I am so sick of the phrase, “War on Terrorism.” I’m so tired of hearing people say this or that is part of the struggle/war/fight against terrorism.

Hey, folks... deal with it. Some crazies knocked down a couple of tall buildings and killed some innocent people almost five years ago, presumably because some guy hiding in remotest Asia told them to! The hiding guy is still out there, unapprehended. And what are we doing five years later? We’re still running around like Chicken Little terrified that it might happen again. We’re ignoring important issues while we shadowbox with... gasp... the chimera of terrorism. Ever see a kid stir up a red ant hill with a stick? The ants run around for a while, but eventually they put the ant hill back together and get on with it. And that’s what we’d have done if we didn’t let ourselves be sold this so-called war!

It’s so infuriating! Drunk drivers have killed over a hundred thousand people since 9/11/01 – is anyone declaring war on drunk drivers? Let’s get a sense of perspective, please. Sen. Feingold is right when he says we shouldn’t give up our freedoms because of this trumped-up war. We also shouldn’t be giving up health care, schoolbooks for kids, assistance to other countries who are really ready to make the leap into democracy... filling potholes, treating drug addicts... all the things we don’t have money for because of this damned, unwinnable, unfightable made-up struggle whose main aim is to enrich arms merchants and distract the public while politicians slurp at the public trough.

Grrrrr!

I know this isn't the place to get personal, but I didn't start it and my adversary (to confer more stature on him/her than he/she deserves) has provided a perfect example of what I was talking about.

Gratefule Alive states that "...one possibility is that terrorism is a chimera, and another possibility is that our intrusive gov't is actually preventing terrorism. Nobody outside the gov't can tell about this, but should Osama get a nuke, could you please forward your address so I can pass it on to him? Thanks Jim, you should be in charge of national security, you schmuck!"

This is exactly the kind of rhetoric we get, in one form or another, from the right wing.. in blogs, magazines, even from our own government. In many cases such as this, the purveyors of panic and fear are types who can't spell (or excuse me, maybe he/she actually meant the moniker to rhyme with "Great Fool") and contradict themselves unapologetically ("...one possibility is that terrorism is a chimera but you're a schmuck if you believe it,") while sneaking in that cancerous message that... YOU COULD DIE!! Yes, Fule, we will all die some day, one way or another. The question is, in the short time we're alive, will we be free?

I don't think the professor was suggesting that we return to the past, nor did he fail to note that lesser members of those old societies got the dirty end of the stick. He's merely, I think, pointing out that there is value -- not total rightness, but value -- in reexamining the concept of "an eye for an eye." There's no reason it shouldn't become part of the philosophical dialogue surrounding the question of how we should govern ourselves; it needn't be seen as a call to replace our entire tort system with revenge-based calculations.

There's a flaw in your flaw, bbrock. To say the victim of murder is no longer in existence and therefore can't be personally avenged doesn't acknowledge society's stake in the balancing of accounts and it begs the question of prevention before-the-fact. If you deprive another human being of his/her full span of years, society will return the favor on behalf of him/her. The fact that the original victim isn't around to take pleasure in the retribution is beside the point. It's society's job to concern itself with evening the score, just as it's society's job to care for those who can't care for themselves, who "aren't there" for themselves. Society also hopes for forestall murder to as great an extent as possible by promising, before the fact, to mete out an equal punishment.

Hell, if all a murderer had to say to the cops was, "Hey, do you hear my victim complaining? No? Then turn me loose!" it would be a very different world.