Imagine that the words "terrorism" and "terrorist" were stripped from our language and even our memory and we had only our remaining vocabulary to describe them. What words would we use? Insurgents/insurgency? Guerillas/guerilla warfare? Jihadists/Jihad? Partisans/resistance?

None of the substitutes evokes the same feelings as "terrorism" and "terrorist," although the substitutes might describe them more accurately. It is because the terms insurgent, guerilla, jihadist and partisan are far more concrete and specific. The administration has refused to tell us just what a terrorist is, for two very good reasons:

First, it gives the president the unprecedented and unchecked discretion to label a person a terrorist and deprive him of the protections of the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Conventions. That degree of power we usually associate with a dictatorship, not a republic.

Second, and more importantly, terrorism only has power when we give it power—by projecting our own shadow onto an enemy about which we know very little. Terrorism makes us fearful because it resists definition, and that is no accident. It is difficult, if not impossible, to project such evils onto ordinary men and women or even insurgents or jihadists. The target of projection cannot be too familiar, because projection becomes impossible in such a situation. Demonized persons are too likely to turn into real people when we come to know them.

Strictly speaking, a terrorist is one who strikes with the primary purpose of making us fearful. For him, the deaths of the innocent are a secondary consideration. If he fills us with terror, he succeeds, because fearful people are people whose judgment is impaired. Fearful people are easily manipulated by crafty politicians against their own interests.

When we refuse to be afraid of the terrorist, he is utterly defeated. We don't have to lift a finger.

There is no rational reason to be fearful of a terrorist attack. The danger to the average American citizen of a terrorist attack is miniscule. There are too many other things that deserve our attention. Yes, there is a small possibility that one might be killed by a terrorist, but one is far more likely to die in an automobile accident or even from influenza.

So ask yourself, has Bush or his minions even once told the American people not to fear? To be of good courage? To keep a stiff upper lip?

No. At every opportunity he has stoked that fear. He has no interest in defeating the terrorists or wiping out terrorism. It took serious creative work on the part of countless politicians, military officers, right-wing think tanks, television networks, and neocons to create an enemy evil and mysterious enough to replace communism and the Soviet Union, which may be one of the reasons that Bush chose not to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden in the mountains of Tora Bora. Why kill a perfectly serviceable enemy that can be recycled over and over to scare the American public, whose short and selective memory makes it so susceptible to this kind of repeated demagoguery?

H.L. Mencken said it best:

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

William Golding's novel, Lord of the Flies, also comes to mind.

Tags: terrorism, terrorist, Osama Bin Laden, courage, projection