The Nation: The Somalia Strike

[waiting for hope]

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Posted 06/04/2007 @ 12:07am

Here's something that didn't come up at Sunday's Democratic debate: Under what authorization did President Bush order a military strike on Somalia this past Friday--essentially widening the "war on terror"?

While the Dems argued about the best way to get out of this failed and disastrous war in Iraq, what Friday's military strike reveals is how our political system continues to evade the challenge of finding an exit from a misconceived "war on terror"--and the damage that "war" continues to inflict on our security and engagement with the world.

That's why I think it's useful that John Edwards is attacking the Bush Administration for its cynical use of "the war on terror" metaphor. A bad bumper sticker, he likes to call it, that "has created a frame that is not accurate and that Bush and his gang have used to justify anything they want to do..."

Very true. Witness the collateral damage to our democracy. The "war" has been used by the Bush team as justification for almost everything-- unlawful spying on Americans, illegal detention policies, hyper-secrecy, equating dissent with disloyalty. It's also been used to justify the expansion of America's military capacity--over 700 bases in more than 60 countries, annual military budgets topping $500 billion--as necessary to counter the threat of Islamic extremism and to fight the "war on terror." Now the expansion of the "war on terror" to the Horn of Africa.

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