Unjust justifications: As George Bush ramps up his campaign to justify the National Security Agency’s illegal spying on Americans, the language he uses emphasizes terrorism and war. He says (repeatedly) that the United States is engaged in a “war on terror,” and that justifies any illegal activities the government wants to commit, and damn the Consititution and the Congress.

In Europe they also have terrorism, but they approach it not in the language of war, but as a crime, the purview of the police. We don’t hear the inflamed rhetoric of war from the British government, we just hear in the news that they have rounded up almost 50 people associated with the London tube bombings. The police investigate and arrest the criminals. They don’t trod on the civil rights of innocent citizens or send suspected terrorists to so-called dark sites in Romania. They lock them up in the Hammersmith Palais and let the British justice system take its course.

When Timothy McVeigh blew up the Alfred E. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, then-President Bill Clinton did not declare war on terror. The FBI hunted down McVeigh and arrested him. He was tried, convicted and, in 2001, executed for killing 167 people and wounding hundreds more. No “rendition” was carried out. No illegal detention was employed. No fake charges were filed before a secret tribunal.

But come September 11, 2001, and George Bush declares war on terrorism and gets his carta blanca to do as he pleases and damn the Consititution and Congress. That ushers in the era of Gitmo, Korans down the toilet, water-boarding, renditions, secret torture chambers and Lyndie English’s special brand of sadism. It’s Bush’s Inquisition, complete with secret trials and confessions extracted through torture and intimidation. With Dick Cheney as his Torquemada, Bush has pursued his War of Terror with a vigor matched only by his zeal in giving tax breaks to the rich.

The War on Terror is about as effective as our vaunted War on Drugs. Employing the language of war on both of these imaginary fronts enables the government to ignore any civil rights or inconvenient laws that impede the search for terrorists or drug users/sellers. It enables the Defense Department to get involved in domestic police actions that violate the posse comitatus injunction against using the military to fight domestic crime.

George Bush is a criminal. He has broken the law — needlessly, it would appear. His hubris enables him to break the law and justify the act by invoking some nonexistent presidential powers. Bush is a criminal and should be impeached, and the War on Terror ended.