Fear is the great motivating influence in most American's lives.
Buy "this" to protect yourself, home, family, nation.
The fear of losing something you never had is a primary sales tool. We have all had a salesperson tell us we had better git "it " now or "it" might not be here tomorrow.
Snake oil.

"What they remind anyone not already in thrall to the cultural hysteria Ignatius promotes is that all the "terrorists" discovered in America over the past few years were, like the British would-be bombers, thoroughly pathetic figures, who collectively proved themselves incapable of blowing up a phone booth.

Where the hell could they find a phone booth, much less blow one up?

Grumpy Lion

The neocon actions create hatred of us beyond what we could ever counter militarily. It is a policy intended to create a permanent state of war and fear in order to quash any opposition to thier absolute rule. Bush/Cheney and the neocons are by definition "The Terrorists." There is no future but feudal slavery and destruction on the neocon plan. It must be rooted out and reversed.

Thank you Economics Truck!

The real terrorists are the fear-mongers in government and the media, including Ignatius, who profit from mass paranoia. Scare people into believing they're in danger, whether from Arabs or from odor-causing bacteria, and you can sell them a lot of stuff they don't need.

Mr. Economics Truck.

Yeah they lied about a lot of shit. Thats to be expected from governments, thats what they do.

google video - adam curtis - the power of nightmares

@ Nietzsche

Or as H.L. Mencken observed "Not all conservatives are stupid, but all stupid people are conservative."

Great commentary. With so much information, as well as misinformation, coming at us all the time, it's hard to consolidate this kind of thinking into concise, understandable rhetoric. It's been obvious for some time that many other ills, misfortunes, and disasters pose a greater danger to America and all humankind than terrorism. Statistically at least, terrorism is far down the scale of problems that must be addressed.

Much lunacy has been instigated by the fear of terrorism, from the silly "emergency alert" colors to the notion that the greatest threat to civilization is the takeover of Europe by Islam by the year 2020. (This latter was told to me by a good friend whose wingnut inclinations I try to mostly ignore since he's such a nice guy othewise. I think he gets these loony ideas from talk radio and Fox TV.)

In the meantime, people die from lack of health care, drive-by shootings and other gun deaths occur daily, the elderly lose their life savings in order to pay for dental work or unexpected bills, children suffer from malnutrition, and a multitude of societal ailments go uncorrected. And we continue to spend in the neighborhood of $3,000 per second in Iraq. That's $180,000 per minute. It's incredible that the fearmongers have been so able to blind so many for so long.

Thanks to Paul Campos for putting all of this into perspective.

When people and pundits in western media write or talk about terrorism, they seem to develop myopia. Their discussion of terrorism is very limited and invariably centers on car bombs, firebombs, and suicide bombings. Look at how much noise they have generated about the doctors who took part in the firebombing in England that didn't even kill anyone.

These people hypocritically never talk about the real big terrorists whose repeated crimes, both past and present, have given rise to retaliation. The real terrorists, unlike the doctors who only attempted to fire bomb, have in the past, and are currently, terrorizing and killing innocent civilians by large numbers in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The real criminals and terrorists such as Israel, European countries, and America need to be mentioned and exposed. While these people may describe a car laden with gasoline as a horrific bombing, they never mention the real terrorist actions perpetrated by Israel, America, Britain, et al, some better known as the coalition of the killing. If one wants to see the real terrorists in action, one has to go to Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Let's not forget that the Shock and Awe that terrorized masses of innocent people in the middle of night was not a garden party.

A lot of people did not run out an buy duct tape after 9/11 and a lot of people do not wish for many of the restrictions on our freedoms in the name of 'terrorism.' A lot of people do not watch FOX news as it is too silly for words. A little bit of common sense goes a long way in whether or not you are scared out of your wits over 'terrorism.' To level the playing field it would be fair to wire tap the White House and have all calls broadcast direct to FOX. Sort of a live 'Big Brother' show. Their ratings would sky rocket.

Ignatius' whole argument is moot because he starts from a totally false premise: America is only "divided" in the minds of so-called journalists and reporters and such, but according to ALL polls, there is massive unity on every important subject, from the environment to education to Iraq and the "war on terror." Hell, most of us even agree that the government needs to get out of a woman's womb and the researcher's petri dish and the torture business.

But since the basis of "storytelling" is "conflict," the truth about how united Americans really are isn't told, because it lacks "drama." Black v White sells better than "80% agree we must stop the Earth from melting."

Best example: is there any question that the majority of Americans are repulsed by the obscenely expanding "wealth gap?" Think that one polls 50-50? How about universal health care for children (at least)? Half of us oppose that one, do we? The list is long...

We're more united than the government, our one Party sub-branches, or our corporate-leashed media wants us to believe, for the most basic of reasons: THERE IS POWER IN NUMBERS. And they do not want us to remember this.

And if the Supreme Court continues down its current path, abortion will be illegal so thousands of women will die each year due to the abortions done the pre "Roe vs Wade" way. Oh yeah, forgot women aren't people again...........

Where would Bush&Co be today if it weren't for bin Laden & Company?

the problem with common sense is that its not that common

So we have common dreams, and wwe can see that there are others in the world on the same wave length as us. now hat the fuck are we going to do about it?

"...Ignatius and his ilk have helped create a fear of terrorism out of all proportion to the actual threat terrorism poses; that by doing so they helped drag America into a disastrous war with Iraq; and that they're now helping to create the conditions that may enable an even more disastrous war with Iran."
'
Terrrrrrsm, from a statistical standpoint doesn't exist. It's all hype. Whether Cheney ordered the hit on 9/11 or not, there were more people killed that month by gunfire in this country than died that morning. You stand a better chance of getting a winning lotto ticket blown out of your hand by lightening than of being killed by terrrrrsts. Be Brave.

lol

thats, a very poignant observation BlackStacey.

Damn

It is in the interest of mainstream media to present 'news' that sells advertizing while supporting the source of advertizing which happens to be large corporations.

How does it sell 'news'? Be presenting it in a sensational manner, and making a big deal of non-news stories (anything about Paris Hilton, while maybe a personal tragedy, should not be front page news).

Mainstream media should be the watchdog, that challenges incorrect facts or misleading statements.

But it instead acts as a lapdog, in bed with with the very entities that it should be guarding the public against- corrupt government and unscrupulous corporations.

so it goes

www.NotOneMore.US/staythecourse.htm - a humourous look at how our president makes decisions

www.NotOneMore.US - Take the Pledge for Peace

I find it very ironic that when I was a kid, their was a toy with it's own cartoon called G.I. Joe. And G.I. Joe had a nemesis called COBRA. And G.I. Joe would fight and defeat COBRA every episode without ever catching Cobra Commander. And here we are 20+ years later and life is imitating a cartoon.

The basic assumption that the Bush-Cheney criminal gang wants the people of the US and the world to swallow is that they are operating on utilitarian principles -- trying to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number, primarily in the US, but also in the rest of the world to a reasonable extent.

Most people who comment at Common Dreams know this is laughable. There is not even a serious effort to convince anyone who has even the slightest degree of awareness that this is true. We know the Bush administration has become a pure criminal conspiracy, a complete fraud, offering nothing but disinformation to enable corruption and cronyism at unprecedented levels. And we know the people of the US need to escape this hall of mirrors before they can even begin to discuss serious policy options with regard to terrorism or other aspects of foreign policy. Yet we also know the corporate media is entirely complicit in the conspiracy, and sets up new mirrors for each old one that is smashed.

While terrorism has not caused nearly the harm of irresponsible insurance companies, tobacco companies, chemical companies, arms manufacturers, or a host of other US commerical enterprises, in the age of nuclear weapons the potential harm is unbounded in scope and so it should be considered seriously. However, since terrorism is caused by blowback from imperialistic foreign policy, the proper remedial policies would involve ending such imperialistic activities and engaging in law enforcement investigations, not furthering imperialistic aims and abuses.

Excellent example of the "availability heuristic". What this means is that people's minds inflate the significance of certain events due to powerful images, words, and propaganda and not due to actual facts, and statistics.

This is why many people who have a fear of flying drive cars, even though statistics demonstrate they are far more likely to die in a car accident than a plane accident(or terrorist incident).

The horrific events of september 11th were a terrible crime, and the perpetrators should have been dealt with. A reasonable level of heightened security afterward would have been all that was necessary. Instead this has been used by the criminals in the White House to justify imperialist actions that actually raise the risk of terrorism(another attack would almost certainly lead to an attack on Syria or Iran, or some other country; regardless, Pakistan may soon fall to the fundamentalist wackos, leading to a war with India, and maybe something similar to the Iran-Iraq war). It is a very disturbing vicious cycle, which pleases both the American war criminals, and the foreign terrorists. How anyone cannot understand this is beyond me.

Let's see now, the three british "car bombs" burned two of the perpetrators and one car. That not much more damage than a vice-president can do with a shotgun.

Be afraid, be VERY afraid! ! ! ! !

The main thing that America has to fear are the real terrorist George Bush and Dick Cheney plus the MSM

They crank it up and then some time in a small article in the back of the paper it will suggest it was all much ado about nothing.

Of course no one ever mentions Oklahoma City anymore, but that was a Right-wing Gulf war vet, not an Arab whose country has oil or that Israel wants to rattle the sabre at.

Doesn't anyone care to remember that it was the CIA who gave America 9/11? Never mind that America built, armed, financed, and trained Osama and his ilk for decades !

While were on the subject of Sept 11. How'd bldg 7 fall again???
All roads lead to Sept 11.......

What's that line? One who calls another a terrorist is the terrorist trying to cover their tracks. The way to keep people guessing is to prey on their fears and keep reinforcing the same old story.

And the more we keep spinning our wheels and play the blame game, the more it keeps happening. Terrorists today will be the same thing named something else in the future as it was in the past.

Vern,

One of the favorite books among extreme right-wingers is titled "The Third Terrorist: The Middle East Connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing". Many of them strongly believe Islamic terrorists were really behind the Oklahoma City terrorist attack, and believe the mainstream "liberal" media continues to cover it up.

Here are my two bits:

ALL the bombs are in the hands of terrorists!

To Fed Up:

I believe Building 7 fell by planned demolition. At least that's what Larry Silverstein, the owner, said on PBS. I think you can watch the direct quote on "Loose Change the 2nd Edition" or "Zeitgeist: The Movie" which is also on Google I think.

Of course, I'll bet you already know all this, right??

Well, perhaps somebody with a better memory or more education can correct me, but I recall reading decades ago from one of those dead guys--maybe Plato--to paraphrase: that the business of government was to scare the masses and turn their hate and fear onto another 'enemy' (often invented or hyped, think Hitler and the Jews for one) so that the 'sheeple' wouldn't realize the TRUE enemy of the people was their own government.

It was true 2000 years ago, and it's still true, in spades now. It's gone beyond simple misdirection, now they're even making very real enemies on purpose of people who presented no threat to us just to have a way to control us--perpetual war, perpetual fear.

In college the guys on athletic scholarships had jobs. One was keeping the alligators out of the gym. The standing joke was the good job that was being done since none were ever seen. Conservative pundits are serious when, defending Bush's spying, torture, lying, warmongering,etc etc, they say "Has there been another attack?"

You don't have to be stupid to be conservative but it helps.

Some quotes:

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." -- John F. Kennedy

"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." -- Barry Goldwater (actually written by Karl Hess)

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." Theodore Roosevelt

So really, people have recognized through time what the problem is (I could have thrown in a couple of Greek quotes as well), and what is causing it. Now we have to determine whether we want to put our complete effort and commitment in changing the current status quo which benefit the few at the expense of the many. Unfortunately, the mainstream polictical parties (democrat and republican) are more concerned with maintaining the status quo which favors millionaires, after all many of our elected officials are millionaires. Big surprise.

peace, justice, and Human Rights for all.

www.NotOneMore.US - The Pledge for Peace

I don't disagree with any of the previous comments, they all have validity. However, one thing that hasn't been said, theoretically; in a Democracy, voters have the opportunity to "throw the rascals out" come every election. However, we reelect incumbents most of the time and in spite of repeated failures by both political parties, we continue to support them. Independents run and almost always loose.

Two thoughts come to mind; one, the typical American voter is an idiot who is heavily propagandized and lacks the requisite intellectual skills to understand his/her situation. And/or two, the system has been so completely hijacked by Corporations and the very wealthy that our democracy is no more than a sham. Do you have any better explanation?

Not One More - Here's another quote for your collection:

'Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.' - Thomas Jefferson.

Ok Mr Paul Campos . . . .
Where did these figures come from . . .
"Some of these people died agonizing deaths on emergency room floors because they didn't have health insurance. A quarter-million were killed in car crashes. Around 200,000 were shot to death. Several thousand died of acute alcohol poisoning."
Give me a break . . . How can we expect to get anywhere when these kind of figures get thrown around . . .
Don't get me wrong . . . These problems are real. Just as real as any, but these kinds of assessments are not going to help.
When we start facing REAL problems with REAL solutions then maybe we can find the middle ground but this kind of BS won't get it.
"Around 200,000 were shot to death." . . . Give me a break.

obl has been very kind to the folks of the us
the past couple of yrs..

(3 bucks worth of gasoline and a buck bic
will shut the entire west of the country down)!

I wonder why?
ken

The deaths of 14 million or so since 9/11 can't be exploited for profit. In fact, these statistics must be swept under the rug so as not to upset the gun, oil, auto, health care, etc industries contributing to the needless deaths. However, the 3,000 who died as a result of the attacks on 9/11 represent the best opportunity for profit, political and financial, since Pearl Harbor. Why the surprise that this is what's actually happening? It's the American way.

I think it is a mistake to try to dilute the fear elicited by terrorism by comparing its lethality to that of traffic accidents, deaths due to a profit-driven health care system, guns, etc. The nature of terrorism is to terrorize, so that lethality is intentional, its perpetrators are hidden or faceless, often living within the enemy population, and its intended targets are the "innocent" victims whose government's policies have put them at risk. Although the leaders of a country are the ones who make the decisions that result in the blowback of terrorism, it is the general populace, the "innocents," who are terrorized and victimized by it.

Another important aspect of terrorism is that it creates the kind of generalized fear of the "enemy within" that has helped to animate the anti-immigration movement, the anti-gay movement, the anti-feminist movement, and any other movement that threatens to problematize fixed notions of identity. Borders of identity become more fixed as people try to regain their sense of control.

These issues may be beside the point of the article, but I think that we have to try to understand some of the dynamics of terrorism if we are to make any headway against the deliberate manipulation of the fear it creates and how that fear is manifested.

The Post is mostly trash, online they're annoying. Ignatius is a keyboard monkey performing for his fan base. In the 70s, the printing presses were gutted and dismantled by unhappy Post employees, in an aggressive statement against da' man. Too bad we can't see a similar protest launched from within the Post's IT department. Things are a bit more complicated now, and anything that prevents George Will's editorial from making it to the masses is an act of terrorism. The Post is led by terrorists, barely a peep when Dipshit attacked Iraq.

An interesting snippet in my morning paper - in the side-bar about interesting quotes. No source was given other then "Interpol". Seems the unnamed spokesperson was complaining that not one fingerprint of the suspected terrorists in Britain had been sent to Interpol.

Since it as unsourced, and not expanded upon, I was left to conclude that at least some people in Interpol wonder just how serious this terrorist threat is/was

jp think about what you be saying..

was stopped rolling into heathrow in '74
brit missile was missing
ira maybe..
fuck-em i'm flying

knew at 27
security is an illusion..

take off was fun
tanks and all
circling the perimeter

take off your shoes
never, never never never

was in an airport 2 yrs past
smelled like fear

ken

Not surprising - people and the media whip up fear on stuff that rarely happens. Years ago the group that most feared homicide by strangers were old ladies in nursing homes the group least likely to be killed by strangers. Least afraid were young black males - the group that is most likely to be killed by a stranger.

Terrorism is a very ineffective way to kill people, lots of booze, drugs, tobacco, and no health care are much more effective.

Basic common sense from the professor who rightfully outraged by the lack of common sense in those who lead and influence public opinion.

But we live in apocalyptic times, what Christians of apocalyptic orientation call the "end times". How many copies of the "left behind" series of books by Tim La Haye and Jerry B Jenkins have been released like anthrax spores in the population? 62 million?

This is an excellant theological foundation for paranoid politics as practised by Bush and the Neocons. In Israel, which must gird up its loins every blessed day because it has so antagonized its neighbors that it can never take its own existence for granted, this unrelenting paranoia is justified. The Israeli really do have something to be afraid of, and insofar as the US colludes with them to perpetrate injustice against the Arabs, then the US has something legitimate to fear from Arab terrorism. It is called "blowback", a concept foreign to the mind of those who preach the war on terror.

But these supporters of the "long war" are not worried to distraction by rational considerations. They have lost their common sense and have become completely irrational. If they were truly worried about a nuclear bomb falling into the hands of terrorists, the rational response would be a determined full court press for nuclear disarmament.

Jimmy Carter, who understands the religious mind because he has one of his own, has warned that these end times fanatics really believe what they are saying. There is a final battle acoming and Jesus will return to initiate his Thousand Year Christian Reich. The future belongs to the true believers.

And whether or not supporters of the war on terror read and believe the "left behind" fantasies, or whether they are professing Christians or not, they are nonetheless drawn into the apocalyptic hysteria, even if they don't acknowledge it as apocalyptic. One does not have to embrace Chstian eschatology to support the war on terror.

One need only be a dedicated military careerist and look at the world through a gun sight.

Fascism is a political view that cannot survive in a liberal cultural environment. It is incompatible with peaceful co-existence. Martial virtues are its highest values and war is its highest achievement. Fascism requires the stark simplicity of a cosmic battle between Good & Evil by which to measure all things.

Fascism and Christian apocalyptism are a good fit. The relentless attack on liberal culture and liberal values such as those embedded in the Constitution in the name of this war on terror, is a fascist inspired assault, a prescursor of a social transformation achieved by means of the politics of paranoia. The politics derived from the Book of Revelation.

The most peculiar aspect of fascist paranoid politics is that it tends to provoke conflict in the name of the ultimate resolution of all conflict, the Ultimate Victory of Good over Evil.

911 was an act of political terror perpetrated by those who wished to launch a war on terror.

To understand David Ignatius, Professor Campos needs to step outside his pragmatic, common sense views of terrorism, and get into the apocalyptic frame of mind. That is the weakness of liberalism. It tends to be too rational. It cannot inhabit the mind of a fanatic. If Professor Campos could do that, he would understand David Ignatius better. He would also understand that terrorism from within our government is the greatest terrorist threat.

He would tremble with every announcment by officials and their media lackeys about the imminent threat terrorism poses because he would understand that this is little more than a gangster selling a protection racket. If you don't buy my war on terror, the cryptofascist officials say, you will certainly be victimized by it.

This is why Bush/Cheney should be impeached, the 911 investigation reopened, and every individual who failed to prevent that act of terror be summarily removed from any position of influence now or in the future.

We don't have a future as a Republic otherwise.

"Fear is the great motivating influence in most American's lives."

In other words: the besetting vice of Americans is no longer Greed (so 80's!), or Sloth and Gluttony, but Cowardice.

Which explains Abu Ghraib and all the rest. Without Courage, Honour is impossible. Honour is precisely to take the risk that one's foe will also behave with honour.

On the Fear in the United States

On 9/11, I was at my place of work, in Manhattan, as usual. We continued working even after we learned that airplanes had been crashed into the towers and after the towers collapsed. Although I was concerned to leave the building I was in, which I did as soon as circumstances permitted, I was not afraid. Nor have I been afraid or fearful since. The anthrax threat, the alleged terrorist alerts, and all the terror hysteria have failed to impress me. Why is it, then, that inhabitants of this country who live states away from here, would be more fearful than New Yorkers? (I am, of course, assuming that New York City is a much more likely target than most places in the United States.) Here are the folks of "the greatest country on Earth," the one that God blesses a million times a day, the one with the biggest military budget on our sorrowful Earth -- a budget, incidentally, as large as the aggregate military budgets of all other nations -- and they are trembling with fear. It leaves one wondering how such a peculiar phenomenon could arise, what its causes might be. Why are the people of the United States so fear prone, so susceptible to that emotion?

Eight years elapsed between the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center Towers and the 9/11 attacks, and presumably those were years during which the country was far less on its guards than it has been since the eleventh. On probabilistic grounds alone, then, the likelihood of a sizeable terrorist strike within the United States is infinitely small. As a reminder, one should note that the likelihood of dying in a terrorist attack in the U.S. is nearly nil, in comparison to that of perishing in a car or ordinary airplane crash. Although thousands of U.S. citizens die in car accidents every year, a tiny minority among us trembles with fear at the sight of cars or at the thought of having to travel to some destination by car, and we advise such people to seek therapeutic help.

With these reminders, I have yet evoked neither the thousands among us who die each year owing to firearm violence, nor the fact that United States territory has literally been attacked by foreign armies once or twice since the inception of the nation. (It is true that we are somewhat more afraid of guns than of cars, particularly when they are being pointed at us, but not sufficiently to ban them from everyday life and to legislate their sale and use very stringently.)

Regarding the mountain of dead people caused by firearm violence in our civil society, take a look at this citation from Bob Herbert's article "Hooked on Violence," New York Times, April 26, 2007: "...since the murders of Robert Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, well over a million Americans have been killed by firearms in the United States. That's MORE THAN THE COMBINED U.S. COMBAT DEATHS IN ALL THE WARS IN ALL OF AMERICAN HISTORY" (emphasis mine).

Might there be a low-level civil war going on in our midst? Might that relentless violence have anything to do with the average American's susceptibility to fear?

Why is it that probability theory is not being applied to the possible occurrence of terrorist strikes on U.S. soil? We do use it to assess the possibility of occurrence of many other phenomena. Is the possibility of terrorist strikes the exclusive object of concern of irrational religious and political sentiments?

Why is it that a nation that prides itself on being enlightened by the legal and political acquisitions of its revolution and its numerous scientific and technical achievements, and whose leaders seldom miss an opportunity to blame other nations for resisting modernization (these days, this reproach is primarily directed at Islamic societies, as we know), shows itself incapable of being rational in the face of the attacks of 9/11 and their aftermath? The Irish, the British, and the Spanish peoples, to take just a few examples, have had to deal with terrorism for decades, yet they retained their ability to be rational agents in the political arena.

Dominik Jenkins's book "The Final Frontier. America, Science, and Terror" (Verso, 2002) documents the way in which the triad formed by science, technology, and economy has been shaping the United States' military since about 1878 by gradually transforming the armed forces into a piece of the triad, a process which gives us what, borrowing a phrase from President Eisenhower, we might call the military-industrial-university complex.

Jenkins shows that the integration of the military into the triad has not left the constitutional structure of the United States unaltered, for the increasing presence of military affairs and military power within government and ever greater sectors of the triad inevitably erodes the separation of powers, pulling as they do the executive and portions of the legislative to their side. That is why Eisenhower, in fact, used the phrase 'industrial-military-Congressional complex', as we now know from his posthumously revealed writings, the adjective 'Congressional' having been suppressed during his lifetime. The erosion of the three powers in turn has blunted the plight of the citizenry for democratic participation and made it into a politically immature population.

As far as the United States' relation to other nations is concerned, the erosion of the constitutional structure has distorted the democracy into an imperial democracy, serving primarily the interests of an elite of highly placed military functionaries, industrialists and business people, and scientists. It is the serving of these interests that has led to most of the United States' military interventions.

Jenkins unearthed many texts to document this transformation, some quite stunning. He displays the role that fear plays in the integration of the military into the triad and its impact upon the constitutional institutions. He shows how the ruling elite made use of fear as an instrument of intimidation and coercion, that in the brutal politics that American politics has been for so long, fear is first and foremost an instrument used to accomplish certain political, economic, military effects or ends. As evidenced by the following quotation, the use of fear as a means of social control and regimentation of the populace was very well understood by Hermann Goering, the chief of Adolf Hitler's secret police (the Gestapo):
"Why of course the people don't want war... That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."

As the gap between rich an poor widen, we are divided in this country, objectively.

Don't fall for this "we are all in this together" bull. As people who are underemployed, unemployed, or working for a paycheck. Our interests are not the same as the people making billions of dollars running the world.

They need terrorist, they need the democratic party, they need to keep us, the working class, thinking we need them to survive. The truth is the opposite. They are killing us. In the work place, on the battle field, in the hospitals, etc. We have independent interest, and they can't give us what we need to survive and still make maximum profit.

We need to build a new party that represents our interest as workers.

The US Social Forum held in Atlanta recently was a good starting point. Please check it out, where people are actually doing something to help build a new world.

I'm not necessarily for Edwards (prefer Kucinich) but when he said the "War on Terrorism is a bumper sticker" (for which he was much criticized) he was right-on.

Terrorism and our "War" with it are meant to incite and rally people. It is completely hyped up in order to motivate us against our enemy (radical islam). The ulterior motives for this hype are easy to understand -- Those folks are sitting on alot of oil fields.

Our countrymen's lives are taken by other means which we collectively never examine (as mentioned in the other readers' comments, e.g., car crashes, avoidable health crises, and gun violence, or should I say, "people who kill people" with gun violence using wording preferred by the NRA). We should be pursuing all strategies available to reduce these needless deaths.

The War on Terror is a hyped-up total BS reason for anything. It's up there with the War on Drugs. It is a plan to manipulate public opinion, purely and simply. Bush scraped by in 2004 because of the public's manipulated need to have the C.in C. stay at the helm and fight this "war". Need more be said?

The Washington Post is pathetic (from a Washingtonian). Their Op Ed staff should have retired a long time ago. They are all seriously myopic.

The War On Terror is The War of Terror.

If you doubt the point made above by, I think, Economic Truck, Jaded Prole, clyde paige, Fed Up, and cruxpuppy, that the 9/11 attacks were at least allowed to happen by BushCo in order to supply the new Pearl Harbor needed to manipulate the U.S. citizenry into consenting to war without assignable end, and to the abuse of the Constitution by the establishment of a "unitary executive," i.e., that 9/11 was a coup d'état, then you may want to consider this quotation from Zbigniew Brzezinski's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on February 1st of this year (Brzezinski was President Carter's National Security Advisor): "A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist attack in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a 'defensive' U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan."

We know that Brzezinski is no choir boy; after all, he may well have set the trap into which the Soviet Union fell with its invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

"As a reminder, one should note that the likelihood of dying in a terrorist attack in the U.S. is nearly nil, in comparison to that of perishing in a car or ordinary airplane crash."

And it is precisely those people who are most afraid of terrorists who are likely to have a gun in their home - a far, far more certain threat tho the lives of their families.

It's irrationality on the loose. It's the reptilian brain.

I just finished reading Fidel Castro's latest musings [July 7, '07, in La Prensa which is a pretty good source for Latin American news]

Anyway, he was discussing some of the more notorious and flagrant attempts on his life by the US between 1959 thru 1993. Said he cannot address the later years since then, as he lacks all the data.

627 attempts! Sure, that is 25 years, and approx 25 tries a year. Now, if you want to discuss terrorism, it behooves our government to come clean before it goes off blowing up every country it sets its sights on.

The more I read about Fidel, btw, the more I admire him. I wonder if his nationalizing US properties in 1959 was a successful attempt to get rid of the counter-revolutionaries. It was certainly effective for that. If all those Cuban patriots had stayed in Cuba and formed a 5th column, Castro would have gone the way of Patrice Lamumba in a hurry.

I realize this is borderline off-topic, except for the general theme of state sponsored terror. But, Castro has been publishing a series of thoughts and reminiscences for the past couple of months, and even Common Dreams has failed to publish them.

627 attempts at murder - It'd kind of make you skitchy and unfriendly, wouldn't it?