Terrorists are not cockroaches

The key theme of the advertising campaign for the so-called “War on Terror” is based on a false analogy. The product currently sold to the American consumer might be called
the extermination model of counter-terrorism. In this model, the world is analogous to a house, in which some of the occupants (the West) have noticed an infestation of cockroaches (terrorists) in the kitchen (the Middle East.) According to this model, it's better to kill the vermin in the kitchen, before they spread into the bedroom (America), and to not stop killing until the whole nest is wiped out and the house is free of cockroaches.

The main problems with this model are that in terms of the present world situation, a) there were very few cockroaches in the kitchen until the exterminators showed up, and b) the more killing the exterminators do, the more the cockroaches reproduce.

A model that better explains what we actually see happening might be called the immune system response model. In this model, Iraq is the human patient, which the West has been operating on for decades. The worse the patient grows under the doctor's care, the more care the doctor gives the patient. At present, the doctor is attempting to transplant an artificial heart while the patient lays comatose on the operating table. In large part, what are called “terrorists” are the white blood cells that the immune system is using to attempt to reject the foreign organ. The more the doctor attempts to force the patient's body to accept the artificial heart, the more white blood cells the patient's immune system creates to fight it.

The only victory possible for the doctor is to completely destroy the patient's immune system, after which the patient will be completely dependent on the technological support necessary (the American occupation) to keep the artificial heart pumping.