     "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, with another crashing into the Pentagon and a fourth that was headed for Washington DC that was brought down by the heroic effort of the passengers aboard. When further examining the rhetoric used by George Bush in his address to the nation and the essay written by Wideman, one may come to the conclusion that the "war on terror" is just a cover up for the work America actually wanted to get done in the Middle East.

     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 spoke 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 has inflicted 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 suggests the US should in his speech. He thinks that the idea of sending American troops into 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 not the same. 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)

     This quotation from Wideman is questioning how for so long the non-black people of America have let the ongoing issue of racism continue and wondering how they can be so ignorant to not even recognize that there is a problem. Wideman explains how racism against black people hides behind names such as Michael Jordan and Oprah Winfrey. These notable success stories of people like Jordan and Winfrey do not offset the experience of the average black American who is forced to live in poverty and continues to be the victim of racism on a daily basis. 

     Wideman then changes his focus to the idea of terror and contends that the word itself 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 continues to victimize African-American people. 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 Americans to focus on while the government goes about completing its own agenda. Wideman notes how Bush stokes our nationalism and desire for payback after the attacks by focusing on our new enemy, the terrorists. When asked who committed the attacks on the World Trade Center, any American would now 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 uses the word terrorism to describe the attacks is because fighting a terrorist group is different than fighting another country. The resolution of a war between two countries typically requires some sort of a negotiation; however, when a country is fighting a terrorist group there is no need for negotiation because terrorists, who are focused on nothing but total annihilation of their enemies, are seen as purely evil.

    Wideman's views are that the "war on terror" 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). Wideman's idea is that the United States sent its troops to the Middle East with a different intention than to stop the "war on terror" but used the idea of a "war on terror" and the sense of fear and patriotism that resided in Americans after the World Trade Center attacks as its reason to send troops. There are many possible ulterior motives for the United States to mobilize their military. The most obvious reason is the extensive amount of oil in that part of the world. Oil is the lifeblood of any industrialized economy, and with the US economy being the world's largest, the US absolutely has to maintain access to oil. Another possible benefit the United States would have by launching a "war on terror" would be the geopolitical benefits of having our troops all the way over in the Middle East. By having troops on the ground in the Middle East, the United States can assists its local allies in maintaining control of countries and territories that are strategically important. Our military presence prevents a vacuum that would allow our enemies from coming in and propping up their local allies and shifting the balance of power. Finally, this war would benefit the United States in that it provides a good playing field to test out all of the latest American military technology and tactics on an inferior enemy. 

     Wideman also believes the US had further ulterior motives for aggression in the Middle East with regard to how it affects the American people at home. First of all, fighting this "war on terror" will immediately make the US government approval ratings go up because no American would be opposed to fighting a war against terrorism. Additionally, 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 now be legal. These included increasing security at airports and dramatically reducing the legal requirements for listening to private American conversations.

     John Wideman's essay, "Whose War - The Color of Terror", offers a very unique perspective of the war on terror that George Bush declared in his famous speech just days after the 9/11 attacks. Wideman's background and life experience as a poor African-American who has been a victim of racism in the US throughout his lifetime causes him to question Bush's words and his motives. It also challenges American citizens to take a hard look in the mirror because they just may see that they are not as different from the terrorists as they would like to think. With extreme cynicism, Wideman urges Americans to resist the temptation to demonize their attackers. He suggest that perhaps instead they should focus on what they have in common, which is their shared humanity in a broken world. Only then will there be lasting change.

