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BS ‘n’ About…
Revolutions, Rebellions, Civil Wars, and Insurgencies
History has a lot of labels for a people at war with itself. Revolution. Rebellion. Insurgency. Civil War. And the label chosen for any given situation is usually chosen by the victor. Our Revolution would have been a rebellion had it failed. Our Civil War would have been a Revolution had the South won.
In their dealings with us, Washington labels the mess in Iraq an ‘Insurgency’ and our efforts against terrorism a ‘War’. Does either word do justice to the conflict it describes? Is it not possible that the labels themselves give us a distorted view of what we’re up against?
To label what is going on in Iraq an ‘insurgency’ infers a legitimate government against which to be insurgent. Iraq has no such thing. We invaded the Middle East under the pretext that we were doing so to topple one man, and once he was gone all would be good. We made that man gone but things are not all good. Our might hasn’t filled the power vacuum left by Saddam’s removal. The Iraqi people dislike and mistrust us so much that any interim government we put in place will either turn against us or be seen as just a puppet by the Iraqi people. Labeling what is going on there an ‘insurgency’ assumes the legitimacy of a government that doesn’t yet exist. There’s a label for what is going on in Iraq, but ‘insurgency’ isn’t it.
And what of labeling our efforts against Al Qaeda and international terrorism a ‘war’? Makes it seem like something with an ‘our’ side and a ‘their’ side. …something with a beginning and an end. …something with frontlines. …something actually winnable. Yet it is none of these things.
The terrorism that came to our shores on September 11th is nothing so simple as a ‘war’. It is a Stone Age clash of cultures, simmering for thousands of years, fueled by modern technology and old-fashioned greed. It was our invitation to the Middle East, mankind’s Ground Zero. It is nothing that can be solved on a battlefield. Our efforts against terrorism are a lot of things, but a ‘war’ isn’t one of them.
And what of America itself? What label applies to what is going on here? Happenings in Washington smack of the biggest ideological conflict we’ve seen since the Civil War. The Supreme Court has lost its luster, the Constitution is under siege, Congress is strangled by partisanship, and the Oval Office is making up rules as it goes along. America is in the process of redefining itself, determining what it stands for, and where it is headed.
Yet We, the People are so caught up in the economics of keeping ourselves fed and instantly gratified that we aren’t even part of the process. We don’t seem to care that our Best & Brightest are stealing from our pension fund. We don’t seem to care that our kids are being ordered to do the Gestapo thing to Iraqi prisoners. We don’t seem to care when they talk about canceling the Election, even! We’ve become docile media zombies, content to watch it go by.
The greatest threat to Constitutional Democracy is that we are free to become any kind of nation we want. The Democratic Process lawfully elected Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler, and the greatest of the Greek despots. Democracy isn’t the kind of government where we can quit paying attention. When the dust settles from the political and ideological chaos swirling around us, it is our childrens’ future we’ll be seeing. What label will they use to describe the events we now live, I wonder.
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