Winning Is Not Part of the Real Equation

Trey Smith

America's "War on Terror" is a battle that can never be won. There is no finite or stationary target. There is no quantifiable enemy to defeat. This contrived "war" is far different than a typical war. In a typical war, there is a defined enemy and objective. Once those are vanquished, the war ends. But when your enemy is little more than shadows, you never can be certain all the "shadows" have been defeated.

And so you fight on.

In the process of fighting on, you work hard to divert the attention of your citizenry from other important issues. You whip up a constant litany of bogeymen for them to fear. You tell them that, in order to protect them, you will need to curtail many of THEIR liberties. Few of them protest because...well...you've already scared them to death. The majority of them willingly accept these curtailments.

If you are one of the ones who reaps tremendous financial and power benefits from this "war," why would you ever want to claim victory? Announcing that we had won the "War on Terror" would mean a diminishing of your returns. You would need to restore those liberties you had taken away. You wouldn't be able to divert as much money from the public treasury as before. Even worse, you'd have to focus the public's attention on tangible issues like job creation or climate change and you'd have to offer genuine solutions.

The "War on Terror" is a charade. Winning is not part of the real equation. Ripping off the majority -- in more ways than one -- is.