America, Cowering to an Imaginary Enemy, Is Not the Country I Once Knew
America seems much in need of Roosevelt's maxim to stop fearing fear itself. Virtually all comment on the Mumbai massacre has mentioned 9/11 and al-Qaeda, and thus invited citizens to continue feeling afraid. No matter that Mumbai appears to have been primarily about Kashmir and the status of India's Muslims. No matter that Osama bin Laden has no dog in that fight. Any stick will do to elevate al-Qaeda as America's enemy number one.
Last week, the CIA warned of a terrorist threat that "might be unleashed" during the presidential transition, a threat which George Bush described as "dangerously real". On Wednesday Barack Obama was formally told by a congressional inquiry that "it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction, either nuclear or biological, will be used in a terrorist attack" in his first year of office. The inquiry demanded an official be appointed "to oversee efforts to prevent such an attack," as if millions of Americans in and out of uniform were not doing that already.
Then London added its pennyworth, with a Home Office minister, Lord West, telling of "another great plot building up again" and a "huge threat" from al-Qaeda. The purpose of this scaremongering is a mystery.
Reactions to Mumbai have seemed to suggest Americans still seeking a fellowship of pain, as after the London and Madrid bombings. Gone are the days when Americans would tell Britons to shrug off IRA terrorist attacks (many instigated from America) and grow up. Any explosion anywhere now abets the extraordinary 9/11 iconography, underpinning the politics of fear that has been the leitmotif of the Bush presidency.
Debating this presidency in New York on Tuesday night, I found myself pitted against Bush's the impresario of fear, Karl Rove. Nothing in his master's glorious reign quite matched his "victory" over terror. The sense of unreality was equaled by Rove's supporters, to whom all who did not fear the "Islamo-fascists" were "liberal upper-east side elitists", an apparently crushing epithet. One assured me that Afghanistan would soon be won by merely "moving the surge" to Kabul. The whole evening was like the scene in Gone with the Wind where Southern gallants out-boast each other in predicting victory over the Yankees.
Rove was undeniably a master manipulator of fear politics, like Tony Blair's Alastair Campbell, who called him a "kindred spirit". Both Bush and Blair were led to portray al-Qaeda in its Tora Bora cave as they had Saddam Hussein, as a threat to their respective realms. It was what the sociologist, Ulrich Beck, described as an exaggerated risk "exploited as an elixir to an ailing leader." On this the two leaders built a culture of self-validating counter-terrorism, with both the absence of any threat and the presence of one can be made equally supportive.
Every explosion anywhere is nowadays described to the media as "al-Qaeda-linked." What seven years ago was a tiny if efficient cabal of fanatics has been turned by western propaganda into a global menace, ridiculously on a par with Hitler and post-war communism. Whoever said the political brain has advanced over time was mad.
On every visit to America I am stunned by the pervasiveness of fear. Terrified officials pounce on the slightest deviation from security rules. Americans must strip almost to their underwear to board even the shortest domestic flights. IDs are scanned in the meanest office blocks. Computers must be dismantled. National Guardsmen troop out at dawn to protect New York installations "against the terrorist threat."
The repressive patriot acts -- mocking a patriotism that was once built on courage and the rule of law -- remain in operation. Getting through American immigration with a brown face is an indignity that many Indians and Arabs of my acquaintance now simply refuse to endure. I had trouble even with a Baghdad visa in my passport.
Barack Obama, who is pledged to close Guantanamo Bay, is being challenged to say what he will do with what the conservative Weekly Standard asserts are "250 participants in the most devastating terrorist attacks in history" from "an enemy unlike any other this nation has ever faced." Britons should not be smile at this hyperbole. The same madness afflicts Jacqui Smith's Home Office.
In the 1960s the American political scientist, Richard Hofstadter, puzzled over the anti-intellectualism of much of American public life, echoing the remark of the Puritan, John Cotton, in 1642 that "the more learned and witty you bee, the more fit to act for Satan." Listening to the debate on Tuesday I realised how deep is that strand, how strong the line of descent to the war on terror from previous generations who likewise puffed up the mafia and home-grown communism.
The 1950s Kefauver commission on organised crime sought a foe to demonise as foreign, sinister and ubiquitous. The inquiry found that there was no national "mafia" worthy of the name, or of their attention, just disparate bunches of local hoodlums. Kefauver and the FBI whose burgeoning empire depended on him, were furious. They had come to need the mafia and its menace to justify their budget, effort and status.
The same synthetic sense of fear enveloped the McCarthy hearings on communism. A grain of truth was exaggerated to boost McCarthy's standing as a defender of the people against a real and present danger, that of reds under every bed. Communism had to be erected as an internal weapon of mass destruction, and much cruelty resulted.
At least organised crime and communism posed genuine threats to American liberties. Al-Qaeda does not, yet it has become the ruling obsession of Bush's courtiers. They see al-Qaeda fiends on every side, bearded mullahs, caches of bombs, ricin and anthrax. The precautionary principle has become fanaticised. By treating the unknown as an enemy, we ensure that the unknown becomes one.
Most the outrages committed by graduates of the Pakistan terrorism camps are locally motivated, and will continue as long as such motivation survives. A network of criminal suicide squads with no coherent programme has no conceivable hope of undermining western democracy. It can just set off bombs, and will always do so if front-line policing is weak and constantly overruled by a grand "counter-terrorism" bureaucracy.
Just when America had won a real victory in the century-old combat with communism, it allowed itself to be terrified by a band of fanatics who, in part through America's negligence, "got lucky once" and pulled off a coup on 9/11. For seven years its behaviour at home and image abroad have been dogged by the reaction to it. The challenge to Obama, here as elsewhere is immense.
The attractive feature of the America in which I once lived was its bold self-confidence. To find the survivors of the Bush presidency still cowering in a mental bunker afraid of a bunch of Arabs -- and with British ministers for company -- strips western democracy of a leadership that should be both heroic and sensible. It is surely an un-American activity.
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OK, you've put the fear of terrorism in perspective, and thank you, I needed a jolt of this viewpoint. But aren't you maybe going too far, and into complacency?
I've wondered what all these terrorist attacks are about. They seem like big-boom-boom temper tantrums that accomplish nothing, unless just killing people is the objective. If the goal is nihilistic, these tactics are futile.
Until they get biological, chemical or nuclear weapons. If they get them, they'll use them; there's no deterrent of mutually assured destruction.
I see this as almost inevitable, but I don't know enough to really assess likelihood.
Make something happen, sit back and wait for people to demand they do something ,and do what you want,,
The whole myth of a "war against terror" has driven us into bad international standing and into moral and financial bankruptcy. What happened on 911 was not a declaration of war. It was a crime, committed by a band of very smart and vicious people. Crimes are normally not investigated and the criminals not captured by the military, but by the FBI and law enforcement. The war in Iraq was a feeble attempt to execute somebody not related to 911 at all. Bush and his band used the crime to finish what daddy did not do. They dishonored everything that America stood for and created a fear polluted fear thermometer in five colors. Terrorism as a fact has been happening since the onset of civilization on what was rightfully or unjustly used against farmers, slaves, lunatics, fanatics and zealots. Whoever was in charge or majority determined what terrorism was: either a pretense for war or a crime. If it was a pretense, then the government was the criminal, otherwise the aggressor. We had the empathy and help of almost the whole world on our side. An enormous capital that could have let to the perpetrators, trials and convictions. Instead we are charged with an illegal war, torture, violation of the Geneva convention and as liars.
Under the Khmer Rouge Cambodia saw nearly 25% of it's people killed. On September 11, America lost 1/1,000 of 1% of it's population. Cambodians do not live in fear.
Terrorists are not an invading army, because they do not represent enough of the population to raise an army. They rely on people cowering in fear way out of proportion to their threat. I never approved of Homeland Security, The US Patriot Act, the suspention of large portions of the US Constution, nor any of the mostly useless infringements of our freedom.
Repudiate Bush and Cheney.
Kill terrorists, but never cower.
To all the progressives out there: Like it or not, we have NOT been a t t a c k e d since 9/11, and some of you act like that never happened. Anyway, seeing as Bush is taking the hits for ALL of the economic problems we as a country face, couldn't you be fair minded enough to give him kudos in the safety of our country department? Of course you won't because everything progressives do is about political expediency. Tsk, tsk,...how long will it take y'all to t e a r PE Obama apart, eh?
We haven't been attacked since 911 because we don't live next door to our enemies. Impoverished bomb victims seeking revenge against us just can't simply strap on a bomb, walk across our borders, and blow themselves up in a shopping mall. We can't even keep illegal drugs out of our country, so logic would dictate that we couldn't stop terrorist bombs here if Iraq and Iran were our neighbors instead of Mexico and Canada.
Another thing to keep in mind is that Bin Laden achieved things against the U.S that enemy armies could never do. That is, force the U.S. to spend trillions of dollars fighting a war that can theoretically go on forever, which is what we are doing. With a handful of men, Bin Laden set up the U.S. to look like a scared bunch of warmongering bullies who only want to attack Muslims and their religion. OBL apparently doesn't have to keep attacking the U.S. when he got all he wanted in only one attack.
Ant, we haven't been attacked here because we have fed Al Qaida with a steady diet of Americans right in Al Qaida's back yard. They didn't have to come to America to kill Americans, they have killed roughly 4,000 of them in Iraq and Afghanistan. Al Qaida internet postings celebrated the convenience the Bush policy afforded them, both in access to killable Americans and in their own recruiting efforts.
I'm not afraid of terrorism, and I never was.
I'm more afraid of driving in my car or crossing the street, to be honest.
I'm more afraid of choking on an M&M
Was this the terrorists plan all along? Conditions couldn't have been better with a president with an obvious cowboy mentality. Many credit Bush with keeping us save since 9/11, but maybe, with "W" as president, the terrorists saw a golden opportunity to launch this hideous attack and watch his (our) responses. Maybe they knew we would be willing to sacrificed so much, (constitution, international relationships, economic security etc.) they didn't need to attack us again. Maybe they see the change of conditions in this country as a continuing victory. Maybe 9/11 wasn't the end of their plan, but just the beginning. The full effects of the attack are still hurting this country, maybe that was the plan all along. Afterall, the attack not only affected this country's policy, it affected the attitudes, with the rhetoric of the policy makers (to justify their responses) of its citizens.
Perhaps many of you would enjoy William Bradley's "12 Key Things About The Mumbai Crisis" that's currently up on Huff Po ...
In the spring of 2003, I looked into the eyes of my fellow Americans, and saw nothing but fear. I left the United States, and moved to Costa Rica, I returned last year. People who are afraid are easily manipulated. Orange Alert, duct tape, daily terrorist warnings from Tom Ridge, Patriot Act, Department of Homeland Security, on and on. You're not safe on the bridge, in the shopping malls, at school, in the subway, even in your own home.
It was brilliant. And it worked. Americans gladly handed over their liberty for a false sense of security. Gradually, Americans caught on, and all the bogus warnings started to lose their effect. Finally, after three years, Americans voted for Democrats, and eventually elected Obama.
Now, a new fear has emerged, to replace the tired old terrorist fear tactic. Economic Fear. And once again, Americans will hand over their economic freedom, for a false sense of economic security. They will be asked to give up their retirements, pensions, workers rights, etc. The bailouts are a perfect example. Give us all your money or the economy will collapse, you will lose your job, and we will enter into depression.
Americans are the most fearful people I have ever met. They are afraid of almost everything, and of each other, and so are easily manipulated by thieves and demagogues.
Looks like it might be time to check out to Costa Rican real estate ads again.
"Americans are the most fearful people I have ever met. They are afraid of almost everything, and of each other, and so are easily manipulated by thieves and demagogues", says RetireGreen.
It's a new (Bush2-inspired) phenomenon. I agree that fear of economic insecurity is replacing terrarism as the new bugaboo. Except that this one may affect many, many more people, where it hurts.
I have hopes that President Obama can make us proud, prosperous (in a decent, sustainable way), and unafraid Americans again.
Save Me Save Me and bless the duct tape.
Bush's mantra of "be afraid, be very afraid" has turned the citizenry of the U.S. into sniveling cowards.
The media have been complicit in all the fear-mongering. Once-respected nationally read newspapers have become ugly tabloids. And the same ambiance reigns on radio and television. One of the first things the Obama administration should do is to undo the media consolidation that has allowed conservati
Right-wing commentators are profitable. Left-wing commentators are not. Guess why? Because no one believes them. And advertisers do not spend their money on left-wing commentators, because they know the money is NOT being spent wisely.
Get some left-wing commentators that make sense, and MAYBE they can draw listeners, until then, keep the GOVERNMENT away from what we listen to...
No, Adam -- the allocation of the slots on the airwaves has been politicized, by design, since Reagan. The reason you don't hear many liberal voices is that they are barred from entry. What you are spouting, "left-wing commentators are not [profitable]", is a right-wing talking point to obfuscate their monopoly of the PUBLICLY-OWNED airwaves.
First off, a minor quibble with major importance for the discussion: Roosevelt's maxim is actually the reverse of how it has here been stated ("to stop fearing fear itself"). FDR's famous words are: "The only thing we have to fear is... fear itself." The real danger presented by fear exceeds all else... whether real, potential, or merely imagined..
That said, let's talk about whether anyone "got lucky once" and pulled off a coup on 9/11."
Unbelievably enough, the evidence does not support that 'official' allegation.
There are many _very_ inconvenient facts -- evidence that can neither be disputed nor dismissed -- which raise very disturbing questions.
Fear is a consistent winner for BushCo, Inc. The disaster of 9/11 completed Bush's "trifecta," as he called it shortly thereafter, and gave him the near-dictatorship that he -- and Cheney -- had lusted after. They have since looted the federal Treasury. Follow the money... ask "who benefits?"
Nobody gets so lucky that they achieve the physically impossible or countermand the laws of physics.
Jenkins comes away from a debate with Karl Rove, watches some cable news, and proceeds to make generalizations about "Americans" cowering in fear. This is standard operating procedure for Guardian types, unfortunately.
Who, exactly, told the British to "grow up" in regard to IRA attacks? I never heard that.
This article reads like it was written in 2003, not 2008. You might have noticed we had an election a month ago, where the keynote was hope, not fear.
Having lived through the IRA campaign on mainland Britain in the 70's, I can tell you the British reaction to terror is far more practical and directed.
First off, the The British Government didn't react to the sustained IRA bombings by declaring war on Eire and strafing Dublin.
If you understand this much, then you'll know there's a history of antagonism between the Irish and the British which culminated in an armed struggle being sustained for much of the 20th century between Republican Catholics and Loyalist Protestants.
No such history exists between the wholly manufactured entity known as 'Al-Qaeda' and the so called 'West'.
What was and still remains the CRIME of the 21st century was never an act of war and the wrong People are being mercilessly persecuted for said malfeasance whose perpetrators are far closer to home....
Just like the man says (Jenkins) Americans are being suckered into fearing a non-existent enemy and trained like Pavlovs dogs to bark at the mention of the words like 'liberal', 'socialist' ,'Muslim' or 'Arab'....
As the above comment is a complete non sequitor, and the commenter claims that Al Quaeda is "wholly manufactured," I will only say
Thanks for the laugh.
And these thoughts respond to mine because...
We are guaranteed freedom not safety, in the constitution. As long as we have the second amendment, we don't need the government to protect us. The rich, of course, have a lot to fear, because they have the most to loose or as Janis put it "freedom's just another word for nothin left to loose"
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