Operation enduring war.

• Author: Zinn, Howard
• Position: It Seems to Me - Focus on terrorism turns attention away from other social ills - Column

We are "winning the war on terror." I learn this from George Bush's State of the Union Address. "Our progress," he said, "is a tribute to the might of the United States military." My hometown newspaper, The Boston Globe, is congratulatory: "On the war front, the Administration has much to take pride in."

But the President also tells us that "tens of thousands of trained terrorists are still at large." That hardly suggests we are "winning the war." Furthermore, he says, there is a "grave and growing danger."

Bush singled out Iran, Iraq, and North Korea because they may be building "weapons of mass destruction." And that's not all: "Terror training camps still exist in at least a dozen countries," he says.

The prospect is for a war without end. In no previous Administration has any President ever talked about such a war. Indeed, Presidents have been anxious to assure the nation that the sacrifices demanded would be finite, and as each war went on, we were told, as in Vietnam, there was "light at the end of the tunnel."

No light is visible in this war on terrorism, for, as the President says, "These enemies view the entire world as a battlefield, and we must pursue them wherever they are."

It seems necessary for the nation to remain frightened. The enemy is everywhere. "The campaign may not be finished on our watch," Bush says. He will pass on the job to the next President, and perhaps the next and the next.

This is an elusive enemy, whose defeat will require an endless war. And so long as the nation is in a state of war, it is possible to demand of the American people certain sacrifices.

Immediately, we must sacrifice our freedoms (although the war is presumably to protect freedom). "We choose freedom and the dignity of every life," the President said. But we cannot choose freedom now. For now, we must give up the freedoms promised by our Bill of Rights.

Thus Congress has passed legislation to give the government sweeping new powers to keep watch over us, enlarging its right to spy with wiretaps and computer surveillance, and allowing officials to conduct secret searches of homes and offices.

The Secretary of State can designate any organization as a terrorist organization, and his decision is not subject to review. The USA Patriot Act defines a "domestic terrorist" as someone who violates the law and is engaged in activities that "appear to be intended to ... influence the policy of government by intimidation or coercion." This could make...