Fag Bomb

The date is October 11, 2001. One month ago to the day, four planes were hijacked by terrorists and attacked the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. A U.S. Navy sailor on the U.S.S. Enterprise is preparing a bomb to be dropped over Afghanistan. The sailor decides to write a message to the recipients of the bomb. He scrawls, “High jack this fags,” onto the head of the bomb to show that no matter what they may try against us, we will fight back. Knowing that the bomb would explode and leave no evidence of his “graffiti”, the sailor did not worry about his message. He figured that his message was merely an additional, symbolic attack against terrorism that only he would know about. However, a photographer for the Associated Press was there as well, and they snapped a photograph of the bomb.

The Associated Press released the photograph to the public, and there was an outrage over the use of the word “fag.” In the sailor’s mind, “fag” was simply an insulting word, and therefore worthy of our enemy. But the word refers to a specific group of people, and that group of people is not our enemy. How can the enemy in the War on Terror be “fags?” The Terrorists are supposed to be religious extremists. Their religious beliefs would never permit homosexuality. If anything, our country’s LGBT population represents a freedom that is allowed in America that the Terrorists want to get rid of. Does that not mean that we should embrace the LGBT community in our war against Terror? If our troops alienate gays and lesbians, then they are oppressing people in a way that the Terrorists would approve of.

This picture demonstrates how imperfect the War on Terror is. Our troops are fighting against an enemy that seeks to destroy our freedom, but at the same time our troops are inadvertently denying the freedom of our own citizens. Homophobia is only one example of how confused we are as a nation. After America began its second war in Iraq, many Americans believed Saddam Hussein and Iraq to be a part of the War on Terror, and that they had been the aggressors in the September 11 attacks. The fact that we are at war against “Terror” is simply a vague concept that is difficult to understand. As this picture was circulated in the news circuit, members of the LGBT community were offended. The word “fag” is enough to strike “terror” in the minds of many Americans who have had to endure ridicule and hatred for having a different sexual or gender identity. As a result of this one sailor’s action, that terror and hatred was spread once again.