Chris Floyd
Lew Rockwell.com
Friday, December 29, 2006
Wise man Robert Parry, who has been a light shining in the darkness
for decades now, identifies an important – and entirely
sinister – change in Bush's description of the "Long
War" that he has initiated around the world. This semantic
shift portends an even greater level of bloodshed, state terrorism
and tyranny than we have yet seen, as it indicates another stage
in the inexorable expansion of the "enemies" that the
"forces of civilization" must crush by violence.
As Parry notes, this declension into madness has moved from very
specific targets (“terrorist groups of global reach")
to the more generalized and already impossibly vague "global
war on terrorism" to the new formulation: a war against "radicals
and extremists" – wherever they might be, however you
decide, arbitrarily, to define them, and whether or not they engage
in violence against the United States.
And make no mistake: the American Establishment as a whole has
bought into the "war on terror" package in one form
or another, i.e., viewing the murderous actions of a few bands
of criminals not as a law enforcement problem to be tackled within
the traditional systems of law and representative politics but
as some wholly new, ludicrously overblown existential crisis of
civilization that can only be "solved" by indiscriminate
military force abroad and the gutting of civil liberties at home.
In the Establishment, you will find almost no voice of any substance,
reach or power that contests the latter view, although a few might
quibble on how best to prosecute this endless war. Thus, the benchmarks
that Bush is setting today, the way he is defining the "Long
War" and establishing the patterns of executive power to
deal with it will have a very large and continuing impact even
when he is out of office. Why? Because as Parry shows here, Bush's
expanding definitions of this endless war are being accepted by
the Establishment – even now, when he is at one of the lowest
ebbs of popular support that any president has ever faced.
So you should read Parry's whole piece. It's important not only
as a description of what is happening today, but also as a guideline
for where we will be heading in the future.
Bush's 'Global War on Radicals' (consortiumnews.com)
Excerpts: The United States will never win the “war on
terror,” in part, because George W. Bush keeps applying
elastic definitions to the enemy, most recently expanding the
conflict into a war against Muslim “radicals and extremists.”
With almost no notice in Official Washington, Bush has inserted
this new standard for judging who’s an enemy as he lays
the groundwork for a wider conflict in the Middle East and a potentially
endless world war against many of the planet’s one billion
adherents to Islam.
Indeed, it could be argued that the “war on terror”
has now morphed into the “war on radicals,” allowing
Bush to add the likes of Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and
the leaders of Syria and Iran to his lengthening international
enemies list...
Now, Bush is broadening the war’s parameters yet again,
depicting the goal of his Middle East policy as defeating “radicals
and extremists,” categories that are even more elastic than
the word “terrorist.”
At a joint news conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair
on Dec. 7, Bush said, “I believe we’re in an ideological
struggle between forces that are reasonable and want to live in
peace, and radicals and extremists.” Bush has repeated this
formulation in other recent public appearances, including at his
news conference of Dec. 20 when he portrayed the fight against
“radicals and extremists” as a long-term test of American
manhood....
In other words, the war against “terrorist groups of global
reach,” which became the “global war on terrorism,”
now has morphed into what might be called the “global war
on radicals and extremists,” a dramatic escalation of the
war’s ambitions with nary a comment from the U.S. news media.
So, under Bush’s new war framework, the enemy doesn’t
necessarily have to commit or plot acts of international terrorism
or even local acts of terrorism. It only matters that Bush judges
the person to be a “radical” or an “extremist.”
While the word “terrorism” is open to abuse –
under the old adage “one man’s terrorist is another
man’s freedom fighter” – the definition of “radical”
or “extremist” is even looser. It all depends on your
point of view.
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