     "WHOSE WAR: The Color of Terror" by John Edgar Wideman encourages Americans to question the integrity of George Bush's speech given immediately after the destruction of the World Trade Center. Every American remembers that day in 2001 when two United States commercial flights were hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center.

     George Bush, the president of the United States at the time, gave a speech called his "Address to the Nation on the Terrorist Attacks." In this speech, Bush talked about the horrible incident that occurred on September 11th and how America will continue to remain strong and push through the hard time that this terroristic attack will inflict on the nation. He speaks in such a way as to promote patriotism and hatred towards the terrorists who are responsible for the attacks. He goes on to explain how even though these terrorist attacks damaged property of the United States, they cannot damage the unity and strength of the nation as a whole. In his speech, Bush chose to include a Bible verse which read, "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me" (Bush 468). He included this Bible verse to help give Americans some sense of hope in such a hard time as thousands of fellow Americans had been lost that day. He closes the speech with "None of us will ever forget this day, yet we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world" (Bush 469).

     John Edgar Wideman's essay, "WHOSE WAR," starts with a comparison between black people living as a minority in the United States and Americans as a whole after the attack on the World Trade Center. He says that just as black people feel a sense of unity among each other that is created by other people's racism against them, Americans will begin to feel a similar sense of unity amongst each other after the attacks on 9/11. Wideman then goes on to say, "I am an American of African descent, and I can't applaud my president for doing unto foreign others what he's inflicted on me and mine" (Wideman 471). Wideman is saying that he doesn't support the idea that the United States should "stand down" our enemy just as Bush was suggesting in his speech. He thinks that the idea of sending American troops into the Iraq to fight the "war on terror" is similar to the oppression of Africans earlier in United States history and will not side with it. Wideman says, "How can I support a president whose rhetoric both denies and worsens the muck when he pitches his crusade against terror as a holy war, a war of good against evil, forces of light versus forces of darkness, a summons to arms that for colored folks chillingly echoes and resuscitates the Manichean dualism of racism." This statement from Wideman is explaining how Bush is just hiding behind the image of the American flag when he talks about America as if America is completely good, because the views of Wideman and many other Americans are completely different. He is wondering how Bush can talk about America fighting terrorism as an act of good against evil when America isn't even completely good to begin with. Wideman says, "I remain puzzled by the shock and surprise nonblack Americans express when confronted by what they deem my 'anger.' Did I see in their eyes a similar shock and surprise on September 11. Is it truly news that some people's bad times have underwritten other people's good times. News that a systematic pattern of gross inequalities still has not been corrected and that those who suffer them are desperate for change" (Wideman 472). Wideman explains how racism against black people hides behind names such as Michael Jordan or Oprah Winfrey. The average American citizen doesn't look at America as a racist country because some people of every race find themselves to be very successful in their society, while at the same time millions of people of African-American decent are forced to live in poverty and continue to be the victims of racism every day. He then changes his focus to the idea of terror. Wideman thinks that the word "terror" has completely lost its meaning over the last few years and is now used by a country to get its citizens to back its actions. He says, "To upstage and camouflage a real war at home the threat of terror is being employed to justify a phony war in Afghanistan" (Wideman 472). The real war at home that he is talking about is the unjust society that African-American people remain to be the victims of. This excerpt from his article is implying that the "war on terror" that is being stressed so much by the Bush administration is just a distraction for American's to focus on while the government goes about completing its own tasks.

     This post 9/11 idea of retaliation is an idea that many Americans like because they believe that someone should have to pay for what has happened to our World Trade Center. Wideman goes into the terminology used by Bush and his administration when discussing the attacks on the World Trade Center. He dives deeply into the meaning of the word terrorism. When asked who committed the attacks on the World Trade Center, any American would say that terrorists did it. The problem with using this word is that in some aspect or someone's point of view, everybody is a terrorist. For example, the French consider the ISIS members in Syria to be terrorists because of the recent attack in Paris. At the same time, many Syrians would consider the French people to be terrorists because of France's decision to retaliate and bomb a Syrian city. Wideman's main point is that the word terrorist can be used to describe almost anyone. It just depends what perspective the accuser is looking from. The reason that Bush used the word terrorism to describe the attacks is because fighting a terrorist group is different than fighting another country. When two countries are fighting each other, they have to use some sort of democracy or negotiation to resolve the conflict typically. When a country is fighting a terrorist group, there is no need for negotiation because terrorists are looked at as pure evil. This allowed the United States to do anything they wanted in the Middle East to fight this group and still have the backing of its citizens.

     Wideman's views are that this is "A phony war, finally, because it's not waged to defend America from an external foe but to homogenize and coerce its citizens under a flag of rabid nationalism. (Wideman 473). He thinks that this war is all just an act put on by the United States in order to gain the support of all Americans in whatever it does.

     Wideman's idea is that the United States sent its troops to Afghanistan with different intentions than to stop the "war on terror" but used the idea of a "war on terror" and the sense of hopefulness and patriotism that resided in Americans after the World Trade Center bombings as its ticket to send troops. There are many reasons why the United states would want to do this. There are the obvious reasons such as the extensive amount of oil that can be found in the Middle East. If America had troops in Iraq then it would be a lot easier for Americans to go over and mine the oil which rightfully belongs to the countries of the Middle East. Another possible benefit the United States would have from launching this "war on terror" would be the geopolitical benefits of having our troops all the way over in the Middle East. It would give America a sense of power in the Middle East that it has never had before. Another reason that this war would benefit the United States is that it provides a good playing field to test out all of the latest American military technology and tactics on an inferior enemy. 

     Launching this attack will not only have positive outcomes for the United States internationally but it will also positively affect the nation at home. First of all, fighting this "war on terror" will immediately make the approval ratings of the government by Americans go up because no American would be opposed to fighting a war against terrorism. Along with the influence of increased nationalism, the United States can benefit in other ways at home by having this "war on terror." By instilling the idea that America is at war with terrorists, the United States government allowed itself to convince the American public that they should give away some of their rights in order to be safe. This idea led to the birth of the Patriot Act, which was an Act of Congress passed to allow security measures that were once illegal in the United States to be legal. These included increasing security at airports by a lot, the United States's new ability to listen to citizens' phone calls, and the ability to search people beyond the extent that was legal before the Patriot Act was passed, such as random searches in airports.

     Wideman's idea that the George Bush and his administration's intentions for the "war on terror" were different than the citizens of the United States believed they were makes an American citizen truly question the integrity of Bush as he gave his speech on September 11th, 2001. It makes one question if he truly meant what he said when he told the people of America that "we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world" (Bush 469).

