Permanent War aka War on Terror

George Orwell understood the relationship between war, patriotism and the suppression of democracy. He summarized his sentiments in a little book called 1984. Orwell's warning has been taken as a how-to manual by the Bush administration. If you claim to be at war you can do just about anything you want: suspend civil liberties, suppress information, lie at will, coerce the vestiges of a free press to get in line with the vast majority of the captive press, attack your political opponents as unpatriotic, and so on. Let's face it folks. We are NOT at war. We are making warfare, but that's not the same thing. The Philadelphia police bombed an entire city block a few years ago, but they were not at war. There were a lot of shots fired and heavy armor in abundance at the North Hollywood shoot out between the police and bank robbers (the subject of a number of television and movie scripts) but this was not a war, nor is L.A. County, North Hollywood, or the state of California at war. If we were at war, then it would be clear what would constitute a victory. We would know when the war was over. For example, the war with the Iraqi government ended when we destroyed their army and took over as occupation force. We're fighting insurgents, but that's not a war. It's an insurgency. They want the foreigners out. Not an untypical way that occupations proceed. Are we at war with terror? That would be interesting. How do we defeat terror? In other words, this isn't a war, it's a propaganda story to mask abuses of power. It isn't the administration that is most to blame, however. It is the media. The media continues to repeat the phrase "war on terror" as if this actually had content or meaning other than as a propaganda phrase.