You Bright and Risen Angels

William T Vollmann

This book was written by a traitor to his class. It is dedicated to bigots everywhere. Ladies and gentlemen of the black shirts, I call upon you to unite, to strike with claws and kitchen pokers, to burn the grub-worms of equality's brood with sulfur and oil, to huddle together whispering about the silverfish in your basements, to make decrees in your great solemn rotten assemblies concerning what is proper, for you have nothing to lose but your last feeble principles. 

An owner of an apple orchard has a bad year because his apples aren't selling. He believes that the reason they aren't selling is that people have suddenly started eating more oranges. At a town-hall meeting, he tells a group of community members who don't know much about orchards, What we're talking about is oranges, not apples. The implication of this statement is that most people think the important issues is apples, and while they matter, the true professional knows that there is something else going on.

In a recent interview with Barbara Walters, General David Petraeus, US head of command in Afghanistan said, What we're after is increasing security for the population, not trying to kill or capture every single Taliban in the country.

The implication here is that most people believe the US is trying to kill or capture every single Taliban in Afghanistan. The last time you heard about people trying to kill or capture everyone in a specific group, didn't it sound like genocide? Though we do not always think about what we say, Petraeus' comment reveals something very disturbing to me in how America thinks about its War on Terrorism. Petraeus' comment was not a harsh correction or a firm reminder; he spoke calmly and it did not seem that capturing or killing every single Taliban in Afghanistan was a thing that should be avoided, only that it wasn't as good a goal as providing security to the population. One got the sense that capturing and killing every single Taliban in Afghanistan would be a nice by-product, but regrettably it was not as important as security.

It's dangerous when any nation or group of people decide that another group needs to be captured or killed. This is a very troubling idea to me. Few Americans would have difficulty digesting the statement: Our mission is to kill every terrorist. Yet, terrorist is a term that we reserve the sole power of applying. I'm willing to bet that Osama, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and other Islamic extremists do not think of themselves as terrorists. When they get together at Ramadan for family reunions, and mom asks what Osama is up to now days, the answer is not, Oh, he's still a terrorist, probably will stick with it for a few more years, there's a lot happening in the field right now. Since we have the right to apply the label and the label removes its bearer's right to life, shouldn't someone be asking some questions about this?