1 Boring Old Man

ter·ror
n.

1. Intense, overpowering fear. See Synonyms at fear.
2. One that instills intense fear: a rabid dog that became the terror of the neighborhood.
3. The ability to instill intense fear: the terror of jackboots pounding down the street.
4. Violence committed or threatened by a group to intimidate or coerce a population, as for military or political purposes.
5. Informal. An annoying or intolerable pest: that little terror of a child.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

First and foremost, the word Terror means the emotion fear, at a very high volume. I know that what President Bush means, or thinks he means, when he says The War on Terror is a war against people who practice Terrorism.

ter·ror·ism
n.

The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Of course, one can argue that he took us to war with Iraq, a country that was uninvolved with any of the Terrorist attacks on our country. So how can his war be a War on Terror, or a War on Terrorists? Maybe he thought Iraq might terrorize us with nuclear or biological weapons. But, we now know that they didn’t have any such things. In fact, even if the evidence Bush presented were true, it didn’t add up to much of a threat. But, it is now known that not only did they not have such weapons and that the minimal evidence he touted was false, we also know that it is likely the Administration knew that there was no threat and no terrorist ties before he went to war. So why did they do it? And beyond that, why did they do it knowing that their reasons were wrong before they went to war?

We know a lot more about the answer to that question now than we knew back in early 2003. We know that the Administration was built from a group who thought that we should move into the role of Superpower that kept order in the world in response to the end of the Cold War. This same group believed that Saddam Hussein was behind the Terrorists. They also believed that the former Administration was making a mistake to focus on the Terrorist Organizations like al Qaeda. They thought we should focus on the States they thought were behind the Terrorists. They were heavily influenced by Israel, who saw these States as being a threat to their existence. They were suspicious of our own Intelligence Agency which was advising the then President. We now know that the Administration came into office planning to go to war with Iraq to effect a "regime change" and as a way to announce "American Dominion" to the world.p

What else do we know? We know that they began planning the war with Iraq in earnest very shortly after the 911 attack. And that’s what they did. Less than two years after 911, we had swept through Afghanistan and Iraq – clear military victories. Did they use 911 as an excuse to do what they wanted to do in the first place? Did they really believe that Hussein was behind al Qaeda, that he had these dreaded weapons, that he was a real threat to America? Why did they all but ignore our own Intelligence Agency reports? Why did they ignore post-war planning? When they didn’t get the confirmation of their beliefs, why did they manipulate the facts and charge ahead with their plans?

Assuming that one believes that they actually did distort the facts to get us into the Iraq War [an increasingly inescapable conclusion], one must explain why. Whatever really started them on the Path to Iraq must’ve been pretty powerful to sustain them against the gradient of dwindling justification. The speculated explanations run from demonic, to polemic, to greed, through misguided, to mental illness. I don’t know what I think really ran that motor yet. It changes from day to day. [I’m not, by the way, counting on Disney to answer it with another croc-u-drama].

But one thought that’s been with me all day is about the phrase, "War on Terror [see below]." Terror is an emotion in the interior of people, not outside. It’s loud, inescapable fear. Our leaders preach fear, terror, in every speech. They connect unconnected things. The only real link between 911, the War on Terror, and the War in Iraq [Iran?] is that they are "things we are afraid of." Everyone in our Administration actively avoided our last war, yet have been drawn to military solutions. Is it possible that they are all so very frightened, that the "War on Terror" isn’t just a grammatically awkward phrase, but and interpretable slip – the driving force is a War on their own internal, unacknowledged Terror – something akin to the preadolescent boys who dress like thugs and swagger around as a way of mastering their fear of the older kids?

That isn’t a new thought for me. When I started practicing, I had a hard time helping "macho" men – men who ended up in my office because they’d mistreated their wives, or gotten in a mess for being bullies at work or with their kids, men who seemed driven by something like the "will to power." One day I had this thought, "If you’re working with a man, and you can’t understand why he’s doing what he’s doing, the answer is always fear. Fear is what makes men tick." Up until that day, I’d been vaguely aware that fear was certainly a part of my own inner machinery, but we don’t talk about that very much – we men. That thought helped me help my patients. Figuring out what they were afraid of was a lot more productive that trying to explore why they were acting like jerks. So are Bush and Cheney and the rest of them just a bunch of scared little boys ganging up together to go to war with their own extreme internal fears [Shock and Awe]? Whatever else is driving them, I expect this is at least a piece of the story. For that matter, I would bet that al Qaeda is a similar gang of frightened little boys beating their breasts [Terrorism]. Fourth grade playground politics seems to be the order of the day…

Tonight’s fear-mongering: