Holder: "A Nation At War"

After quoting John F. Kennedy about “the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger,” Holder went on in the introductory section of his speech to say that we have once again reached an “hour of danger.” The juxtaposition of quote and statement is a clear implication that it is our nation and our freedom which are in danger, an implication reinforced by his further statement that, “We are a nation at war.”

This administration fear mongers more subtly, but no less aggressively than did the Bush administration, and its rhetoric is every bit as hollow both as to the degree of threat, and as to the state of the nation. The rhetoric that Holder uses here is typical of that used on a regular basis by Obama and his administration.

First, the threat of terrorism is not a threat to us as a nation and it does not threaten any of our freedoms to even the slightest degree. All of the screeching about the “existential threat” posed by Al Queda and other terrorist groups is sheer nonsense. Saner heads will say, as some have actually said, that “they can take down a few buildings, but they cannot actually harm us as a nation.”

Suppose that what is posed as the “worst case” were to happen and a small nuclear device were detonated in one of our cities. Even if that city were Washington, DC, would that cause us to be unable to function as a nation? It would not. Which of our freedoms would be curtailed by that event? It could lead us to pass laws restricting our freedoms, as we have been doing ever since 9/11, but that is the result of our own panic-stricken overreaction to the event, and not due to the event itself.

Terrorism is a threat to the lives of American people, and certainly steps must be taken to prevent such crimes against persons. But the response to this threat is out of proportion to the risk, and these crimes are not in actuality “attacks against our nation” no matter how much the criminals want to pretend they are. They are crimes against persons of this nation.

And we are most certainly not “a nation at war.” Our military is conducting combat operations in an unknown number of foreign countries, but that is the military, not the nation as a whole. We give lip service to “supporting the troops,” but we don’t really care about the troops. If we cared about the troops, we would pay attention to the way that our government is abusing them, and we are not paying attention.

Hell, we are not even raising taxes to pay for these wars. On the contrary, the more wars we fight the more we cut taxes, which used to be the province of Republicanism, but which the Democrats now embrace with every bit as much fervor as the Republicans ever did. That's what we care about; we care about our "way of life" and our tax cuts, and we barely even know that our troops, and the wars that they are fighting, even exist.