Can someone please explain?

I read that the Senate postponed dealing with the spy bill, and while I'm pleased, it certainly left me contemplating a few things.

I mean, yeah, it would bug me that the FBI might be listening in on my phone except that I figured they were anyway, and have been since I had a couple of students who surfed the Internet and came up with bomb plans which they presented to a conference at Los Alamos.  Their point, and this was back in...sheesh, 1992 or so, was that it was awfully easy to do.

A couple of us had visits by the Feds and subsequently had funny clicks on our phone lines afterward.  So I'm not that surprised.

But that was in response to a specific incident.  How much information is really gathered by the government with these warrentless wiretaps anyway?  Who's processing it? 

That's not what I want explained, though, although I'm hoping that there's going to be some accounting somewhere for this unspecified snooping.  If there's not, then does that mean I can snoop into whatever intrigues me, as long as I say it's for national security?  'Cause there are some religious organizations I think need some serious looking into... 

Focus, Fran, pay attention to where you were headed!  I'm so easily distracted.

No, my question is about the "War on Terror".  It seems to me that it's like the "War on Drugs".  It's this big, fancy phrase, and it doesn't really mean anything.  It's certainly nothing that anybody's ever gonna win.

I mean, think about it.  How long have illegal and dangerous drugs been around?  Conservatively guessing, I'm gonna say...forever.  Or at least as long as we've had laws.  And according to Wikipedia, the War has been going on since about 1880, although we really got into it with Prohibition, and then Nixon got into the fray not quite a century later. 

So how's it goin'?  The war on drugs?  D'you see a difference?  Yeah, me neither.

And that's the problem with what I call "Concept Wars".  They can't be won. 

You can win a war against a country, you can win a war against an invasion.  But you can't win a war with no specific or identifiable target.  How can you? 

We have a war on terror going on right now, and I wanna know who decides who the terrorists are?  The Shrub and his puppet master?  Congress?  Who?

'Cause see, I think there are homegrown terrorists right now, walking among us, and they're not even hiding, but we haven't declared war on them.  I'm talking about the people who bomb abortion clinics, who protest military funerals, who use their power and current influence to harm people, any people, whether it's the people of the Sudan, the Jihadists, the Religious Right, or the couple who just got busted for slavery.

Whenever you use your strength to hurt someone weaker or innocent or unsuspecting, you're a bully, and a bully is simply a terrorist in the making. 

Now we can beat bullies, but we can only do it on an individual basis.  You can't stamp out bulllying any more than anyone has been able to stamp out terrorism or illegal drug use.  Ever.  Because there's always a new bully, a new terrorist cell, a new illicit drug. 

So those aren't wars we can win, and it seems to me that we shouldn't even use the word "war" because now it's lost its impact, and we've come to accept that we'll have ongoing conflicts with no resolution.  And we call them wars. 

I know, it's not a happy or cheerful topic for the season, and I'm sorry.  I'll try to think of something fun for tomorrow, and it'll probably be easy since I'll be able to talk about the madness of the signing by J. A. Jance, and I promise, she's an inspiration for any time, not just the holidays!

But that's what I wanted explained to me:  Why declare a war on a concept?  And why declare a "war" that you know you can't win?

Comments

[charlie]

Ah, you shouldn't REALIZE things like this Fran. You're un-American. The WAR ON TERROR is 'REAL' and even Senator Clinton uses that euphemistic language-like the rest of our political establishment.

What is most disconcerting for me is the ease people (us) have allowing only a few people to control everything that affects our lives with words and phrases that are meaningless and mindless.

That is the reason America is filled with MALLS. Are we as Americans doomed because of an insipid desire for an oligarchial leadership? Whatever happened to "LIVE FREE OR DIE?"