End of the words 'terrorism' 'terrorist'

As the Bush administration fades into the sunset, so too should the use of the word pair "terrorism/terrorist." These overworked words mean everything and they mean nothing.

They mean everything when your leaders desire to remake the Middle East in their image at the point of a $600 billion military juggernaught but lack a marketing campaign. The administration advertising writers were truly gifted by the 9/11 attacks and came up with "The War on Terrorism". The beauty of this slogan was that it allowed the administration to wage war anywhere, anytime they wished. The targets of their warfare were reduced to either being terrorists or aiding terrorists. They could kidnap anyone around the world at will and have them tortured in torture-friendly lands simply by labeling them "suspected terrorists". They could set up the Gulag at Guantanamo to hold them endlessly without a shred of legal protection, which, if granted, would determine many were utterly "terror free." Some were simply sold to the American invaders by Afghan and Iraqi tribal chiefs under our "cash for terrorists" program.

The words mean nothing because they do not shed an iota of understanding to the complex world we inhabit. They mean nothing because they stifle real debate about the sanity and legality of our military ventures. They mean nothing because they could just as easily be applied to American administrations throughout history. The first terrorists? Weren't the Founding Fathers nothing but a bunch of terrorists in the eyes of British owners of the American colonies? Wasn't the American army that invaded Mexico in 1846 viewed as a terrorist horde by the folks who had Texas and a handful of other western states stolen from them? Oh, I forgot. That wasn't terrorism; merely Manifest Destiny.

Walt Zlotow

Glen Ellyn