PostHeaderIcon Rethinking the “War on Terror”

Our so-called “War on Terror” continues to be the primary excuse for the steady erosion of our individual and civil liberties. Yet, a rational analysis reveals this to be a phoney war.

To begin with, wars are fought between nations. There is no nation on Earth named Terror. As we should well know, terror is a technique, a method, not a place or even a specific group of people. Ergo, how exactly could a nation be at war with a technique?

The obvious answer is that it cannot.

But, beyond this simplicity, might we probe deeper and ask what we have here that this phoney war is trying to protect? The easy answer is our individual rights – the one and only thing that clearly separates us from the other nations on this Earth. We have traditions – and Constitutional protections – that have made us the freest people in history. Free to come and go as we please, free to use our property as we please, free to succeed or fail as we please, and, most of all, free from undue interference by government.

I submit that such freedom is certainly worth guarding and defending, with blood when necessary. Is the current phoney war achieving this end? IMHO, it is most assuredly not – unless you take the position that individual freedom is so precious that it must be taken away from the people in order to “protect” it. It should not require much of an IQ to conclude that the previous statement is insane. Yet, it is exactly what we the sheeple are allowing our government to do. All in the name of guarding our freedom and making us safe.

Can it possibly be that our own government is a larger threat to our freedom and safety than any foreign threat? I submit that it is, and further, that it is becoming more so by the day as our slide into dictatorship accelerates.

The fondling of genitalia and “zap you’re naked” X-ray machines are only the latest in a string of abuses that actually started before 9/11/2001. Indeed, many of them originated with that other phoney war, the so-called “War on Drugs” (I assume I don’t need to explain that there is no country named “Drugs”.)

You might reasonably ask “well, if we don’t do all this stuff, wouldn’t more Americans die?” The answer is probably so. Isn’t this a bad thing? Of course it is. Any unnecessary death is a tragedy, if only to the one dying. My reasonable response is to attempt to explain that every thing has a price, often including a price in lives. Do any of you know how many Americans die at the hands of terrorists each year (worldwide)? On average, it is well under 100. For sure, an attack like 9/11 gets our blood hot and we want revenge. Fine, so long as that revenge is directed precisely at those responsible. But taking revenge on ourselves hardly makes sense. (Please see: http://www.theinsider.org/news/article.asp?id=0472 for more statistics.)

Now I am not about to tell you that losing a few Americans to terrorist attacks now and then is a good thing, but I will suggest that, when one starts to rationally measure the various costs of freedom, this one is really not all that expensive. For instance, where is the outrage when our freedom to drive anywhere and anytime we wish costs us nearly 50,000 Americans per year? How about the right to consume tobacco products at around 40,000 Americans per year? I will not bore you further with numbers but consider that all of our freedoms cost. We live in an imperfect world, a world where every hazard cannot be avoided every time. So we accept that the miracles of modern medicine will accidentally kill a few of us. That the marvelous ability to fly most anywhere is a short period of time will accidentally kill a few of us. Yes, we accept these things. Why then is it so hard to accept that ensuring our individual freedom will inadvertently kill a few of us? Surely the freedom to be free from unwanted groping or viewing of one’s privates is at least as important at the freedom to drive or to smoke?

Might I remind you that your government can now: imprison you without just cause; tap your private communication without a court order; break down your door, enter your house, and shoot you and your pets on the mere rumor that there might be drugs there; demand that libraries tell them what books you read; peek into the supposedly “private” information the government demands from you for tax and FICA purposes; soon, they will be able to analyze your medical records to help determine whether your puny life justifies the medical costs of keeping you alive. And, on, and on.

Wake up America! You are being stampeded into voluntarily giving up your essential freedom through scare tactics and phoney “wars”, both brought to you by the government that meets in Washington DC. The threats to American freedom from North Korea and Iran pale in comparison to those posed by our out-of-control government.

I leave you with a parting thought. Protecting freedom is always far less expensive, in blood and treasure, than getting it back once it has gone.

And remember Berra’s law: “you can observe a lot by just watching”. Please pay attention.

Troy L Robinson

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