Phil Taylor's papers
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BACK TO : PROPAGANDA AND THE GWOT Year 3 - 2004 (mainly Iraq)
Killing a Cloud of Mosquitos with a Machine Gun by Micael Saba 
Opinion Editorials, June 2004, To see today's opinion articles, click here: ww.aljazeerah.info Killing a Cloud of Mosquitoes With a Machine Gun Michael Saba Arab News WASHINGTON, 12 June 2004, 12 June 2004 - Did you know that the words "war" and "liverwurst" (a German sausage) have a common derivation? Both words derive from the common Indo-European root word "wers" which means "to confuse or mix up." And whether it is a mixed up German sausage or the confused current "War on Terrorism," it is very difficult to clearly define the elements of either. Rush Limbaugh, the ultraconservative American radio talk show host was heard rambling along on the issues surrounding the 9/11 attacks shortly after that incident. He succinctly stated at that time that the US should not declare a "War on Terrorism" until it could clearly define what victory would be. He pointed out that in World War II, the Allies knew what victory would be before a formal war declaration was made. We expected complete unconditional surrender from Japan, Germany and Italy that were the nations that we were fighting against and would declare war on. Note particularly the word "nations" which we will come back to. Limbaugh then rambled off into the horizon with his following thoughts as he so often does with an arrogance only he is capable of. He actually thought that the US could eventually declare victory against the "terrorists". Limbaugh made an excellent first point in his argument but he blew it in his conclusion. Now let's return to the definition of the word "war". Dictionaries and legal texts traditionally define "war" as a contest carried on by force between two or more independent nations declared by the authority of their respective governments. And in the United States, to legalize a war, it must be formally declared by the branch of government entrusted by the US Constitution with this power, the US Congress. Congress has never formally declared a "War on Terrorism." So do we have a war or don't we? Maybe the Bush administration went back to the original Indo-European root word "wers" for war and has applied its original meaning, "to confuse or mix up." In recent American history various presidents have declared the War on Poverty (Lyndon Johnson), the War on Drugs (Richard Nixon) and the War on Crime (Nixon again). George W. Bush wasn't the first US president to declare a War on Terrorism. President Ronald Reagan did that before him in the 1980s but Bush's War on Terrorism has moved these terms into an entirely new dimension in the American political discourse. This "War on Terrorism" is a war that can never see a clear victory or defeat. This "War on Terrorism", according to a former American ambassador quoted in the Nation magazine, "is a permanent engagement against an always-available tool." He went on to say, "(The term war on terrorism) is neither accurate nor innocuous, implying there is an end point of either victory or defeat... a war without an end in sight, without an exit strategy, with enemies specified not by their aims but by their tactics...The president has found this 'war' useful as an all-purpose justification for almost anything he wants or doesn't want to do; fuzziness serves the administration politically." What if from the beginning of the current 9/11 conflict, the perpetrators of these acts had been treated as "criminals" and the US had followed criminal procedure to find and apprehend them. We might have already apprehended many more of these criminals and not had hundreds of US soldiers dead and thousands wounded. One American sage stated that relying principally on American military means to confront this problem is like trying to eliminate a cloud of mosquitos with a machine gun. Many years ago, a very astute college professor always started his first class of the year by stating a very basic rule of logic. "Whoever defines the situation, controls it," he was known to say. So who has defined the "War on Terrorism" and how is it being controlled? When one tracks these terms on the Internet to their earliest origins, you find them appearing initially in the mid-to-late 1970s. A proliferation of these terms occurred after the June 1976 Israeli commando raid to free hostages in Entebbe, Uganda. The raid was lead by Jonathan Netanyahu, the brother of former Israeli Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu. Jonathan Netanyahu died in that raid and Benjamin later started the Jonathan Institute which focused on Terrorism and the War on Terrorism. Since that time Netanyahu, and both Israelis and pro-Israeli Americans, have greatly influenced the terms that we have used to justify many of our actions in Iraq and the Middle East, particularly the term "War on Terrorism." The Israelis have significant experience in this field. They claim to have been fighting a "War on Terrorism" against the Palestinians for many years. American presidential candidate John Kerry has recently been quoted as questioning whether the "war" on terror is actually a war at all. "I don't want to use that terminology," he said. In his view, what we are engaged in is "not primarily a military operation. It's an intelligence-gathering operation, law enforcement, public diplomacy effort." Maybe there is some hope out there. John Kerry is not so sure that we should call this a "war". However, we've not yet dealt with the word "terrorism". Guess who greatly influenced the American definition of that term? We'll try to tackle that in our next article. Stay tuned. |