Fear, With Good Reason
Friday 12 February 2010
by: Barry Eisler, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: davidking, Steffen Jakob)
Last week, Dahlia Lithwick had a terrific piece in Slate in which she ponders America's "Terrorism Derangement Syndrome [TDS]."
America does seem to be in the grip of morbid fear, doesn't it? Khalid Shaikh Mohammed could irradiate Manhattan if he's given a trial there ... terrorists can melt the walls of supermax prisons ... the Underwear Bomber is so diabolically clever he would laugh off traditional interrogation methods. With all this terror, you might even think ... I don't know, that terrorism is working pretty well.
Lithwick attributed some of the cause of TDS to Republican fear-mongering and to Democratic acquiescence in GOP scare tactics. I agree - but I think there's something more fundamental going on, something that explains both the fear and the fear-mongering.
Something like ... our own policies.
I believe some deep-seated part of our national consciousness is aware there will be consequences for what we've done, and continue to do. The wars, and kidnappings, and illegal imprisonment, and off-the-mark Predator strikes, and, most of all, torture - we sense a reckoning for all this, a conflagration waiting to engulf the combustible materials we insist on piling recklessly, relentlessly higher. Our tactics worsen the danger.
The worse the danger, the more scared we get. The more scared we get, the less capable we are of rational policies. As our rationality deserts us, we embrace more tightly primitive tactics. And the more primitive we become, the worse we make the danger. And so on.
So, yes, we're afraid. After all, we understand revenge, don't we? Revenge is a human need so powerful that, if necessary, we'll attempt to satisfy it by proxy, the way we satisfied our need for 9/11 vengeance against al-Qaeda by attacking Iraq, instead.
We know payback is coming because, by God, if there were a country kidnapping Americans and imprisoning them and torturing them in secret prisons, and if that country constantly threatened to bomb us and sometimes actually did so, and if the bombs often missed and massacred women and children and funerals and wedding parties, we would not - we could not - rest until that country came to rue the day it even considered fucking with the United States of America.
That's how it would be if the shoe were on the other foot - in fact, that's how it was. And you don't have to be psychic or even exceptionally empathetic to know that's how it is with other cultures, too. A little imagination and intuition are more than enough.
Imagination and intuition, as it happens, is the same combination that makes us sure Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons. Our own National Intelligence Estimate claims otherwise, but we don't believe the NIE because what would we do if we were subject to the kind of bellicose rhetoric our politicians and press level at Iran?
What would we do if we were Iran, and America had invaded our neighbors east and west? We wouldn't rest until we had nukes, so we know Iran is after them, just as we would be. Anyone who suggests otherwise must be wrong.
As I wrote over a year ago:
It's common for rightists to justify America's embrace of the "dark side" by claiming President Bush has kept the country safe. The claim strikes me as remarkably simplistic. If the temporal frame of reference begins on 9/11, and we ignore the unsolved anthrax attacks that came shortly after, and the geographical frame of reference is the territorial United States alone, then one might accurately claim America has been safe up until now. Whether the correlation between "the dark side" and our safety up until this point has a causal connection is far more debatable.
Regardless, to me, "has kept us safe up until this point" has far too much the ring of Neville Chamberlain's "peace in our time." It also makes me think of a parent who seems to be an excellent provider because he's financing all those provisions on a dozen maxed-out credit cards. The temporary comfort he's afforded his family will inevitably be wiped out by the unpayable bill they're all soon to receive.
Watching these documentaries, you can't help but feel that bill is out there, and that soon enough, it will be horrifically presented to us. Even if you believe "the dark side" offers benefits, and you're willing to ignore what the dark side has cost us in terms of our own ideals and our image in the world, that bill, when it comes, will represent the dark side's true price.
What every American needs to understand about torture and the rest of the dark side is this: Not only has our embrace of the dark side violated our laws and profaned our values, and not only have we received no safety in exchange for our willingness to cash in our national ideals - no, the real irony, the real tragedy is that war and secret prisons and torture and the rest have created and continue to create a new generation of Muslim extremists intent on revenge. We know this.
We try to stopper our minds, but our intuition won't be silenced. It's why we're so afraid.
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Comments
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Karma's a bitch, isn't she?
Fri, 02/12/2010 - 17:30 — trisha (not verified)Karma's a bitch, isn't she?
The US-a country with too
Fri, 02/12/2010 - 17:31 — Anonymous (not verified)The US-a country with too many cowards and fools. Creatures who'll throw away their own freedom-and threaten that of other Americans-just to feel a little safer.
It's obvious now the
Fri, 02/12/2010 - 17:42 — Anonymous (not verified)It's obvious now the Pentagon War Machine is in control, to profit on the rest of the world hating us in perpetuity. How else can you explain weapon sales to Taiwan, military base agreement in Columbia , at least 40 bases in Iraq- still, up to 700 military outposts and bases in Afghanistan, military base expansion in Australia. All this reported in just the last week. The US Military- Industrial- Energy War-Machine reaps between $750K- $1 million in profit from each soldier.
It's ludicrous to claim that
Fri, 02/12/2010 - 17:53 — Anonymous (not verified)It's ludicrous to claim that Mr. Obama's predecessor 'kept us safe' in any way, shape, or form. These are the people who ignored numerous specific warnings of an imminent attack and had our multi-trillion dollar military running around like headless chickens on that day. If that weren't enough, they then used the excuse of terrorism to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. Me, I felt and continue to feel a whole lot less safe.
Friedman is twisted.
Fri, 02/12/2010 - 18:04 — Anonymous (not verified)Friedman is twisted.
Osama bin Laden material.
Fri, 02/12/2010 - 18:16 — Anonymous (not verified)Osama bin Laden material. What a great poster child for the keepers of the two holy places.
Roman Empire collapsed from pursuing barbarians in the hinterlands.
We are indeed a nation of
Fri, 02/12/2010 - 19:52 — Mustapha Crappe (not verified)We are indeed a nation of timorous poltroons, but then we have been and are unmanned by a continuous barrage of advertising that plays on our fears. I'm not particularly bothered by all this. Our lunatic policies are self-limiting; eventually we will become over-extended and bankrupt financially, morally, and spiritually. Our future is that of a tin-pot banana republic, led by a parcel of craven despots. Nations tend to get the leadership they deserve.
With all the blood and treasure that we've thrown down foreign rat holes we could have done wonders at home. For the annual expenditures on the military establishment, we could have full health care for every man, woman, and child in the country. If not health care then some amazing public infrastructure. It won't happen though. We are less safe now than we were ten years ago and not getting any safer. Instead we are getting more freaked out by the month, jumping at our own shadows.
It's been true, since the
Fri, 02/12/2010 - 21:14 — woody (not verified)It's been true, since the beginning of the Vietnam war at least, that the rest of the world had far more to fear from the US than 'we' had to fear from them.
And it has grown more apparent since 2001, with the intransigence of first of the Bushebviki on the stage of internatrional ccooperation, and since last year with the intransigence of the Minority in Congress to support any Majority policy that. from the point of view of their own safety and survival, the rest of the world would be 'justified' to work to totally overthrow and ruin the USofA, justified by exactly the same means-->ends logic by which we ourselves inhabit the world and justify our 'exceptionalist' practices.
Barry, what form(s) do you
Fri, 02/12/2010 - 21:50 — Shaun Deacon (not verified)Barry, what form(s) do you think our comeuppance might take? Do you think perhaps we might be held accountable on the world stage, for violating Geneva Convention standards or sanctioning from the U.N. (who seem to do very little and have little effectiveness)? I think we will certainly continue to add to the ranks of the terrorists as we affirm their beliefs that we are the enemy, I just hope that we can bring ACTUAL change, not some campaign slogan using the same term, to the way we do things. Thanks again for your insight and informative opinions.
I am not quite sure the
Fri, 02/12/2010 - 22:19 — BruceB (not verified)I am not quite sure the Friedman video is embedded with this article, but his summation seems to be that we can scare terrorism away by our superior force and our willingness to be ruthless mother fu**ers.
Has it worked? Is Al Queda suing for peace? Has bin Laden turned himself in?
All we have done is squander the lives of 5000+ Americans, wound 50,000 and emotionally scar thousands more. We have pissed away a trillion dollars, every dime of it borrowed money.
How much does AlQueda spend on the war on terror? De they borrow or do they have income to support it? Are we being rope a doped into bankruptcy?
What better way to carry out
Fri, 02/12/2010 - 23:33 — Genessender (not verified)What better way to carry out the Shock Doctrine on the US than to provoke it, or pretend it's been provoked, from without? 9/11 worked like a charm for the people who committed it; why should they stop now?
Friedman is even dumber than
Fri, 02/12/2010 - 23:50 — Texas Aggie (not verified)Friedman is even dumber than I thought. All he did was focus on terrorists and totally forget, not even recognize, that they don't do those kinds of things because they didn't have anything else to do that day. They had some powerful grievances that drove them to do what they did.
The first thing to do to counteract terrorism is to understand their motivations and see if they are in any way justified. Then you stop doing the things that motivate them. Instead what idiot child then recommends is we send American soldiers over to a country that had nothing to do with terrorism and knock down doors in homes of people who were completely innocent, torture them, abuse them, kill their family members, destroy their country, and this is supposed to prevent terrorism??? Not only are the real terrorists applauding our actions from the sideline for being such good recruitment officers for their cause, but the formerly uninvolved Iraqis are now quite happy to kill Americans. Why is this guy still being paid to pontificate?
George Orwell wrote about it
Sat, 02/13/2010 - 03:57 — ivan thomas (not verified)George Orwell wrote about it over 60 years ago. you keep the population under control by fostering a fear in them of those outside, the other.
the powers that be have a vested interest in an acquiescent populus living in fear. it makes them easy to control and manipulate.
This country, and by
Sat, 02/13/2010 - 13:19 — John L. Opperman (not verified)This country, and by extension- because of our policies both worldwide and at home, all are at serious unrelenting risk of eliminating civilization if not most life on earth -which is entirely interrelated and dependent on the whole.
We would be backed by at least 99% of the world's peoples if we took down the US Establishment, but at 76, I fear we never will and it is becoming nearly too late to do so.
And I had hoped it could be a non-violent takeover, but they will never give up volintarily and a bloody revolution will be required to set things right for humanity, and life on earth worth living.
~John L.
"As ye sow, so shall ye
Sat, 02/13/2010 - 14:21 — Adoregon (not verified)"As ye sow, so shall ye reap."
Think this is an empty aphorism?
Look around.
How's life in this best of all possible worlds?
How is [the U.S.] being the global mega-prick working out for ya? Are you feeling secure?
North, south, east and west, killing is what we do best.
The real laugh is that the mil-gov-corp oligarchy gets its killing done with taxpayer money and the children of the non-elites who cannot find other work.
Muy rico, tools.
Thanks for the comments,
Sat, 02/13/2010 - 14:21 — Barry Eisler (not verified)Thanks for the comments, folks. Sean, I wish I could be optimistic about prosecutions of US officials who ordered torture, but the establishment (or oligarchy, as I call it in my forthcoming novel Inside Out, borrowing the description from MIT's Simon Johnson) seems to have decided otherwise. Witness Obama doing all he can to block prosecutions.
Sadly, there is nothing to
Sat, 02/13/2010 - 21:34 — S. Wolf Britain (not verified)Sadly, there is nothing to be optimistic about. The U.S. is going more and more insane with each passing day, and we haven't seen anything yet. I fully expect my door, and the doors of millions of other completely innocent Americans, to be broken down in the middle of the night soon to "disappear" me, and them, for doing nothing but peacefully and non-violently standing up for the Supreme Law of the Land, the U.S. Constitution, and for our human rights and civil liberties, as well as standing up against all of the violations of those civil liberties and human rights, and the ever-increasing madness.
I'm "afriad" True Freedom(s) is (are) dead in the U.S., that the Fourth Reich has completely taken over "our" govenment, and that the history of Nazi Germany is about to repeat itself on a terrorizing scale never before seen in the entire history of the world. Look at the fact that the Roman Catholic Church still has a "Inquisitor General", the cardinal in my hometown of San Francisco. We've been falsely led to believe that they became some benign religious institution, but they still consider all non-Catholics to be "heretics"; who, unless they completely "repent" and become Catholic(s), are supposedly deserving of being exterminated.
Look at the fact, too, that most of Congress is now made up of Catholics. And you wonder that the madness, and the level of it ever-increasing as it is right now, is worsening as it is? At its founding, the U.S. was the only country that wasn't overridden with Catholicism, and the Roman Catholic Church has been slowly but surely working non-stop to bring the U.S. under its sway as well ever since the U.S.'s very inception, and they've been almost completely successful. Now they are putting the finishing touches on completely destroying our PROTESTANT Constitution, eradicating all of our freedom of religion and other civil liberties, re-instituting the inquisition, and getting ready to exterminate the "heretics" again.
http://www.care2.com/news/member/101658859/1339366
When I heard the famous
Sun, 02/14/2010 - 10:15 — Anonymous (not verified)When I heard the famous dictum of a village idiot "YOU ARE EITHER WITH US OR YOU ARE WITH THE TERRORISTS" and saw no elected official stir in the legislature, I knew our democracy was gone. The land of the brave and the free had been transformed to the land of sheep and prisoners. I expected at least a couple of the peoples' REPRESENTATIVES would stand up and say " over my dead body, Mr. idiot". But I learned disappointingly that no one was a BRAVE HEART! Everyone was there for good times at our expense.
In the midst of all of this
Sun, 02/14/2010 - 21:55 — Anonymous (not verified)In the midst of all of this fear, we have lost not only our perspective but our sense of humor. I prefer to think of the 'underwear bomber' by the more descriptive term the "Weenie Roast Bomber.' We should put up a picture of his roasted parts with a sign saying, 'are you sure you want to do this because sometimes you live.'
More people die from a lack of health care than die from terrorists. Let's get some perspective. More American lives would be saved with universal health care than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Get a grip folks.
You all may be forgetting an
Mon, 02/15/2010 - 23:38 — Uppity Woman (not verified)You all may be forgetting an important consideration. About 75% of our people disapprove of the actions of our politicians, and contrary to the lies spread on TV, this is because we are a left of center nation. The people in the rest of the world know that roughly 3 out of 4 people in the USA hate the scoundrels in our government as much as anyone. If the truth were known, i suspect this statistic would hold up in other nations as well; we all have our own set of scoundrels. The poor people of the world are being exploited by a tiny minority of the worlds population, and these selfish and supremely arrogant people are sprinkled throughout all nations. We all know this, and we all know that we have nothing to fear from other poor people. What we need to do is find a way to impress a few racist, sexist, elitist, narcissists that they actually have something to fear from the rest of us if they do not straighten up and start working for the common good. This trend is building, and our politicians know what is coming. Why do we not have more faith in our own goodness? After all, the vast majority of people on the planet are peaceful and loving. Must we continue to believe lies about our brothers and sisters in other countries? Must we continue to distrust our neighbors, in spite of all evidence that we live surrounded by basically good, trustworthy people? Let's quit believing in fear mongering propaganda about how evil we are, and let's stop being afraid to see the goodness in ourselves and others.
"It is written, thus says
Wed, 02/17/2010 - 00:53 — S. Wolf Britain (not verified)"It is written, thus says the Lord [God through Jesus the Christ, the Word(s) of God, and the Maker / Creator of all things except evil]...": "...The heart (and/or mind) is (and/or are) deceitful above all things, and (is and/or are) desperately evil; (therefore), who can trust it (and/or them)?..."! [Jeremiah 17:9; etc.; emphasis and/or clarification(s) added by me.]
The answer to the question, obviously, is: NO ONE CAN TRUST IT AND/OR THEM!
So, "goodness in ourselves and others"?! We are all evil sinners; and, without God, there is NO true goodness in ourselves and others!!
We must get truly, fully and completely restored to God, our Maker, and totally transformed by Him back into the holy perfection that we were created to be in the first place; or we and all of our so-called "goodness" are going to be completely destroyed very soon!
"...[Truly, fully and completely] (r)epent...; for the kingdom of [God] is [very near] at hand..."! [Matthew 3:2; etc.; emphasis and/or clarification(s) added by me.]
Please, S. Wolf Britain:
Fri, 02/19/2010 - 15:14 — Frances in California (not verified)Please, S. Wolf Britain: Get a GRIP! You have every right to express yourself at TruthOut but when you go off the deep end, Man, you are so gone! Seriously, spare us the biblical ruminations; when you speak to the issues, you can be so insightful. We can learn from you, but you gotta get at least one foot on the GROUND!
Frances, what part of
Sat, 02/20/2010 - 07:18 — S. Wolf Britain (not verified)Frances, what part of freedom of religion and freedom of speech do you not understand?! The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights grants EQUAL free speech to expressing religion AND quoting the Bible. So YOU are the one who needs to "get a grip" and completely learn and/or come to fully understand the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, the Supreme Law of the United States; to STOP trying to take away my equal rights to express religion and those things which you don't believe and/or don't like to hear/read; to STOP making other completely illegal and/or unconstitutional psychological diagnoses without a license to practice medicine (psychiatry) and/or psychology; and who needs to STOP perpetrating totally illegal libel and/or slander! But thank you for the backdoor compliment(s)..., I think.
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