Caveat: The longest war

I overheard on the radio part of a book review of Susan Faludi's new book, Terror Dream.  Without having read the book, I'm probably as skeptical as the reviewer with respect to Faludi's apparent core thesis:  that Bush/Cheney's war-on-terror is resulting in significant rollbacks of feminist gains of previous decades.

Nevertheless, one sub-thesis that the reviewer mentioned, that I found compelling and powerful, was the idea that, far from being a strange and unwonted new type of war, the new "war-on-terror" is, in fact, America's oldest and most formative experience of war:  after all, wasn't the idea of a besieged city-on-a-hill at the heart of the White Man / Native American conflict, from the time of the first British settlements in North America?  A community of "innocents" victimized by fanatical, unknowable others who, "unprovoked," would come into the community and attack civilians.  As a nation, after a long period of aberrant integrative practice, we've finally reconnected with our long lost old demons, now conveniently externalized into the broader world.

In this sense, we've been fighting the war-on-terror since the mid 1600's.  By comparison, all other wars are irrelevant internecine squabbles.  Regardless of the validity of the parallel, the drawing of it is quite thought-provoking.  Are these Islamic fundamentalists, our fellow humans, the new Injuns?  Wow.

Listening to:  Magnetic Fields' "Strange Powers;" "The Trouble I've Been Looking For."

[Youtube embed later as part of Background Noise.]