The War on Terror is a War on Ourselves

Dear Mr. President,

You must be really frustrated. Your call to punish Assad never got off the ground—the coalition of the willing was one—our friends are wary, our enemies laughing up their sleeves (in a Surveillance State there are no real friends; just frenemies). And hard as you tried you couldn’t get your mitts on Snowden or his documents so the leaks keep coming like Chinese water torture. How can it be that a “29-year-old hacker” (your words) foiled the great Caesars of Surveillance? How could we go from America the Omniscient to America the Despised so quickly? Guess what, Mr. President, people don’t like to be spied on; not in Europe or Asia or the Americas, Today’s NYT reports that Dilma Rouseff of Brazil canceled a state visit because of it (“Brazil’s Leader Postpones Visit to Washington Over Spying” p. A4). According to the article, Biden called her, Kerry visited her and you spent 20 minutes on the phone with her Monday, but no luck, still a firm no. It’s called blowback, Mr. President, and here’s some more: the European Parliament just nominated Edward Snowden for the top human rights award, the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought (NYT “Snowden Among Nominees for a European Human Rights Prize” p. A4). The image of America as the beacon of freedom and justice no longer works. We are a nation of snoops, spies, assassins and terrorists, our double standards and blatant hypocrisy as exposed as the NSA’s secrets. We have given up freedom for a false sense of security; we are ruled by secret laws and secret courts; our police deal their own brand of street justice and our president calls for punishing Assad for the slaughter of innocent civilians in Syria but ignores our own slaughter of innocent civilians in Pakistan, Yemen and Afghanistan. The War on Terror is a war against phantoms and it has become a war not just on perceived enemies but on friends as well, a war against ourselves really, and a war we are clearly losing. It is a war that cannot be won no matter how much we spend, no matter how much we spy, no matter how many we kill, no matter how many we lock up. The Dream of Empire is a fantasy, Pax Americana an illusion. The neocons thought it within their grasp in 2001 and 2003 but the dream was a nightmare that continues under you. Either you too, were a true believer from the beginning or you were seduced by it—the seduction of power—but either way, it has been a disaster for America, a disaster for the world and there’s no end in sight.