Sometimes understanding makes it necessary to peel back the layers of the onion to see the whole onion laid out with all of its parts exposed. Our horizons have been conditioned by what almost amounts to an overload of meda, academic, think tank, and oficial pronouncements on terrorism. There is a governmental effort to have us "see" terrorism as a singularly form of behavior perpertrated by others; we have conveniently labled the US half of the onion as "coercive diplomancy, " or "interventions." This labeling has obscured our vision and shifted our focus to the other half of the onion.

The existing prejudices stirred by the mere mention of the word terrorism usually serves a political agenda by the user that should be accounted for if under standing is to be possible. There are barriers in place to inhibit understanding. The well spring for terrorist information is limited to the experts in the employ of governments, academics functioning under government or industry grants, organizations like the Heritage Foundation, all designed to serve the same viewpoint and protect the "status quo." There is an explicit motivation for those in authority to maintain a monopoly position on defining who is, or is not a terrorist and exactly what does and does not constitute a terrorist act. This is more than a battle of semantics it is the mediation of how popular legitimacy of state actions is perceived. This is how the state uses terror as an immanent threat to national security interests and paves the way for dropping liberal legal safeguards in the name of efficiently combatting terrorism.

Karl Rove went to school by looking at this as the tactic of Great Britain in their occupation of Northern Ireland. Normal civil rights were suspended with the institution of summary laws that allowed imprisonment without charges and other extraordinary abridgements of rights under British law.

These lessons haven't been lost on the Bush administration and any thinking person has to maintain a healthy scepticism about government actions or those civil liberties that have evolved since 1275 in the common law will have the same fate as the yellow when confronted by Pepsodent.

Publius