From today's Washington Post and with a hat tip to my favorite mujahid, Brian -- Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, has some stinging words regarding life under W's self-appointed crusade against "terror":

The "war on terror" has created a culture of fear in America. The Bush administration's elevation of these three words into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious impact on American democracy, on America's psyche and on U.S. standing in the world. Using this phrase has actually undermined our ability to effectively confront the real challenges we face from fanatics who may use terrorism against us...

Constant reference to a "war on terror" did accomplish one major objective: It stimulated the emergence of a culture of fear. Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue. The war of choice in Iraq could never have gained the congressional support it got without the psychological linkage between the shock of 9/11 and the postulated existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Support for President Bush in the 2004 elections was also mobilized in part by the notion that "a nation at war" does not change its commander in chief in midstream. The sense of a pervasive but otherwise imprecise danger was thus channeled in a politically expedient direction by the mobilizing appeal of being "at war."...

That America has become insecure and more paranoid is hardly debatable. A recent study reported that in 2003, Congress identified 160 sites as potentially important national targets for would-be terrorists. With lobbyists weighing in, by the end of that year the list had grown to 1,849; by the end of 2004, to 28,360; by 2005, to 77,769.

The national database of possible targets now has some 300,000 items in it, including the Sears Tower in Chicago and an Illinois Apple and Pork Festival.

The entertainment industry has also jumped into the act. Hence the TV serials and films in which the evil characters have recognizable Arab features, sometimes highlighted by religious gestures, that exploit public anxiety and stimulate Islamophobia....

Where is the U.S. leader ready to say, "Enough of this hysteria, stop this paranoia"? Even in the face of future terrorist attacks, the likelihood of which cannot be denied, let us show some sense. Let us be true to our traditions.

In whipping up the American populace into a frenzy of fear, W's "war on terror" (a war which, according to Hoax author Van Hoffman, is by definition unwinnable as it is a war against a tactic and not an enemy) began to alternatively flip between being the "War on Islam" and the "War on the Arab World", interchangeably.

Only by stopping the racism-driven hysteria can we really focus on who we should have been fighting against the entire time: the murderers, the actual terrorists who want to kill us, and not the millions of innocent humans who happen to look and pray like them.

Remember, all the Islamophobia and "ethnic profiling" in the world wouldn't have caught Timothy McVeigh.