I hear the Neo-Con argument loud and clear. We are in a "War on Terrorism". We are in this "war" to fight those that would threaten our way of life. We must fight this "war" with every means at our disposal. What you don't hear them say, but it is implicitly clear, is that "Frankly folks, we are scared to death of these people". That my friends, is the message that they are sending to people that are fighting this "war". They are fighting us with AK-47's and rusty grenade launchers, and munitions that we left lying around in our "rush" to enter Bagdhad. Are these the people we should be so afraid of, that we drop all pretense of morality, and become a nation that hides behind our fear, so that these "evildoers" don't come to America and rape our women as they sleep in their beds. This is insanity at is height.
What makes these people so different that we can't prosecute this war in the same way that we have prosecuted all the other wars that have come before it? Are these enemies so committed, so terrible, so omnipotent that we have to take extraordinary measures to defeat them? That is the message that this administration is sending to out citizens and to the world. George W. Bush is afraid of what he has started, and now he wants our military to have the right to do what we have refused to let our military do in any other war... torture prisoners. Do these prisoners warrant that type of special treatment? Are they any worse than all the enemies that we have faced in the past, or are they somehow so terrifying that we have to resort to breaking the law? They are not vampires. They don't need to be shot with a silver bullet. They will not rise from the dead and attack us again. Osama Bin Laden is not "supernatural".
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney don't have a clue. They invented this "War on Terrorism" and this is just a next logical step to keep this so-called "war" at the forefront of everyone's mind until the elections. There is nothing so "special" about these Islamic extremists. They are not so dangerous as they would like you to believe. They managed to slip over here, get in our commercial airliners and overpower crew with box cutters and drive the planes into things. I hope that we have corrected the inadequate security that allowed then to do that. Beyond that, they are just a group of militant people that will die to advance what they see as their agenda. No different than the Viet-cong, The Red Brigade, or the communist cells that were spread out all over the world. The only difference between these militants and other militants is George W. Bush. He is using these terrorists to advance his own agenda by holding them up as the Orwellian enemy to blame, every time he needs to control the public, and as you can see, all the politicians are playing his game.
That day is not that far away.