Terror 'war' doesn't meet definition

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Terror 'war' doesn't meet definition

September 17, 2004 BY ANDREW GREELEY

http://www.suntimes.com/output/greeley/cst-edt-greel17.html

Is there really a clash of civilizations? Or are we entering the Third World War? Or the Fourth World War? Such are the models and metaphors being proposed to cope with the horror of the mass murders at Beslan in Russia. The American Right (as in the Wall Street Journal) proposes the first. Russian leadership proposes the second. The Vatican's Cardinal Renato Martino proposes the third. The last also agrees with Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge and Attorney General John Ashcroft that nations must give up many of their liberties to engage in these conflicts.

Each model is both an exaggeration and a dangerous (self-) deception. Arab armies are not moving on Tours, the Turks are not closing in on Vienna, the Crusaders are not attacking Jerusalem. Neither side is forcing conversions on the other side. Nor are massive armies moving back and forth across Europe with tens of millions of casualties, as in the two real world wars. Cities are not being destroyed in hideous air attacks. Women are not being raped by the millions. The Cold War, nasty and unpleasant as it was, did not involve any of these horrors, despite Cardinal Renato Martino.

What, in fact, is happening? Small bans of religious fanatics are killing relatively small numbers of innocent people -- small compared with the casualties of the Great Wars. These are terrible events, but Islam is not engaged in open conflict with the West. Many Islamic leaders denounce the killings. Most Muslims do not approve of the killings. Islam is not the enemy; only a very small number of very dangerous Muslims.

Most Muslims don't like America. However, it is not, as President Bush inanely says, that they want to destroy our freedom (Ashcroft will do that, given enough time). The reason, as the Muslims see it, is our oppression of the Palestinians and more recently the Iraqis. Our great ''war'' leader has been too busy with other things to deal with the Palestinian mess. Yet there is no more critical challenge in the struggle against terrorists.

good article-