Much has been written this week about the Bush Administration's obvious re-manuvering away from "war on terror" to "a struggle against violent extremism". I agree, and have agreed for some time, that the "war on terror" worldview and solution (mostly military) was myopic and idealistic, and that a broad based understanding of "political extremism" was needed to best understand the real threats we face and protect ourselves. Of course, professing this perspective from 9/12/01 up through last year's election (remember Kerry getting attacked for his "more sensitive" war against terrorism?) brought accusations of naiveté, idealism and of being sympathetic with the enemy. I found myself the subject of these accusations and even worse, and I lost my older brother on 9/11. Of course, the neocon approach that they are now seemingly moving away from is the actual naive and idealistic perspective, but in post-9/11 American politics such up-side down reality is irrelevant and unfortunately par for the course.
This
Christian Science Monitor Article is a good read on this shift.
And two plugs:
The 9/11 Group I have been very involved with that has been calling for a more reasonable approach to countering the "violent extremism" that killed our loved ones.
And my Campaign for State Senate here in Oklahoma-- which is the next step in my own attempt to do my part in helping get our country back to sanity, on a local level.
-Andrew Rice