| Commentary | ||
|
NOVELS The Moon Pool
MAX
MCCOY
COMMENTARY
OTHER
STUFF
|
This column was first posted March 1, 2003, and revised March 4, 2003. During this time, my website was blacked out to protest the coming war in Iraq. So as not be misunderstood, let me make it clear that I wholeheartedly support our men and women in uniform, and that they should always be our first concern. But since no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, it has become clear that the American people were lied to about the reasons for the invasion. Iraq also had little if any connection to the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001. And speaking of which, whatever happened to Osama bin Laden? Why are we spending billions in Iraq instead of using it to bring bin Laden to justice? The answers, unfortunately, involve oil and the destruction of the American way of life -- by Americans. This website is temporarily closed to urge you to JUST SAY NO TO WARRespectful
dissent is not unpatriotic While terrorists succeeded in taking thousands of American
lives in the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, the attack on our way of
life is being mounted daily from within. We are bargaining away our liberty in
exchange for the illusion of safety. The freedoms that our fathers and
grandfathers fought for on the beaches of Normandy and in the jungles of the
Pacific are being whittled away in the name of "homeland security." We have entered a constant state of war with no
identifiable objective. The "War on Terror"
is not a war at all but an Orwellian campaign using fear, uncertainty,
and other unpleasant emotions. Since fear will be with us always, so might this
war. The color-coded alert assumes a constant state of anxiety. There is never
an "all clear." The risk may be low and green, but it is always
present -- from somebody, somewhere. And, when our anxiety is bounced to the
next higher shade, the source of information the risk assessment is based on need
never be revealed. It's all part of the package of secret courts and holding
people in jail without charging them (or releasing their names to the press) and
generally assuming an attitude of "why do you need rights, if you have
nothing to hide?" We had already begun teaching the next generation to
always be afraid, to expect "zero tolerance" (meaning hang your rights
at the door) when entering public schools, and to treat with intolerance and
suspicion those who think for themselves. The groundwork was laid with the
"War on Drugs," and we all know how well that little police
action has turned out. Yes, drugs are bad. Meth is particularly destructive. But
who hasn't known a friend or relative whose life was ruined for a non-violent
drug offense, and our prisons are filled with these people, who will serve far more
time than rapists and murderers.
The drug war provided a beachhead to sidestep the
Constitutional protections again unreasonable search and seizure and other
rights, and provided cash incentives for police to seize property (because local
departments share in the proceeds). And here in the Midwest, you're even at the
risk of losing your money, your car, and maybe even your house for possessing an
amount of marijuana that elsewhere would be an offense comparable to a traffic
ticket. You could even end up in prison for just purchasing the right
combination of household materials necessary to make illegal drugs, regardless
of your intent. Punishing people for what they might do may seem pragmatic to
some, but it is contradictory to the American ideal of justice. For a long while, I had doubts about this new "war," but kept them to myself. After Sept. 11 we were in a state of national emergency. We had been under attack. So I gave President Bush the benefit of the doubt, and I kept silent even though I was alarmed at the way Attorney General John Ashcroft was handling the detention of suspects. I kept flying even though I thought the new restrictions would impose a greater hardship on law-abiding citizens who follow orders and stand in lines than any potential terrorist. I even kept my tongue when some mouthpieces for the radical right labeled as "traitors" those members of Congress who didn't applaud President Bush's speeches at the “appropriate” moments. But now, the Taliban has been removed in
Afghanistan. The immediate crisis has been dealt with. And despite some critics
announcing "the death of irony," irony seems to have made a comeback
in America. We haven't been scared witless after all. We have survived, even
though Osama bin
Laden has escaped, despite our best efforts. So why are we starting a new war against Iraq while bin Laden is
still free, when most of the world disagrees with us, and when our leaders can't
present a convincing argument as to why Saddam Hussein is a threat to Americans? Yes, he's a deplorable
man who has done terrible things to his own people, and we should have removed
him from power after we won the Gulf War (and speaking of the Gulf War, we
should note that Kuwait still has not met its decade-old promise to
improve human rights). Of course Hussein has violated his promise to disarm.
Did anyone expect otherwise? Is it worth risking the lives of three hundred thousand
American servicemen and women, and the lives of thousands more Iraqi civilians
who will be caught in the crossfire, to finally remove him from power? My suspension of disbelief finally collapsed, and I decided to speak out, when I heard Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld say the use of nuclear weapons by America could not be ruled out, given the state of the crisis with Iraq. Beg your pardon? Now, don't get me wrong. Nobody who knows me could accuse me of being a pacifist. But I wonder if Rumsfeld has ever spoken to a survivor of a nuclear attack. I have. Dozens, in fact. Let me explain.
During the mid-1980s I
was an Akiba fellow and spent five weeks in Japan, interviewing the aging survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These were
not Imperial soldiers, but hard-pressed Japanese citizens who were treated as
little more than than slave labor by the government to support the huge Imperial
war effort. And even though they were better off in the long run because of
American intervention, these ordinary citizens lost friends and
family members, either instantly or agonizingly slowly, to the atomic bombings.
Parents in their eighties still wept for children they had not seen since one
morning in August 1945. And in all of the hundreds of hours of conversations I had with
these hibakusha (Japanese for
"those who received the bomb"), one phrase was used over and over again
to describe the experience: "It was beyond imagination." Now, in 2003, the American secretary of defense is telling
us that using an unimaginable weapon, in a preemptive war, is again within the realm of
U.S. possibilities. Have we, as a society, become so
desensitized to violence that we not only swallow the notion that a constant
state of war is necessary, but that nukes might be acceptable? Did we learn
nothing from the Cold War? Have we forgotten
the bad old days (in 1953) when the Doomsday Clock stood at two minutes
to midnight? The clock now remains at seven minutes, where it was placed in 2002. Desperate to bolster public opinion, President Bush -- in
a "had to burn the village to save it" kind of
reasoning -- has told us that a war against Iraq would be the best thing
for the Iraqi people. But if we are truly concerned about global human rights,
then why didn't we do anything when the Rwandans were killing one another? And
why haven't we done anything about slavery in Sudan, the AIDS pandemic, and the victims of torture
worldwide? I suspect it would have been different had any of these issues
intersected with one of the world's largest oil reserves.. Disagree with me? Good. We're lucky enough to live in a
country where it isn't a crime to disagree with anybody -- me, the government,
or somebody else's idea of how God wants you to behave. So let's use this
essential freedom to have a reasoned debate on this issue, instead of jingoism. Agree with me?
Good. Contact your Congressional delegation, write a letter to the editor, post
a message on the Internet. Talk to your family, friends and neighbors.
Contribute to the discourse. We are negotiating a dangerous passage in our life as a nation. It is easy, when driven by fear, to over-react -- to strike out, to punish others, to want to make them pay. In today's paper, the Associated Press reports that every means "just short of torture" are being employed to extract information from a captured terrorist leader. The location of the suspect, who is in U.S. custody, was not known, the AP reported. This should give every American pause. Even though this man, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, may be an accomplice to mass murder, the idea that American interrogators have the blackjack and lead pipe within reach is disturbing. Can the jumper cables to the testicles be far behind? If we are literarily engaged in a "War on Terror," why aren't we treating our prisoners in accordance with the Geneva Convention? We expect those who would fly airliners into skyscrapers to act like thugs. We should expect something better from ourselves. By acting arbitrarily, by engaging in what appears to be a ham-fisted attempt to secure an illusory sense of safety, we are handing the terrorists victory. We are helping them destroy our way of life. No missile could do it as effectively. From here and forever, let us take the measure of our situation, both here and abroad, and act appropriately. Let us back away from the realm of the unimaginable. Let's stop the cycle of violence now. Americans are traditionally reluctant to back wars in which we weren't attacked first, and let's keep it that way. Now is the time to speak out, before American troops are again in harm's way on foreign soil, before any more foolish cries of "treason" are uttered when people speak their conscience, and before the knock on the door comes in the middle of the night and you find yourself questioned about your loyalty "just short of torture" in an undisclosed location. -- Max McCoy Go to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
|
