Article I wrote for my website:
Rhe Republican National Convention started a couple days ago. And while Dick Cheney has said some suprisingly moderate things (like that he feels the states should decide for themselves about gay marriage) and also blessedly pledged not to run for office again after this campaign, Bush has been touring the country. One day, at a question-and-answer session with the 'general public,' someone actually asked a good question: Can the war on terror actually be won? Bush's response: No. Now he's trying to backpedal. In a speech later he said that the war on terror cannot actually be won in the sense that we will never 'sit down at the peace table'
(NPR News, August 31, 2004).
And there it is right there. It's the perfect Orwellian concept. The war that will never end. The war that, by definition, can never end. We're fighting our war with Eurasia and we've got our eye on Eastasia. And Oceania too, in case they try anything funny. And, even though we cannot measure whether the terrorist mindset is really subsiding (actually, statistics indicate that the number of terrorist attacks worldwide is increasing), we are told that we are winning. We are told that we are winning so that we will keep lending our children to the armed forces to be used as cannon fodder. No, it won't be easy. We're not doing well in the war on terror at the moment. But we ARE winning.
And behind all this doublespeak is doublethink. How can we be winning the war on terror when we don't even know how to fight it? Fight fire with fire and someone's gonna get burned.
And sadly, the American proles are the same as the proles of
1984: they just don't care.
But don't worry. This will all be sorted out by Minitrue. You know who I'm talking about... the ones who are Fair And Balanced.
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See my website, Common Sense:
www.ThoseDamnLiberals.org
I'm an atheist/moralist.
My parents were hippies. Both my grandfathers were Mennonite conscientious objectors in WWII. It's complicated.
