The Poet's Eye 
        commentary by Lightning Rod

the Poets' Eye is skeptical
without being cynical, innocent
without being naive and
critical without being
judgmental

 

Al Who?
for release on 10-18-04

Politicians of both parties can be heard these days making the assertion, stating it as a given fact, that "the world has changed since 9/11." This is patent nonsense. The world did not change on 9/11. The sun still rises in the East. They still pump gas at the corner service station. Television continues to get more and more tasteless with its programing. There are still desperate and ruthless people who will do anything to advance their causes. Nothing has changed.

Terrorism was nothing new on September 11, 2001. Our own homegrown nuts had blown up buildings and planted bombs in crowed places and massacred schools. Our barracks and embassies and ships had been attacked across the world. Hijackings and kidnappings and bombings certainly weren't invented on 9/11.

What happened on 9/11 was that a highly organized small group of fanatics scored a lucky hit, a bulls eye, a home run. It was a spectacular act of vandalism. They had tried to do the same thing at the same place nine years earlier and it didn't "change the world." Only when the fanatics succeeded did they 'change the world.'

The only thing that really changed on 9/11 was that suddenly an administration that had limited legitimacy and big economic problems got a blank check and a hook on which to hang its political hat. And ever since 9/11 the boys at Bushco have bin Ridin' the terrorism horse. They have used terrorism as an excuse to look into your bank accounts and internet habits, arrest citizens and hold them incommunicado and without benefit of counsel, and to embark on imperial wars.

It is appropriate that both Bush and Kerry were members of Skull & Bones at Yale. Pirates are famous for sailing under false colors and at the last moment hoisting the Jolly Roger. To sail under the banner of anti-terrorism is an example of the same ploy. Although both parties want to claim that terrorism is a major issue, the fact is that it isn't a major issue. More people died of the flu last year than died on 9/11. But influenza is not as glamourous as jet crashes and buildings tumbling down on national TV. More people in our country died from lack of adequate heath care last year than in all the spectacular terror events in the last decade.

It is useful to the bureaucratic snakes and lizards and the neo-con New World Order crowd to have you believe that terrorism is some new and threatening disease. It takes your mind off the real problems, like the fact that jobs are escaping our borders and we don't have adequate healthcare, while they accomplish their own greedy agendas.

This week the BBC will begin running a three-part documentary series called, "The Power of Nightmares," which advances the idea that the so-called war on terror is a pure political fantasy. The series is written and produced by respected documentarian Adam Curtis who asserts,
"al-Qaida is not an organised international network. It does not have members or a leader. It does not have "sleeper cells". It does not have an overall strategy. In fact, it barely exists at all."

In other words there are street gangs in LA with more membership and organization than Al Qaida, which did not even have a name until early 2001, when the American government decided to prosecute Bin Laden in his absence and had to use anti-Mafia laws that required the existence of a named criminal organization.

Leo Strauss, a political philosopher at the university of Chicago in the 50s was the father of the neo-conservative movement. Strauss' disciples such as Paul Wolfowitz, now the US deputy defence secretary, believe in using grand myths as a higher form of political propaganda. This was the same bunch that made their living off of the Cold War until that myth collapsed. Then in the 1990's they needed a new villain so they invested great energy in monsterizing Saddam Hussein until he became, in our minds, nothing short of Hitler's little brother.

Americans have all seen enough spy movies to, on a subconscious level, be an easy market for the notion that an evil mastermind is sitting somewhere in a mountain redoubt stroking his ocelot and commanding a secret army of mindless minions. I smell a grand myth cooking. If Al-Qaida didn't exist the neo-cons would have had to invent it. Hmmm....maybe they did.

The Poet's Eye sees that terrorism will always be with us. Anybody that says he can rid the world of it is a liar and a rainmaker. And if you believe that terror would cease if we had bin Laden in handcuffs, then I've got some bootlegged James Bond movies to sell you on CD.

The Poet's Eye
HOME

Lightning Rod
World Headquarters

Studio Eight.tv
Showcase for
Writers, Artists,
Musicians & More

Studio Eight Forums
Discuss the Arts
& Comment on
The Poet's Eye

Freedom Hall
say anything

doreenperi.com
Art, poetry, music

•

to comment on this article
email Lightning Rod here