Re: Put in another way, what do you think will have to happen, practically, for the "war against terrorism" to end?
Havoc in the US itself... Of course, as I anticipated, Americans will be to themselves their own nemesis. As US authorities realize that the southern border (with Mexico) is the soft underbelly --through which terrorists can easily mix with illegals on their way northwards-- they'll increase surveillance and repression against Hispanics. There'll be more dragnets, more crackdowns on clandestine sweatshops, more pressure on Latin American countries notorious for harboring organized crime kingpins, etc. All this is to deteriorate already damaged US-Latin American relations (eg Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba). As the splc watchdog has reported, hatred against "wetbacks" and Hispanics is already widespread in the Sun belt... it's somehow a powder keg ready to be set ablaze by the "terrorism match". It's a collision-course problem: as long as US public opinion doesn't associate "al-qaeda terrorism" with "wetbacks", so much the better. But if the two issues get somehow mixed up then... the specters of 1950s McCarthyism and anti-black KKK lynchings will be back, that is, a Latino version.
As I once put it, religious, far-rightist fanaticism is the asbestos miasma that seeped throughout the US fabric and might eventually kill it... Suppose, for instance, that a nuke or some other deadly device blows up in San Francisco. How would the US react? Oh, granted, US authorities and a majority of the American people would be outraged and call for a devastating retribution against the culprit, whether it's a country or "al qaeda"... Yet, I bet you that another, substantial segment of the Bible belt will feel ELATED at the news that "God just rid America of that den of iniquity, that Sodom-cum-Gomorrah, that gay&lesbian cesspit that, for too long, defiled Holy America"... Just like Jesus quacks like Falwell and others explained away 911 as God's wrath against the American Mammon, exultant televangelists will tell their benighted audiences, "I told you so..."
Such is the sorry, pathetic state of affairs in America today.
Gus |
