There Is No War on Terror

About this book

One of the most telling signs of the political naiveté of lib-erals and the Left in the United States has been theirsteadfast faith in much of the worldview that blan-kets the imperial state they call home. Nowhere hasthis critical failure been more evident than in theiracceptance of the premise that there really is some-thing called a “war on terror” or “terrorism”[1] – how-ever poorly managed its critics make it out to be – andthat righting the course of this war ought to be this country’s(and the world’s) top foreign policy priority. In this perspective, Afghanistan andPakistan rather than Iraq ought to have been the war on terror’s proper foci; mostaccept that the U.S. attack on Afghanistan from October 2001 on was a legitimateand necessary stage in the war. The tragic error of the Bush Administration, in thisview, was that it lost sight of this priority, and diverted U.S. military action to Iraqand other theaters, reducing the commitment where it was needed.