The world goes to war on terror

MUCHA Q ARQUIZA

Another head hangs lowly, tied slowly to die
and the violence cause such silence
who are we mistaken
but, you see, it's not my family
in your head they are fighting...

Another mother's breaking heart has taken over
when the violence cause such silence
who are we mistaken
it’s the same old team since 1916
they are still fighting...’
[‘Zombie’, The Cranberry]

In the 60s,70s and the 80s, America waged terrible wars on terror. At first, it was Vietnam, and then, it was Afghanistan. There, the terrorist was itself, America. In its Afghan war, America harnessed international soldier-recruits to fight its holy war. The mujahideens were to reduce Afghanistan into smithereens to flush out Russian communists. Earlier, the same jihad was also fanned by American CIA in Indonesia that successfully cleansed the country off in less than a year of close to one million suspected member of the PKI and repudiated from society its future generations forever. Little did the Muslims and mujahideen in both countries knew that they were fighting a jihad not for Muslims, not for Allah, but for Uncle Sam.

In 2001, America again invested on a war on terrorism. The terrorists were the heroes it helped prop up and built-up in strength, Osama bin Laden, and Arab and Indonesian extremists. In this war America was again recruiting international allies to ‘be with us’ or else ‘you are against us’. The fight was called a crusade for ‘infinite justice’, later scaled down to ‘enduring freedom’. Little did the loyal allies knew that they were launching a crusade not for themselves, or for their gods or holy saints, but for the future of world religion – the Market – and the future god called Profit.

Ten years later now into the 2010, we have completely become and still are conscripted and embroiled into this war on terror that America has led us all. And each with his own defense to justify America’s and the West’s successes and interests as our own, this American holy war is also the world’s war. As the US, the world is to liberate Muslims from their autocratic regimes, for instance, and to democratize Islam that is not liberal enough; in the name of American ideals of liberty and freedom, the world is supposed to fight this, so it claims, 'oppressive and backward' religion of the 'illiterates' ruled by the 'savage laws of the desert nomads'. The new war doctrine says Muslims and Islam must be liberated to see the shining lights of US and Western democracy and liberal capitalistic lifestyle. The irony of all is that Muslims who have been coerced to be soldiers of this world war have been targeting its own, the women and secular intellectuals, most especially, yet perennially blind to the real instigator or the war-monger.

This war on terror, as America intends, is enduring freedom indeed, pervasively fought globally on a 24-7 basis, and worse than the previous world wars that went before us. For in this war, we fight at airports where we are made to remove our shoes, our belts, our coin purses; leave our toothpaste, shampoo and lotions and unconsumed bottled water; and if we are Muslims, in some airports, we are made to unrobe and untangle our jilbab and unhook our brassieres. The war goes to schools, too. In countries such as mine [Philippines] where Muslims are a minority, poor innocent grade-school kids with Arab sounding names get extra attention by suspicious teachers, and are demanded to narrate their ‘brief’ personal – meaning, religious – life history lest they be related, if distant, to any of the ‘terror-sounding’ names and hooded personalities. Or else, for someone declaring herself Muslim but bearing a ‘Christian-sounding’ name most likely gets into arguments where ‘curious’ [islamophobic?] school-mates are wont to investigate why, ‘but your name is Christian name, why are you a Muslim?’ -- as though being a Muslim is some sort of a disease or dreadful thing that one better stay away from. Overnight, everyone becomes self-conscious about their race and ethnicity, religion, gender and with other markers of identity that define ‘us’ and ‘they’. Suddenly, friends become enemies and fences are erected between neighbors. And when things go a little bit overheated, or overboard with too much politics, they apply the instant 'band-aid', a moral emergency kit called 'interfaith dialogue'.

The new war on terror as designed by the United States of America is a Zombie war, fought in the battlefield of emotions and intellect -- its weapons are anger and hatred stashed in hearts and fired away by fingertips and tongues; its target victims are not bodies but souls. And as the Cranberry sings the wars go on and on: ‘in your head, are their tanks, and their bombs and their guns, in your head…’