If you recall, Obama said during his Inaugural Address, “That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred.”
What Americans thought of when they heard that was Al Qaeda and other Islamic extremists who hate America. But, we must reassess our thinking on violence and hatred in the world. Whites have had just as much (if not more) to do with acts of violence and hatred than Muslims ever have.
We could fight a “war on terror” that involved going after rightwing terrorism, those who incite racism, hate, and violence. But, I suppose the government response would be something tantamount to martial law or a further roll back of civil liberties that we saw commence after September 11th.
Something about fighting domestic terrorists just doesn’t allow for the spread and dominance of empire that terrorists from the Middle East make possible. They don’t quite allow for the same level of war profiteering, don’t help us become united as a nation, and as evidenced by recent events, don’t really make us afraid of much at all.
But then is there really anything for us to be afraid of? Is the jury still out on this “war on terror” or can we begin to call it what it is---a phony war of terror?
In closing, during a summer with a probability of heightened levels of civil unrest and domestic terrorism by Americans who have been afflicted and broken mentally if not physically by the economic recession, we owe it to ourselves to contemplate the wilding of Americans, we owe it to ourselves to investigate and ask what creates this beast within, we owe it to ourselves to do what we collectively have not had the courage to do up to this point.
We owe it to ourselves to further define terrorism, examine the semantics, and decide if we wish to let a percentage of the world’s population---those filled with racism and hate---define our lives.
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