The War On…

There has been an on going debate in Washington concerning the treatment of the numerous captives the US has acquired throughout the war on terror.  Much of the debate is semantic, centered upon the terminology the US Government uses, and the legal variations depending on how these captives are classified.  While Washington is torn over the legal ramifications of what definitions they choose to use, they are missing the fact that these words, their words, are characterizing are struggle against terrorism.  The choice of using the word war has drastic implications, by calling it a “War On Terror” or even worse “War On Muslim Extremism”, it forces people to choose sides.  Furthermore, terror is an intangible thing, there is no way to conduct a war against it.  It also empowers the people whose influence the US Government should be trying to mitigate.  Osama Bin Laden is a criminal, he is not representative on any state or body of people, he is not the general of an army let alone a soldier in a regular army, he is part of an international criminal conspiracy.  Osama Bin Laden has more in common with Don Corleone than he does with Nikita Kruschev, heads of state are not found on the FBI most wanted list like Bin Laden is, he is much smaller and less deadly than he is often portrayed.  However, when he is described in the context of an existential struggle, that the fate of the US hinges upon stopping this one man, it makes him far more powerful than he really is, and makes is that much easier to recruit people into his criminal enterprise.  It also builds him sympathy in the Muslim world that he might not enjoy if he were painted as a criminal, a murderer.  But as the war has continued, leading to the unjustified war in Iraq, his narrative of a War against Islam gains more credence, especially as our footprint in the Muslim world increases, with US forces conducting military operations in a greater number of countries.  The US has used the phrase “war on” repeatedly, most often in regards to internal struggles, and it has cause the same polarizing effect.  The War On Drugs and The War On Crime in the 1980’s rapidly devolved into a war on African-Americans, with a significantly higher arrest rate among African-Americans, and stiffer penalties being placed on drugs associated with poor African-American communities.  The result is an us versus them attitude, African-Americans against the police, by characterizing it as a war is very rapidly becomes one, once a line is drawn in the sand, even if you are a law abiding citizen, when an outside force is kicking down doors, and looking to arresting African-American men, you are going to be inclined to side with your community even if you don’t agree with what they are doing, and even today there are inner city areas across the US that local police call war zones, that urban militant attitude has survived.  The equally unsuccessful War On Poverty pitted the poor against powerful business interests looking to profit from urban development projects that simply redistributed the poor as opposed to lifting anyone out of poverty.  Anytime something is characterized as a war it becomes one, so when a phrase like “Global War On Terror” is used, it has a cacophonic effect on the world, and when the a phrase like “War On Muslim Extremeism” is used, it resonates across the Muslim world.  Those words are actually promoting an existential war between the US and Islam, and arguably the US Government has done more to aid Al Qaeda than any of the grainy videos Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri have released.  We are fighting a war in Afghanistan, the Taliban is a political entity that we are engaged with, prisoners in Afghanistan should be treated under the Geneva Convention, not packed into cages in Bagram, where people will on become more isolated and radicalized.  In Iraq it is much murkier, US forces are going to be drawn down this year, and their combat role has significantly been reduced, and mostly the Iraqi’s are handling their own prisoners.  However, when a terrorist is apprehended outside of these battlefields they must be treated like criminals, tried in courts, and serve prison sentences in actual civilian prisons.  There is no need to paint these criminals as anything more threatening than they really are, it only serves their interests, isolates us from the international community, and forces Americans to compromise the laws that are designed to protect everyone.