The War

Reading scolding columns from Conservative columnists about how we have forgotten September 11th is giving more credence to the thought that we live in a 1984 style society.

Or to put it another way, compare the following two passages, the first from Linda Chavez's latest article and the second from George Orwell's 1984.

Unless we learn to see our enemies for who they are, we cannot hope to win this war. We've got to stop treating our own government as the enemy. We have to quit worrying about whether the rest of the world will love us when we take actions to protect ourselves. We have to give up the illusion that if we just retreat from the world or abandon Israel the Islamist fanatics will leave us alone.

We must recognize that it took most of a century to defeat communism and it may take much longer to vanquish Islamofascism.

The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.

We won't win the war against Islamic Terrorism any time soon and thus it will remain a constant justification for Republican power, intrusions into our privacy, and military adventurism around the globe. And given the nature of our enemy we'll never really know if we've won or not.

I don't think we are living in a 1984 style country yet. And I am comforted to suppose that most Conservatives would be opposed to going that far just as I would.