"This Unconventional War
...this "war on terrorism". It has just finally, fully sunk in today--what it means that the Bush administration has set this precedent for being able to fight an actual war against people who wear no uniforms and belong to no one country and represent only themselves (if that) and may not even be who or what they are claimed to be.
People who are merely "alleged," "suspected" or "linked" without any proof other than secret intelligence that no one is allowed to question or the claims of some (often unidentified, unauthorized) official can be spied on, chased from country to country, imprisoned, tortured or killed. Anyone who is considered an enemy of the U.S. for any reason whatsoever can be labeled a terrorist, a potential terrorist, a suspected terrorist or a supporter of terrorism without any real proof or even any charges. Attacks can cross borders from countries with which there are declared (although illegal) wars-turned-occupations to ones with which there are no declared wars. Individual as well as national sovereignty and boundaries mean nothing. Nothing.
The many wrongly imprisoned and tortured, who survive the ordeal, might eventually be returned to what's left of their lives because of this lack of evidence, some even found quite innocent, but at what cost already to their psyches, their souls, their families, their homes? At what cost to the "soul" of any nation or any individual that does this or allows it to be done and does not take a stand against it?
And the dead who were "alleged", "suspected" or "linked"? How many of them, like so many of the imprisoned and tortured, were actually innocent or mistakenly identified or lacking enough proof to convict in a court of law? How many of those who did actually take up weapons and fight were just doing what any one of us would do if our home or our family or our friends or our whole country was under attack and occupied? (which it is, by the way, in case you didn't realize that by now)
I want you to think through the implications of what I have just tried to say, and realize through and through, as I just did, that in this "war on terrorism" WE ARE ALL COLLATERAL DAMAGE. The only difference is in degrees. Even now we are being sorted into two camps: one, the people who will tolerate anything and thus can safely be allowed to live as slaves of the system; two, the people who will fight back against injustice and thus are marked for some form of neutralization. Isn't that what all of this is showing us? Think about it.
