Problems with Metaphor and Values

So the Neocon roll call has repeatedly come up with the metaphor that the 9-11 attacks are equivalent to Pearl Harbor or worse. They claim that they, like Bettin'Man Big Bill Bennett, claim to have morals and values on their side. So, they claim that God must be on their side too. These shrill inhuman voices keep shouting that we had no warning and that these attacks targeted civilians (if you watch the debate shows that is, for me I watch with the sound turned off and listen to music).

Now that is an interesting point, if not in the incessant whine of an Ann Coulter or Instahack, or Andy. Civilians were targeted, hmmmm... Oh where recently have I heard that refrain?

The problem, at least in my mind, with equating the 9-11 attacks with the Pearl Harbor attack, lies not in the fact that Hawaii was a territory, but that the 9-11 attacks were not carried out by a nation-state. For all we knew, the perpetrators of the attack were dead with the rest of their victims.

Therefore, who deserves retaliation? I shuddered, like I am sure everyone else who reads this blog, when I realized they were going to attack Afghanistan. I was certainly no fan of the Taliban, but what did the average Afghani have to do with the 9-11 attacks? And how have we been made safer by this boyhood adventure into the mountains?

I remember hearing in one news report that members of a bombed out village in Afghanistan had no idea what was going on. As globalized as this society is, there are people who have no idea who the president of the United States is and why he hates them. But the leaders of their country allowed the Al-Q to squat in their country and that by golly was reason enough to attack.

Now we are engaged in intensive war with Iraqi insurgents (or should they be thought of as freedom fighters as they want their country back, heck its theirs to fuck up, isn't it?), and again, what did the average person from Fallujah have to do with the 9-11 attacks? I simply cannot understand how anyone can think that these activities are sanctioned by God, under the prophethood of George Bush. THESE are the moral values of the right: Targeting civilians!

Seems like the moral values of the right sound a lot like the values of the terrorists.