James Wagner

Ok, we just found out that the world is a dangerous place, but America is making it more dangerous, in fact as well as in its imagination.

We are like a nation that has had a psychological break and is descending into rank paranoia. The destruction of the twin towers shows that there are things to be afraid of, but our government’s mad responses are making us more vulnerable to such things, not less.
The ”war on terrorism” has strengthened the hand of those who hate America. The US example of ”overwhelming force” has pushed the Middle East into the abyss and has dragged India-Pakistan to its edge. The only real protections against cross-border terrorism are international structures of criminal justice like the recently established International Criminal Court, yet an ”unsigning” United States slaps the court down with contempt.
Since September we have squandered our wealth and focus on a huge war while neglecting police work and intelligence at home and abroad. Hence the vagueness of the current warning. And how dare our government set off alarms about Cuba’s putative bioterrorism project while it has done nothing to apprehend the anthrax killer? Oh, and – forgive me, just asking – where is Osama?

Castro is apparently no longer a threat to the Western Hemisphere, but only a weight on the shoulders of his own people. Bushie says we must continue the embargo designed by our Cold War, but now it is because he’s not democratic enough, or sufficiently capitalistic.

“I want you to know that I know what trade means with a tyrant,” Mr. Bush said. “It means that we will underwrite tyranny, and we cannot let that happen.”

“For 43 years, every election in Cuba has been a fraud and a sham,” Mr. Bush said. “Mr. Castro, once, just once, show that you’re unafraid of a real election.”

Well I think we smell a rat. No free elections in Cuba? Does he mean that Castro lacks the legitimacy of a Supreme Court appointment? And even ignoring our own shortcomings, shouldn’t we be boycotting, among others, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, China, any number of former Soviet Union republics, and certainly Pakistan, rather than allying ourselves ever more closely with these non-democratic, occasionally capitalistic model states in the fight against freelance terrorism?
We don’t understand. Please help us out, Bushie.

So, this supposedly democratic nation with its famed Bill of Rights cannot keep us safe without disregarding its own principles and standards. And, since we have been told that the “war on terorism” will continue until there is no terrorism (freelance) anywhere on the planet, we can expect never to see those principles and standards again.

HACKENSACK, N.J., May 20 — Justice Department lawyers, defending the federal government’s refusal to identify the 1,200 foreign Muslims arrested after Sept. 11, said today that public disclosure would undermine counterterrorism efforts and put the detainees at risk of attack from angry Americans as well as terrorists.
Appearing before the Appellate Division of State Superior Court, the government lawyers insisted that national security interests outweighed any public right to know who is being kept in its jails, why and for how long.
“This is not secrecy for secrecy’s sake,” said Robert D. McCallum Jr., the assistant attorney general in charge of the department’s civil division.
He added that revealing the names of detainees, even those cleared by investigators of involvement with terrorism, might open them to attack by American “vigilantes” or allow terrorists to piece together details of the government’s counterterrorism efforts.
The arguments were the latest in a series of attempts by the Bush administration to justify its assertion of sweeping powers to hold secret immigration hearings, conceal the identities of foreign detainees and imprison people as material witnesses, all in the name of fighting terrorism.
In every case heard in the last few months, federal and state district judges in New York, New Jersey and Michigan have ruled against the government and in favor of disclosure.

Should we bother pointing out that these detainees were rounded up within our borders and most remain concentrated in camps (oops, Jails) largely in two New Jersey counties?
And is it still necessaary to point out that in all of the Government’s counterterrorism efforts since September 11, among all of those detained after that date, here in the U.S. in Afghanistan, Cuba or anywhere else, not one person has yet been charged, other than John Walker Lindh?

Are we really sacrificing our liberties, and those of much of the rest of the world, and ignoring almost all domestic problems, to virtually no effect in the “war on terrorism?” Say it ain’t so!
In the past six months, virtually any allied operation in Afghanistan has, upon examination, turned out to look about as farcical as the next.

Brigadier Lane complains that the [Al-Qaida/Taliban] are “not showing a predisposition to reorganize and regroup to mount offensive operations against us”. They just won’t come out to play. Well, would you if the place was crawling with some of the most sophisticated weaponry in the world? Far better to lie low and look after your goats, or visit some relatives over the border in Miram Shah in Pakistan’s Waziristan, and brush up your Koranic chanting. [JAW—I know, the phrasing betrays a certain British cultural sarcasm at the very least]

Any [Al-Qaida/Taliban] strategist can rely on the fact that their commitment and patience will comfortably outstrip that of the western soldiers currently trudging up and down the mountains of eastern Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, like any terrorist organization, doesn’t need a base in Afghanistan to launch its attacks, while the Taliban can sit tight, quietly recruiting and regrouping, before re-emerging in Afghan politics. It’s an ignominious ending to the triumphalism of the fall of Kabul just over six months ago.

Afghanistan offered the perfect solution to September 11 – a massive expiation of US anger and, more subtly, guilt. Dropping all those bombs felt doubly good: it was retaliation for a terrible crime, but also getting rid of an evil regime. The emotional rush was everything; whether the latter actually worked has fallen off most people’s radar screen. They’re not interested. The selective memory means that what is remembered is that a few women in Kabul threw off their burkas in November, not that many more women in northern Afghanistan have been raped since then in a wave of ethnic revenge against the Pashtun. Nor is anyone much interested that since the fall of the Taliban, the old lawlessness of highway looting and illegal road tolls has re-emerged. Or that in the past few months there have been at least two major conflicts between warlords – in Mazar-i-Sharif and in Gardez – as an uneasy truce awaits the results of next month’s loya jirga.

But maybe we can do better in Iraq, North Korea, the Phillipines, and all the other evil hotspots we still have to straighten-out.

How did we get here?
How many times have we heard that so many people voted for Bushie because he was the kind of guy you’d want to have a beer with (whether or not he would want to on his part). I asked my own Mr. B what I thought was a rhetorical question, “Do people pick their doctors that way?” He said he thought they do. Lawyers too. Wow.
It’s got to be only because presidents, doctors and lawyers aren’t really that important—unless you really need them, and most decent Americans do not, of course.
So what about your auto mechanic (or plumber, if you are a New Yorker)? Is it more important to imagine having a beer with him or her, or to expect he or she can fix the car for a decent price?
Ok, let’s admit it now, we all really need a president, not another drinking partner.

The following quote is posted not for the status of its source (modest), but for its pithy timeliness:

It is more than investigation of possible counterterrorism oversight that [the Bush administration is] resisting. They are resisting the erosion of the dissent-free culture of political orthodoxy that has dominated this nation’s for the last eight months — and it comes not a moment too soon.
The President who couldn’t even name the leader of Pakistan has embarked on a foreign-policy nightmare. America has allied itself with a number of flagrantly undemocratic nations, from Uzbekistan to Malaysia. Evidence emerges almost daily of our probable role in an aborted coup in Venezuela, while our support of a brutal civil war in Columbia resembles the early years of Vietnam. One and a half million troops are massed at the India-Pakistan border, ready to plunge the Indian subcontinent into chaos. War with Iraq looms. The situation in Israel and Palestine threatens to destabilize the entire region, and our policies in the Holy Land risk birthing a new generation of anti-American terrorists.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration has revived talk of using nuclear weapons on a first-strike basis, overturned the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, declined to sign a biological weapons treaty, hid our own production of biological weapons, refused to recognize International Criminal Court, held up the World Council on Children, and — after rejecting the Kyoto Accords — replaced the head of the International Panel on Climate Change. Domestically, we have an energy policy written by the same people responsible for staging an energy ‘crisis’ that cost the state of California $30 billion. The denial of public inquiry into the matter was justified with an invocation of, more or less, the divine right of kings — fitting, perhaps, given the administration’s disregard of the Constitution in the name of fighting terrorism.
To top it all off, contrary to Bush’s campaign promises, our budget deficit is at least $121 billion — and, according to a note from Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill in our government’s 2001 financial report, it may actually run to half a trillion dollars.
The time has come to lift the star-spangled shroud of silence that has hidden the affairs of our nation.