The more blather there is about the "War on Terror," the harder it is to know exactly what it means. Juan Cole has an excellent essay about this, and asks what Bush/Cheney are really fighting.
Bush and Cheney are cynically using the trauma of September 11 as a pretext to fight a series of elective wars against weak governments that are inconvenient for hawkish goals and some US corporate interests. Iraq was a poster child of this policy. It had no weapons of mass destruction, was ramshackle, and had no significant ties to terrorism. It was invented as a dire threat to Peoria by Karl Rove and Rupert Murdoch, the latter-day Wizards of Oz.
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The "war on terror" of Bush-Cheney is a smokescreen for naked American imperial aggression. The sad story of how Iraq posed no threat either to the US or to any of its neighbors, despite high-decibel claims to the contrary for two years by Bush, Cheney and their acolytes, will be repeated in the case of Syria and Iran if Bush and Cheney are reelected. They hope that their project of overthrowing governments in the region will go smoothly, but they do not really care, since even an Iran and a Syria in chaos is a net gain from their point of view. Chaos creates "terror" and justifies further US involvement, aggression and control. It is inconvenient for the rest of us, but then they insist, unlike John Kerry, that we live with the nuisances they are creating.
If this was a test, this one question would be worth the whole enchilada, pass/fail. What Bush means when he talks about the "War on Terror," is not so much stopping terror where it exists, as it is about entering a state of perpetual war with whoever looks at him sideways. That's why he has to go.
Posted by Jason at October 11, 2004 02:18 PM