In the War on Terror (WOT), Truth is the First Casualty

Last Monday, July 18, 2005 the American terrorist Eric Rudolph was sentenced to life in prison in a Birmingham, AL courthouse. We didn't hear much about Rudolf 's conviction and sentencing in comparison to the Natalie Holloway disappearance or the Michael Jackson molestation trial. And yet Rudolf alone is responsible for killing over a hundred innocent Americans---mainly women and gay men---for how they live and who they are. Why wasn't Rudolph's conviction hailed as another victory in the war on terror?

The reason why is because Rudolph doesn't fit the definition of terror the federal government wants to portray.

According to the AP: "Rudolph, 38, pleaded guilty in April to setting off a remote-controlled bomb that maimed Lyons and killed police officer Robert "Sande" Sanderson outside the New Woman All Women clinic on the morning of Jan. 29, 1998.
He also faces sentencing Aug. 22 in Atlanta for the 1996 Olympics bombing that killed one woman and injured more than 100, as well as 1997 bombings at an abortion clinic and gay bar in Atlanta." See http://khon.com/khon/display.cfm?storyID=5568§ionID=1163

Indeed, the United States, like most modern nation-states, has a history of American terrorists---including the other anti-abortion extremists as well as such groups as the Ku Klux Klan---that have terrorized the country for years.

Terrorism---extremism, hatred and violence---is nothing new to America, although we have been told that, since September 11, 2001, the USA is engaged in a war on terror. Indeed, the "war on terror" has been misused by the Administration to justify the invasion of Iraq under false premises, the illegal indefinite imprisonment of detainees, and the U.S. Patriot Act.

In The Weekly Standard electronic newsletter Irwin M. Stelzer notes that "[m]yths are not the stuff of which sensible policy is made. So it is important to scotch the myth that Britain and America have similar and equally effective responses to the terrorist attacks they have suffered. The hard fact is that America has decided that it is engaged in a war, while Britain has decided that it is confronted with what the leader of the Tory party (historically the foreign policy tough guys) calls a 'criminal conspiracy' and the Economist calls a 'war on terror,' complete with quotation marks. Put differently, 7/7 has evoked a policy response very different from 9/11."

He goes on to explain: "One reason for the widely different responses is that America was attacked by foreigners, whereas Brits were horrified to learn that they had been attacked by fellow citizens. Americans know it is 'us' against 'them,' whereas Brits know that 'they' are also 'us'." Does Stelzer's understanding and vision of terrorism---that is his imagination---include Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols? Or is "terrorism" just a convenient ideological over-simplification for neo-conservatism?

Of course, Stelzer's argument only holds if one discounts and dismisses the ample evidence that "they" (i.e. the terrorists) are "us" (e.g. Eric Rudolph, Edgar Ray Killen, Russell Henderson, Aaron McKinney, Ted Kaczynski, Charles Guiteau, or Leon Czoglosz, etc.).

The war on terror has been used to justify an illegal invasion of Iraq by the United States government as is demonstrated by the President's continued insistence that America's confrontation with terror includes the deposing of Saddam Hussein (i.e. regime change) as he noted in his June 28, 2005 address to the nation. Were the over 100, 000 and rising civilian casualties maimed and killed in Iraq all terrorists?

Yet the bombings in London, Egypt, and Beirut this past week suggest that the violence may be spreading, not receding.

The 9/11 Commission noted that the underlying failure of US preparedness leading to the September 11th attacks was one of imagination. And the 50 or so casualties in Great Britain on July 7, 2005 is still a whole lot less than the thousands killed on 9/11.

The 9/11 Commission noted that intelligence failures led to the most lethal attack on the 48 contiguous United States since 1812.

Yet the U.S. President just last week changed his standard of tolerance for administration breaches of national security when he retracted his longstanding pledge to remove from the White House anyone involved in leaking the identity of covert CIA operatives to dismissal only if administration officials are convicted of a crime. This double standard is hypocritical and disturbing.

And if the war in Iraq is part of the war on terror, and if it is supposed to make us safer, then what can we conclude about the bombings in Madrid, London, Beirut, and Sharm el-Sheikh?