Freedom And Fear... Are They Still At War?

Freedom and Fear…. Are they still at war?

Since the former president George Walker Bush, standing up to the devastating, inhuman, cruel and bigoted event of 9\11, stated that Freedom and Fear were at war,[1] the world has held divided opinions on the matter; but in order to be able to constructively criticize and analyze his statement we should understand what he, as plenty Americans,understands by freedom and fear. On one side, Freedom is a "sacred heritage" a bastion that needs to be defended by all means[2]. Fear, on the other, is contained in terror, is oppressive and is part of a generation that is currently living the "dark threat of violence"[3]. Now, when he stated that they were at war he was implicitly stating that we were in a breaking point in which we couldn't tire,neither falter nor fail, he was implicitly stating that what came next was a whole new policy to eradicate any bigoted, extremely nationalistic, harmfully fascist group standing over The Earth, and so did happen; nine years later, the question that emerges is: Are they still at war?

After the events that took place in Sept. 11, America was devastated. We, the entire mankind, understood that weweren't safe, and that the world was falling apart. We understood that extreme bigotry didn't just tear down the World Trade Center buildings in New York; they transcended to a higher level, a more dangerous one, their hate regime was, in some way, showing us that the differences are not always positive as Rawls would like with his maxim[4] and that an imminent response needed to be taken.

On theother hand, Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda's head, hadn't raised his hate to the United States over a night, he had been preparing himself for it; he had previously declared a Holy Jihad against the Americans[5]. Throughout our lives we've been taught and raised up to respect other's beliefs; as a matter of fact, we are forced to do it, that's what The Universal Declaration of Human Rights state in itsarticle 18, but we fall in a conflict of interests, when that right isn't limited and trespasses the borders of humanism when religious hate starts leaving casualties. This is where freedom has its first struggle with fear.

When the "War on Terror" policy started, most of the reactionary[6] Americans stood by its side. Some Hurt relatives were looking for vengeance, important politicians whereseeking to set some frames so that human coexistence would be better, common citizens expected to be safe and hoped that freedom would finally overcome this event, but no matter what their situation was, they were all supporting the new policy that would apparently set things up. It was so important that the new policy was even confident of having God on its side[7], and the first de facto reactionwe witnessed was held in October 7, 2001 when American troops, helped by NATO and UN additional troops entered to Afghanistan looking for Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda's terrorists to take them to court; the former Government looked to "disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations"[8].

Just two years later on March 20, 2003 when American and British forces broke into Iraq to bringpeace, stability, democracy and safeness back, we witnessed the second reaction of this policy: American troops were expecting to remove all terrorist harboring in Hussein's territory[9], as they were also trying to control their fear to any biochemical attack that could injure American integrity.[10]

However, about 3500 days after freedom had its first struggle with fear, with 1.4 trilliondollars spent in this struggle[11], more than 3.1 million casualties[12], and a recession coming, the same reactionary society that at first favored with an overwhelming majority the intervention, now starts to wonder if these concepts are still at war. As a matter of fact 63% out of 1010 people disapprove the war in Iraq[13] and they want to have a real and soon withdrawal deadline.

Right now,...