Richard Hill: From Infinite Justice to Infinite Jihad

All the media coverage and commentary has neglected to ask the big question: why is it or how is it that the new U.S. war will differ from the Soviet experience in Afghanistan? That 1980-88 war was labeled by many Americans as the "Soviets' Vietnam," which raises yet another current glaring omission, that being a Bush administration explanation of why the new war will differ from the US experience in Vietnam. Another currently unanswered question is: as the US increasingly bombs and shoots its way into Afghanistan, will it result in increased or decreased Moslem and Asian support for the Afghans? History indicates that there will be an increased support for the guerrillas fighting the latest invading foreign superpower, as the memory of the World Trade Center inevitably fades in Asian memories. The US will thus essentially repeat the Soviet-Afghan and U.S.-Vietnam experiences.

Another comparison of those two old wars and the new war regards the Bush administration warnings of the coming terrorist attacks on US soil. The US did experience terrorist attacks during the Vietnam war, but those were executed by homegrown antiwar radicals and were nothing compared to what we are now warned to expect from the foreigners who have already shown no mercy. As the war escalates in Afghanistan, bin Laden's al Qaida will be swamped with thousands of new fanatical religious recruits dying to perform heroic acts of resistance.

While many US civil liberties still stand, it will be relatively easy for the Mujahedin to smuggle into the US small cans of nerve gas and anthrax. As the government and media has repeatedly warned Americans over the years, each of these aerosol gases can be cheaply manufactured in small, primitive labs all over Asia and the Moslem world. The al Qaida network will then pass the word detailing the next ground zeroes and the zero hours. They will be anywhere Americans are gathered in large groups inside large structures like shopping malls, airports, subways, department stores, and office buildings. The small deadly cans can be tossed in trashcans or behind boxes or a thousand other ordinary everyday veils. The radicalized Mujahedin need not even be suicide gassers if they have taken the antidotes and vaccines. When the Mujahedin smuggle their small aerosol cans into the closed death chambers, everyone breathing the recirculated air will be killed.

Americans at war will then have to adopt internal security state measures that will equal or surpass the severity of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia. The US government will begin detaining and arresting increasing numbers of "Middle Eastern" looking people. This process has already begun, and it will accelerate as more terrorist acts occur in the US The government investigations of these brown-skinned people have already harassed Latinos who are suspected of being Middle Easterners. Many Latinos in the US already have false identification papers because they are illegal immigrants. As the US government takes emergency "initiatives" in the wake of acts of terror, it will arrest first and investigate identities and backgrounds later. Those investigations already take a long time, and will take even longer as arrests mount beyond the thousands.

As dark-skinned people and American Muslims are increasingly investigated, persecuted, and arrested, the economic costs of all this emergency internal state security will be added to the mounting costs of war in Afghanistan. The US standard of living will continue to deteriorate as it did in all past US wars, due to the increased US police state regulation of places of business, and to the increased war taxation and/or inflation.

The first segment of American society to be strangled by this military and economic war will be the bottom half of society, as it always has been in past US wars. They will begin to lose their enthusiasm for the infinite justice waged against the infinite jihad. Thus will there arise a division in American politics as the Democratic Party again comes to question the war. Increasing numbers of Americans will ask themselves why they are living and fighting and dying like this. All wars begin in unity and progress toward dissent and division. The dissenters will begin to listen to the enemy's consistent demands, a US military withdrawal from Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Just as the Democrats questioned the ultimate cost of Persian Gulf oil in the 1991 Congressional vote, they will again. Perhaps for the first time they will ask economists to determine the true price by factoring in all the costs, including the taxes paid for the US military protection of it. They will find that this true price never made Persian Gulf oil the most economically efficient automotive fuel, just as it obviously will not be when all the additional costs of the new war are being paid.

Richard Hill

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