War On Sanity

Studs Terkel, the old Chicago writer, has it dead right. Mr. Bush's war on terrorism is really a war on sanity. In all my years of observing the political scene, I've never heard so much nonsense from so many important people.

It is a policy based on the Big Lie and therefore is bound to fail.

The truth is this: The terrorist attacks against the United States are a direct result of our one-sided support of Israel's oppression of the Palestinians. That's it, pure and simple.

Bush, however, does not have the moral fortitude to admit that. Therefore, he had to concoct a Big Lie to explain the attack. Oh, he said, they hate us because we are free. This is absurd on its face. Why would Arabs or anybody else care one way or another whether we were free or enslaved? It's no skin off their noses either way. The rest of the world does not wake up in the morning worrying about the American people. They have their own lives to live.

But, as a consequence of the Big Lie, Bush is doing absolutely nothing to end terrorism. Terrorism, like all human action, proceeds from a cause for a purpose. If you want to end it, you have to remove the cause. Instead, Bush is imitating the Israelis and thinks that killing people, jailing people, deporting people and threatening people will solve the problem. Those tactics have not worked for the Israelis, and they will not work for us.

To be able to kill your way out of a terrorism problem assumes that there is a finite number of terrorists. There is not; the ranks are constantly being refilled. Does anyone think that if someone kills members of our family, we're going to love the killer? If someone destroys our home and our possessions, we're going to like that person? Every time we inflict death, wounds and destruction on people, we recruit more enemies.