am calling it "our" war on terrorism because i want to distinguish it from bush's war on terrorism, and from sharon's, and from putin's. what their wars have in common is that they are based on an enormous deception: persuading the people of their countries that you can deal with terrorism by war. these rulers say you can end our fear of terrorism—of sudden, deadly, vicious attacks, a fear new to americans—by drawing an enormous circle around an area of the world where terrorists come from (afghanistan, palestine, chechnya) or can be claimed to be connected with (iraq), and by sending in tanks and planes to bomb and terrorize whoever lives within that circle.
since war is itself the most extreme form of terrorism, a war on terrorism is profoundly self-contradictory. is it strange, or normal, that no major political figure has pointed this out?
even within their limited definition of terrorism, they—the governments of the united states, israel, russia—are clearly failing. as i write this, three years after the events of september 11, the death toll for american servicemen has surpassed 1,000, more than 150 russian children have died in a terrorist takeover of a school, afghanistan is in chaos, and the number of significant terrorist attacks rose to a twenty-one-year high in 2003, according to official state department figures. the highly respected international institute for strategic studies in london has reported that "over 18,000 potential terrorists are at large with recruitment accelerating on account of iraq."
with the failure so obvious, and the president tripping over his words trying to pretend otherwise (august 30: "i don't think you can win" and the next day: "make no mistake about it, we are winning"), it astonishes us that the polls show a majority of americans believing the president has done "a good job" in the war on terrorism.
plz mark me as brainliest if this : )
