War on Terrorism???

George W. Bush, since 9-11, likes to remind everyone very frequently that we are in the middle of a war -- a war on terrorism. This war, W tells everyone, is different than the other wars previously fought. I presume that he's referring to conventional armed wars and the Cold War (with W it's sometimes hard to tell).

This war, we are told, will be fought in the minds of the people who are the enemy (of course, this is never fully delineated). We must chase the terrorists whereever they can be found. We also must stop the financing going to the terrorists.

The US government just spend millions of dollars to prosecute a University of South Florida professor and three co-defendants who were accused of racketeering, conspiracy to maim and murder, and providing material support (i.e. financing) for Palestinian Islamic Jihad. A federal jury acquitted them on most of the charges and deadlocked on the rest.

Meanwhile, in the middle east, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) has just approved a new law which provides monthly grants to the families of "shahids". Shahid is Arabic for martyr. These are people that Israel and the US may well consider terrorists -- people who go into malls and restaurants and blow themselves up. Each shahid's family is entitled to $250/month plus another $50/month if they were married, $15/month for each child, $25/month for each living parent and $15/month to each brother the shahid was supporting.

While this might not sound like a lot of money to a westerner, this is a lot of money to a Palestinian whose average annual income is around $1000. Suddenly this seems less like compensation and more like an incentive. The average Palestinian that walks into a mall with a bomb vest is worth a lot more to his family dead than alive.

But let's examine where the Palestinian Authority gets its money from. Its primary donation sources are from the European Union, United States and other Arab countries. So in essence, the US and EU are now funding terrorism. What seems even more ironic was one of the Bush Administration's rationale's for invading Iraq -- that Saddam Hussein was giving each Palestinian shahid's family a $25,000 payment. I guess the US and EU are going to pick up the tab now.

Bush Administration foreign policy has been schizophrenic since inauguration day of 2001. This only further solidifies that perception. It ought to be interesting to see how the Administration and Congress reacts.