Changing the "war" rhetoric

Written by: Linda Maloney on Jan 29, 2007 11:19 AM EST

My greatest disappointment with the State of the Union speech was not the speech (my expectations of GWB are too low for him ever to disappoint), but the post-speech interviews. Was there ONE presidential contender or respondent who did not make the stock assurance "of course we must vigorously prosecute the war on terror"?

Most of us have already discussed the inanity of the phrase "war on terror." Nevertheless, it has become obligatory political rhetoric. It's got to stop. As long as we permit our leadership to say, and somehow believe, that "we are at war," they can use the War Powers Act and our own fears to slash away at our civil liberties -- and a "war on . . ." is limitless and unending. Besides, as long as we think of our own lives, and the life and work of our country, in terms of war and hostility, that's what we'll have to live with, forever and all the time. "Going shopping" won't dissipate the fog.

It's not as simple as just setting up a "Department of Peace," though there are good elements in that idea. War is not the opposite of peace. War is an activity, with goals (well, at least it used to be!). Peace is a state of being. What we need to be about is shaping our lives, and the life of our country, in such a way that we can move from a mentality and activity of warmaking to a condition of things that makes a state of peace a possibility.

First step: no more war talk. Can we come together and begin to think of (and promote!) new ways of addressing the problems of the world? Can we talk, for example, about "overcoming" the use of terrorism? ("We shall overcome . . .") Can we shape a vision of a world in which, in every nation, people who use terrorist tactics are pariahs, just like "conventional" mass murderers and child molesters?

Let's do it!

Linda Maloney+ 

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