The Texas WMDs

Another major newspaper devoted a news article to the Texas terrorism story that I've mentioned previously.

The terror threat at home, often overlooked Christian Science Monitor 12/29/03

David Neiwert, a journalist who follows the far right, deserves a big part of the credit for keeping this story in the news. Neiwert has a long, thought-provoking post at his Orcinus Weblog on why the Justice Department may be de-emphasizing this case: Marketing Terror. For those interested in how the real law-enforcement fight against terrorism is going, his post is a valuable but disturbing contribution. From Neiwert's post:

Think, if you will, about the different kinds of terror at work here. The war against international terror plays out on a global stage, and as it's been waged so far by this administration, in remote and exotic locales. When Bush invokes the "war on terror," it revolves around images of Arab fanatics and desert combat. ...

This is a peculiar, amorphous terror to which we as individuals feel only remotely or vaguely connected. The attacks of Sept. 11 are raised to remind us it can strike here, but the source of the terror is something that seems distant and disattached to us. The less concrete it is, the more vague the potential response. Thus Saddam Hussein can be conflated with Osama bin Laden as a threat to America and an entire war campaign constructed around his role in "the war on terror," though it is becoming increasingly clear he had little if any role in the Sept. 11 attacks.

This is a highly marketable kind of terrorism, in the sense that its potential threat can be invoked at any time to justify an entire panoply of political moves, as well as to impugn the patriotism of your opponents. This sort of "war on terror" doesn't require any real sacrifices on the part of the public -- unless, of course, you happen to draw the unlucky Gold Star -- but being on the Right Side is easy, since the Enemy is The Other. He isn't The Guy Next Door.