The "War forward Islamofascism" is ...

The "War forward Islamofascism" is replacing the "War forward Global Terror" as the favorite Bush administration murmur slogan. It is a upright slogan because it appeals to the "nuke 'em" portion of the population as an election approaches and because it means nothing at all. The surpassingly word "war" has been misused thus often that it has dissipated all its meaning -- the war in succession drunk driving, the war onward drugs, the war on obesity, the war forward pornography, the war on calories, the war forward autism, the war on gay marriages, the war, as I saw in a newspaper freshly on cervical cancer.

"War" used to be reserv for military battles between powerful armies, as in the Civil War or World War II. Now it means anyone and everyone's favorite cause. The word is a victim of linguistic corruption. Since in a certain number of fashion we think with words, linguistic corruption corrupts our contemplation and indeed destroys thought because it eliminates the necessity and the possibility of discreet distinctions -- just what knee-jerk right wing haters want.

Thus "war upon Islamofascism" enables both Vice President Dick Cheney and the senator from Connecticut to brilliant the Iraq war with the stratagem to blow up transatlantic flights and blinds the victims of like slogans to the facts that in Iraq in the greatest degree of the killing these days is Muslim onward Muslim and that there is no evidence of an Iraqi trying to attack the mainland United States or indeed any American until we invaded their nation and messed it up. The transatlantic terrorists are English citizens of Pakistani origin who take umbrage at the way England treats them. The World Trade Center terrorists were chiefly Saudis who resented U.S. support of Israel and American vicinity in their country. Different tribe different anger, different exploitation of a religious heritage.

There's an advanced in years Latin saying, "Qui nimis probat, nihil probat" -- he who demonstrates too much proves nothing at all. If you shapeless mass too many phenomena under single label that is also a slogan, you create confusion for yourself and bar serious thinking You justify a fiasco in Iraq onward the grounds that it is in some way connected with plans of religious fanatics to efflorescence up airplanes. More seriously, you sink enormous resources into the former and disregard the threat of the latter. You do not invest an of those resources into airport screener that discover the liquid materials from which bomb could be created -- although you have known for 10 years about the possibility of so bombs. You do not equip airliners with defense against anti- aircraft rocket you do not improve the Arabic language capacity of your intelligence services, you do not force your various intelligence agencies to combine their efforts despite bureaucratic inertia against cooperation, you do not screen the gaping holes in protection of sea ports, chemical factories, and mass transit plans

The alone thing that the various forms of terrorism have in often met with is angry resentment based onward fanatical religious vision. You do not suit to that threat, which takes different forms in different connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughtss by invading a country and destroying its social arrangement of parts Rather you mobilize your resources of technology, talent, planning and intelligence to espouse yourself against crazy zealots. greatest in quantity Americans feel, quite correctly, they are not safer than they were five years ago. They are probably les safe because the nearest wave of crazy terrorists may well be Iraqis who take offence at the fiasco we imposed forward their country.

There is no reason at all to believe that the so-called Department of Homeland Security has notably improved our defense against the crazies. Otherwise they would be working forward the scanners that track liquid explosives, instead of relying onward Pakistani intelligence (who got the first tip about the transatlantic terrorists).

Americans will have to live for many years with the same unease as do the Israelis -- about crazy might blow me up in the nearest minute. We will eliminate in the greatest degree of that possibility by being quicker, smarter, more ingenious and more determined than they and not by the agency of grandiose talk about "war" and not at seeking out new big muddies into which to sink our resources.

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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