Friday, April 21, 2006
(10:05 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Friday Afternoon Disgust: The War on Terror
Historically, the United States has been the greatest state sponsor of terrorism, although it has tended toward sponsorship of terrorist organizations that would take over the state -- for instance, Pinochet et al., the great terrorist torturers in Latin America. The School of the Americas is a much more dangerous and effective terrorist training ground than Afghanistan ever could have been. Now in Iraq, we have used terrorist techniques meant to instill fear and shame into the native population, and our new client state has started to "step up" in that area. And now there is speculation about using a nuclear weapon against a wide range of targets in Iran. While our military strategists wring their hands against the new era of so-called "assymmetrical warfare," the United States currently has more destructive force at its disposal than any other nation in the history of humanity, and this power continues to grow."The terrorists" have enjoyed a single (though spectacular and appalling) success on 9/11, and now Americans are told to live in fear, now America is the perpetual victim -- even though, after five years of what has by all accounts been a rather inept counter-terrorism effort, there has not been another attack on American soil. We have had the luxury of invading a nation completely unrelated to terrorism, yet somehow the threat of terrorism is supposed to be at the forefront of our minds. I'll tell you who really faces the threat of terrorism: Iran, for instance. It is Iran, not the United States or Israel, that is currently facing the prospect of an unmotivated nuclear attack. Or the people of Iraq who live in fear of being abducted by death squads (albeit perhaps under a different name). Or the people of Latin America who have managed to find some breathing room for self-determination now that the United States is tied down in its illegal war in Iraq who may find themselves staring down the barrel of a military coup, who might again find their friends and family "disappeared" and subjected to unspeakable tortures -- administered by men trained by the United States, with "our tax dollars."
Or perhaps we've given up on the military dictatorship thing -- perhaps now we're going to permit an inept figurehead "democratic" regime that will mainly focus on passively torturing the people by guaranteeing that foreign corporations have the right, for instance, to charge the people of Bolivia to drink the water in Bolivia's own aquifers.
"The War on Terror" is disgusting. Isn't it enough for the United States to be the greatest military power the world has ever seen? Couldn't it refrain from also taking up the pose of the Ultimate Victim that must Defend Itself at All Costs?
UPDATE: For a case against war with Iran that has more of a chance of convincing your parents, try Yglesias's column (via Brad).
