| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"N. Czerniak" |
| Date: |
04 Mar 2004 02:07:12 PM |
| Object: |
War and the Plague of Fear |
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0302-12.htm
This Plague of Fear: A Thought by a Writer
by Magie Dominic
March 2, 2004
Wars are fueled by fear.
We have all known the ghost of war and felt its effect. It collapses into
the pillow with us and invades our dreams at night. It wakes with us in the
morning, and follows us to work. It creeps into our music, our thoughts, our
conversations. It marches silently into our future.
We are living a lifetime filled with violent and unforgettable images and a
country suffering from a collective post traumatic stress disorder. We are
being spoken to and guided by an administration which has successfully
capitalized on those fears in the past and continues to capitalize on them
in the present.
The new escalating and costly war on terrorism is becoming a war in the
mind, a tool eroding civil liberties. The ultimate war is control of the
mind.
We have all seen the ghosts of war. World War I, World War II and Korea. We'
ve witnessed Vietnam, and bloody body bags carried across television screens
nightly. Seen the broken hearts and broken minds. Vietnam requires no
adjectives - or it needs a thousand. It doesn't need a date to define it.
Vietnam was the sixties. Iraq was the nineties. And is now the next century.
Everything else fell in between.
Today people watch war on television and the Internet - watch actual bombs
fall in actual time. We see guided smart bombs hitting their marks, or
missing, as the case may be.
***** Cheney, as Secretary of Defense, said in a statement before the Senate
Armed Forces Committee in 1991, "We are the only nation on this earth that
could assemble the forces of peace".
***** Cheney is manipulating our very vocabulary. Force and peace may as well
be opposites. Peace can't be forced. It can't be owned by one side. Peace
steps outside the parameters of language as we know it. It is borderless,
un-claimable; the same everywhere; only the flags are different.
In 2002 President Bush signed a bill called The Enhanced Border Security and
Reform Act designed to shut the borders to terrorists worldwide. A move
dictated by law and order. But international writers, musicians and
filmmakers have been shut out as well or unfairly harassed. Havana-based
film director Humberto Solas was prevented from attending a tribute to his
own work. Kayhan Kalhor, the Canadian-Iranian instrumentalist, was
fingerprinted, photographed and searched. The writer, Margaret Atwood, was
denied entrance, had to leave the airport and obtain additional
documentation, then missed her flight to the United States. The director of
a small Michigan music festival said he would no longer consider
non-American acts because the financial risk caused by cancellations was too
great. We have all become prisoners, those forbidden to speak and those
forbidden to listen.
Fear of terrorism invades the air. It invades the air in Lower Manhattan
where a permanent wrought iron fence surrounds The New York Stock Exchange.
Built as a barricade to terrorism it extends about four feet into the air
and down the center of the street. Pedestrians walk on one side, an armed
presence stands on the other. Pick-up trucks block intersections. On one
bitter cold, unforgiving January morning this year, uniformed guards and
police tried to keep warm by moving from one foot to the other. Weather was
the enemy that day. Along the small winding streets the armed presence
resembled something from old black and white movies, stories of
dictatorships in countries far away. This is how cities are captured. Street
by street, block by block, everything fueled by terror and fear. With every
radio announcement, every television special report, every multi colored
terrorist alert, fear is heightened and the airwaves become filled with
jargon, "weapons of mass destruction related program activities". The plague
of fear erodes hope and we rush each day past the obvious.
During The Vietnam War there was a shift in family definition. War does
something to families; it does something to its heart, to its foundation.
Two distinct families came into being, the blood family and a chosen one,
and the dynamics of the chosen family often changed as people aged or moved.
Those who moved away were often ostracized by their blood family and a claim
to structure or foundation was removed.
Children born in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, and into this set of
dynamics, entered a community-less world at a time when the world was
desperate for structure and coming apart at the seams. Born in the sixties
and seventies and now struggling in the face of a collapsing economy, AIDS,
and laser wars, they are often distanced both geographically and emotionally
from any form of extended family.
We have all entered a surreal state of orphan- hood and are now being asked
to live in a state of government induced fear because it's for our own good.
The government will be our new family. We are asked to surrender our civil
rights without question, and to be loyal to an administration which is
questionable at best.
The wrought iron fence at Wall Street is a deterrent, yes, but not only to a
person on a suicide mission. It is also a deterrent to hope, hope for the
future, a fortress to fear of the other. If "fear of the other" continues to
fester we will be waging war with each other, citizen against citizen, state
against state.
It may be time for vigilance, yes, - but not only for enemies from outside
the border. It may be time to be aware of ourselves - of a military like
presence creeping into our cities. To watch what we are told to think and
allowed to believe. To be aware of how often the word terror is used on the
airwaves. And if that word is changing how we think and how we speak. To be
aware of which countries have excess and which are impoverished - to
question the very wealthy for not helping the destitute. If we truthfully
are all part of the same world what does this mean now in the face of famine
and war?
There are hundreds of computers inside The New York Stock Exchange and these
computers are hooked up to hundreds of other computers worldwide. A
biological or chemical weapon isn't needed to paralyze the system, if this
should ever become someone's intention. It could possibly be paralyzed with
the flick of a switch. Despite the costly military like presence on the
streets of lower Manhattan, the computers and money are not secure. Only the
military presence is.
In the words of ***** Cheney, "DOD (Department of Defense) is eliminating
unnecessary management levels, limiting unneeded reporting requirements,
reducing burdensome regulations". He went on to say, "Our military presence
will remain a key factor in our national defense strategy. Presence can take
many forms". "We are at the dawn of a new era". We are at the dawn of a new
era indeed.
We are in an era where our national interests, as they apply to Iraq, are
more accurately defined as a permanent and total control over another
country's natural resources.
The outcome of war is unpredictable. It cannot be planned in advance. The
outcome for either side can't be foreseen. Anarchy, riots, civil wars, and
chaos are some of its probable conclusions. This being the case it seems a
logical motive for not waging a war in the first place.
The outcome of war is an uncertain and gross expenditure of a countries
financial resources, robbing money from its hospitals, schools and the poor.
The statistics on homelessness vary from report to report but one fact
remains true. The number of homeless in New York City has reached its
highest point in the city's history. This reality, in such a rich country,
is something to be afraid of. Wars are fueled by fear, hatred, rhetoric and
indoctrination. Once fears are ignited, they are difficult to
extinguish -this is something to fear.
Magie Dominic is author of 'The Queen of Peace Room', nominated Book of the
Year, Foreword Magazine; The Judy Grahn Award for best non-fiction; and for
the CWSA Award. (Wilfrid Laurier University Press).
--
Tired of the same rhetoric of lies and deceit?
http://www.gentlemanjim.net/
"It aint what you don't know that'll hurt ya, it's what you "know" that aint
so." -- Will Rogers
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