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July 12, 2007

From Fear to Hope and Back in Less than 24 Hours

Last night, my very persuasive husband and I had a discussion about the War and President Bush that made me want to believe that the President means well and truly believes he is doing the right thing in Iraq. We then watched, for the first time, the Oliver Stone movie "World Trade Center," which tells the story of two of the Port Authority officers who were trapped in the collapsed buildings on 9/11 and rescued many hours later. If you have seen the movie, you know that it is very patriotic and brings back the emotions we all felt so deeply on that fateful day. So with an open mind and forgiving spirit, I looked forward to this morning's press conference with the President. I wanted to give him a chance to allay my concerns about the war and convince me that we were doing the right thing over there. I was deeply disappointed.

I won't get into the details here because I'm sure many others will analyze his responses, but in a nutshell what struck me was that the reporters asked all the right questions and gave the President every opportunity to address the doubts and concerns plaguing the minds of many Americans, but he repeatedly skirted the issues and dodged the questions, instead sticking to his well-worn script, which has been repeatedly shown to be pure fantasy. I was left with the sinking feeling that my cynicism - and my fear - were based more on truth than was my hope.

John Feffer has a lengthy, but powerful piece today in the Asia Times entitled, "The core misconceptions in the 'war on terror'" that seems particularly apropos. In it, Feffer offers the sort of hopeful approach I was looking for from our President this morning.

A just counter-terrorism policy would shift the focus away from military solutions, which have done so little to improve the security of the United States and have sent Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia into tailspins of insecurity. It would focus on strengthening homeland security and the international mechanisms that hold terrorists accountable. And it would attack the enabling conditions that are laid out in this document - economic inequality, the international health crisis, unjust dictatorships, and regional wars.

The Chinese have a saying: before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves. The US pursuit of vengeance, rather than justice, has been similarly self-defeating.

Feffer makes many excellent points:

- An "artificially prolonged state of fear" has led America to misidentify terrorists, see dangers that do not exist, and jump to military solutions instead of engaging in diplomacy.

Even during the Cold War, the United States negotiated with the object of its worst fears. The current regime of fear is more theological in nature. "We don't negotiate with evil," Vice President Dick Cheney famously remarked. "We defeat evil." [4] In such a struggle against "evil", all means can be justified, as they were during the Crusades and the Inquisition. By putting the "fear of the Devil "into the American public, the Bush administration has acquired carte blanche to transform not only certain US policies but the entire policy-making structure.

- Terrorism is not the product of poverty, oppressive government, or religion. "The roots of terrorist support lie in despair … [which] derives from a combination of unjust economic, political, and geopolitical conditions."

- The widespread misconceptions that "we need a war in the first place, that terrorists represent a major threat to US national interests, [and] that terrorists are attacking 'our way of life'" must be addressed if we are to find a solution to this mess. Feffer addresses these misconceptions one by one, carefully setting aside irrational fear and looking at the issues factually, so as to dissipate the fear. I hope you will take the time to read what he has to say.

In case you don't pop through to read Feffer's article, his conclusion is excellent:

In his 1941 State of the Union Address, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt talked about Four Freedoms. The first two - freedom of speech and religion - came directly from the US constitution. The third, freedom from want, derived from the experience of the Great Depression of the 1930s. But the fourth one, freedom from fear, spoke to a public facing the escalation of a world war that would, before the year was out, engulf the United States.

Today, the US government has forgotten that this fourth freedom is as precious as the other three. Fear created the "global war on terror." Fear propelled the invasion of Iraq. Fear plucked Maher Arar from the immigration line at JFK airport and consigned him to a year of torture and imprisonment.

Fear is the greatest weapon of terrorists. When it becomes our greatest weapon, too, what does that make us?

A similar statement was made by a soldier who recently returned from Iraq:

Sergeant Camilo Mejía, 31, from Miami, National Guardsman, 1-124 Infantry Battalion, 53rd Infantry Brigade. Six-month tour beginning April 2003

"I just remember thinking, 'I just brought terror to someone under the American flag'."

Is it any wonder why, when our government blames outrageous acts on "terrorists," tells us about "gut feelings" about forthcoming "terrorist" attacks, tells us we must sacrifice our civil rights to protect us from the "terrorists," and refuses to address our legitimate concerns, many of us are increasingly inclined to view our own government with fear?

Posted by Becky at July 12, 2007 12:02 PM