More on the failed "War on Terror"

It is such a relief to read commentaries by Glenn Greenwald and Christopher Hitchens, a day after writing that the Norwegian terror attack reveals the hollowness of our obsession with wiping out terror and linking terrorist acts with Islamism and al-Qaeda.

Hitchens opens thus:

Having had 16 years to reflect since Oklahoma City, we should really have become a little more refined in our rapid-response diagnoses of anti-civilian mass murder.

But, of course, as Greenwald also documents, there was an insane rush to concluding that the Oslo massacre was somehow linked to Islamic terrorists and al-Qaeda.

Greenwald, who has been writing for years now against this "War on Terror" and the atrociousness of naming a violent activity as terrorism only when the agent is a Muslim, writes:

Terrorism has no objective meaning and, at least in American political discourse, has come functionally to mean: violence committed by Muslims whom the West dislikes, no matter the cause or the target.  Indeed, in many (though not all) media circles, discussion of the Oslo attack quickly morphed from this is Terrorism (when it was believed Muslims did it) to no, this isn't Terrorism, just extremism (once it became likely that Muslims didn't).  As Maz Hussain -- whose lengthy Twitter commentary on this event yesterday was superb and well worth reading -- put it:

That Terrorism means nothing more than violence committed by Muslims whom the West dislikes has been proven repeatedly.  ... [As] NYU's Remi Brulin has extensively documented, Terrorism is the most meaningless, and therefore the most manipulated, word in the English language.  Yesterday provided yet another sterling example.

The Norwegian mass murder ought to have convinced us once and for all that there is no winnable war on terror.

Among the Muslims who have been sidelined because of our baseless and shameful obsession with Islamic terrorists are the ones who have been suffering through the Arab Spring, which is now well into a summer of discontent.  Hitchens points out:

Meanwhile, the streets and squares of Syria and the committees of the Libyan civic opposition fill up with eager and anxious people who want to know if they have been naive to place their bets—in some cases to wager their lives—on democratic transition, peaceful tactics, the transparent allocation of previously stolen funds for long-overdue reconstruction, and the removal of a parasitic military and police caste.

How awful in the manner in which we are messing with people!  Were politicians and pundits always this terrible?