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Et Cetera, Et Cetera, Et Cetera
 Once
again, horror and nonsense, an incongruous
combination we might be inured to by now if it were possible to get used to
horror.  The
London bombings were the
horror; the usual nonsense was immediately served up by President Bush and
Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The perpetrators will be
“brought to justice,” et cetera. Fat chance, even assuming they
are still alive. What would “justice” be for such crimes, and
what would it achieve? The two rulers also reaffirmed Western
determination, et cetera. Isn’t that what we’ve already shown
in Iraq? Has the war, with all the additional measures taken at home,
deterred terrorism? Or has it just inspired more determination on the other
side?
We can’t really know. Maybe
the answer is both: maybe some acts of terrorism have been prevented and
discouraged, but others have merely been provoked. But the response of
Bush and Blair implies a sweeping certainty nobody can have. When there is a
lull in terrorism, it shows that the war is succeeding; when it erupts again,
that shows the need to continue the war. What would it take to convince
these men that their policy is failing?
Karl Rove, “Bush’s
brain,” recently said that the liberal response to the 9/11 attacks
was not to wage war, but to offer “therapy.” That was too silly
to be really slanderous (it was less poisonous than Bill Clinton’s
blaming the Oklahoma City bombings on right-wing talk radio), but it
illustrates the administration’s penchant for loose talk. Anything but
tough talk, however vacuous, is wimpy.
Tough talk may be great for
Republican fundraising, but whether it scares fanatics is another matter. Be
that as it may, four years of tough talk, two unfinished wars against
ill-defined enemies, and the toppling and capture of Saddam Hussein seem to
have left us about where we started. The rhetoric of Bush and Blair leaves a
frustrating sense of monotony and of their inability to adapt their approach
to meet reality.
The original reason given for war
with Iraq was that Saddam posed a threat to the West, even an imminent
threat. Blair warned his country that Saddam might be able to deliver his
fearsome weapons to England within 45 minutes. That propaganda, exposed
as empty, has had to be abandoned, but the murderous policy it sold the
public goes on anyway. We are still being “protected” against a
threat that never was.
![[Breaker quote for Et Cetera, Et Cetera, Et Cetera: Terrorism's indispensable allies]](2005breakers/050707.gif) What
about terrorism? Its purpose,
obviously, is to terrorize. The London bombings this week killed around 50
people out of five million in the city, a horror, yes, but a militarily
insignificant number. During World War II German bombers killed more than
that daily — yet never came close to conquering the Sceptered Isle.
Hitler’s purpose too was to
terrorize, in the hope of inducing the British to yield. Winston Churchill
retorted that the British would fight on the beaches and in the streets
rather than surrender; but a German invasion was never feasible. Both sides
were bluffing.
How, then, are a few terrorists
going to conquer England now? How could they win, and just what would they
win if they won? Would they install their own prime minister in place of Blair?
And how would they conquer a much bigger country across the Atlantic?
Terrorism isn’t a threat;
it’s an unnerving nuisance. Most of the panic it causes is due to news
media coverage, rather than to the material human harm it does. In our time
it’s easy to mistake a dreadful local incident for a general threat
— or even an attack on civilization itself, as Blair, playing Churchill,
calls the latest bombings.
We should never think about
terrorism without considering the role played by media amplification.
“You give me the pictures, and I’ll give you the war,” the
publisher William Randolph Hearst is supposed to have said. That was even
before the coming of radio. Today he might have said, “You give me
the runaway bride, and I’ll give you a worldwide sensation.”
Terrorism, in order to have full
effect, requires three elements: terrorists, politicians, and electronic media.
We need to think of it in conjunction with its indispensable allies. What if they
gave a bombing, and nobody covered it?
Joseph Sobran |
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| Copyright © 2005 by the
Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of Griffin Internet Syndicate 
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