The Politics of Fear
The first pages of Seymour Hersh's book Chain of Command give a horrifying look inside the bureaucracy of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib -- the meetings of high-level officials, the memos exchanged, and the promises that something will be done. It is a disturbing, though not wholly unexpected, glimpse of the disconnect between the conditions of prisoners and the cool discussion of what to do about it.
But instead of making me outraged or determined to do something about it, the book forced me to remember the circumstances that allowed such atrocities in the first place. We've seen the images hundreds of times -- the planes plummeting into buildings, grey dust covering Manhattan, the collapsed wall of the Pentagon. And because we've witnessed these horrors again and again, we forget one very important thing -- on Sept. 11, and for days and weeks and months afterwards, we were scared. We knew it could have been any one of us on those planes or in those buildings. We didn't know why we were being attacked. And we didn't know what was going to happen next.
That's the funny thing about being afraid of something: you want someone to protect you. Our government tried to fill that void, armed with the PATRIOT Act and promises of more and better security. They had a willing populace, people who were ready to give over just a little bit of their civil liberties to make sure they were safe on airplanes and in cities. And then they were willing to give up a little more. Just to make us safe.
That's the funny thing about being safe: you never really are. But you believe you could be. So to stop that little tremble that runs through you even time you see a plane fly low, you nod your head when they ask if they can wiretap the phones of terrorists. Or drop bombs on Afghanistan. Or question prisoners who may know exactly where and when the next attack will come.
So we can rail against the administration for Abu Ghraib and shake our heads for the injustices of Guantanamo, but there was certainly a little part of me, perhaps of all of us, that would have let the government do anything after Sept. 11 to make sure that I and all the people I loved were protected. I certainly feel somewhat complicit in what my governement has done in my name. And now I'm not sure what to do to take back that little piece of power I gave up when I nodded my head and said, "Protect me. Please."
posted by Sammy @ 11:33 AM
2 Comments:
How brave you are to tell the truth about the fear we all shared. The peace movement has to acknowledge the reality of this fear and ask "What would it really take to make us safe?" To answer that we have to go back to the time before Sept 11. I considered assigning the Sept 11 report from Congress for this class, it's slow reading but it does reveal something about how ignorance and denial worked to make us less safe. Not knowing how the rest of the world lives, sees things, reacts - we pay a price for that. Bye, Prof. M
I think you're absolutely right. Ignorance breeds fear, and our ignorance of certain parts of the world is certainly one reason why the politicians have been able to manipulate our fear so effectively. So maybe this all goes back to my Somalia post -- the first step in fighting fear is to recognize our lack of knowledge and attempt to correct it.
Post a Comment
<< Home