A description of my blog. http://www.my-site.com 6780684764443858739 What I Did During the War 2006/09/#6780684764443858739 2006-09-11 5 years ago today I made a pointless drive to and from the Oakland airport in an effort to send my mom off on her trip back home to Florida. My mom was understandably skeptical of my ability to locate the airport (my sense of direction being virtually nonexistent), and she was relieved when she saw a sign indicating it was nearby.

"Oakland Airport," she read aloud.

"Uh, mom, did you see the rest of the sign?" I responded. "It said 'Oakland Airport CLOSED'." We were informed at the departures gate that the Pentagon was on fire.

Thus began, for me, the War on Terror(TM). This incident remains the high point of my involvement in a war that is supposedly the moral equivalent of the struggle against the Nazis in WWII. I feel like I should be rationing sugar, collecting milkweed pods, or at least ducking and covering under a thin sheet of plywood. Most wars, like religions, give birth to rituals which, even if they are of no practical use, at least give us something to do while the world goes to hell around us. With this war, instead of receiving draft cards or sugar rations, we are given color swatches. Today's color is yellow. What am I supposed to do with that, buy curtains? Every time I hear the terror level announced, I expect to hear that it was brought to me by the letters M and Q, and the number 7. Go play with your legos, honey, the grownups are fighting.

I like the ambitiousness of a War on Terror. Basking in the glow of our victories in the Wars on Poverty and Drugs, we've transitioned from fighting social problems to combatting unpleasant states of mind. I wish someone would declare a War on Disillusionment.

It's really a War on Terrorists, of course, but we call it the War on Terror because it's catchier. The problem with this terminology is that terror is a tactic, not a group of people or an ideology. Presumably we would remain at war if our enemies were to renounce terror in favor of conventional military attacks on American soldiers, so logically we should call this the War on People Shooting Back at Us. Or, more pithily, the War on Violence.

Hmmm. I think I know who wins this one.


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