simple fact, the sooner we can get on the right track.