"War on Terror": Worst Phrase Ever... And Still Being Used, Ctd.

It also doesn’t make me happy that Panetta talked about the “very dangerous time” and “a time of great peril” that we live in. It’s subtle, but the sense that that language creates in us is that we are all besieged, that a terrorist attack is always imminent, and that we should always be afraid. Well, sure an attack could happen, there are people who want to hurt us, that’s clear. Though I think it’s an open question just how much danger we are in, any threats we do face are threats we will have to live with for decades -- they are not going away. What we need is to not be afraid, to know that if we do get attacked we will go forward, we will get through it. We need, especially, to realize that, to some extent, living with terrorism is simply part of the reality of living in the globalized, open society that is the United States in the 21st century. It can be mitigated, made scarce, but not eliminated. It is the “new normal” The Obama administration needs to communicate the reality that we live in without making us feel that something could happen this very second, that since there are threats out there, we need to develop a certain amount of toughness. It’s time that the government acknowledge the world that we live in and figure out a way to get past the fear tactics of the Bush administration. Bush created a color-coded terror-threat level (when was the last time we saw that?), engaged our fears and ended up turning us into scared children, with the administration as the parent we all have to trust and depend on. Obama should expect us to be able to handle certain tough truths about the world and then treat us like adults.