The "War" On Terror (2008)

(From the Buster Gammons column of 6/16/08)

Here’s what’s wrong with our “war on terrorism” (besides the fact that, on false pretenses, we invaded a country that had nothing to do with terrorism, blew that country to bits and actually created more terrorists in the process, killed bunches of innocent people, and have ourselves been stuck there for years getting killed as we try to clean up the mess we made, while the Haliburtons and the Blackwaters of the world enrich themselves in our glorious shit-pile. Besides that.).

• It’s a “war” on a noun, on a tactic. It’s like the War on Drugs or the War on Poverty.
• The “enemy” is nebulous, ill-defined, and in no particular location. They are everywhere, they are nowhere.
• The troika of Bush, Cheney and Rummy, despite the obviously non-conventional circumstances, chose a conventional “boots on the ground” (and not enough of them) response. The results speak for themselves.
  

Ol’ Buster is as far from expert on this as one can be, but he thinks we’re looking for lace in a lumberyard. A successful anti-terrorism effort would seem to call for some Cold War-style strategy – covert actions, lots of good intelligence, and some back-channel diplomacy, not the traditional troops and tanks approach. Bring ‘em home.