Blog For Arizona

Al Qaeda: The Mouse That Roared

The lastest objective analysis of the Al Qaeda network concludes that it isn't nearly as large and sophisticated as it is portrayed by the media. In fact, it is a sad fact that we know so little about it, and it is so elusive, precisely because it is so small and disorganized.

Yes, they and the terrorist cells they have inspired and trained in the past are still dangerous and still likely to cause harm. But more and more it becomes apparent that, 3 1/2 years after 9/11, it is time to realize that terrorism is primarily an international law enforcement issue. InterPol not the Navy Seals are the model for anti-terrorist work. The all-out worldwide military mobilization against terror this Adminsitration exploits is like swatting a fly with a 40mm HEAP round.

I am weary of the sick joke that terror inspired security procedures have become. The shoe demanding, traveller harrassing, breast fondling mouth-breathers of airport security services have become a standard fare of standups. I'm agog at the stupidity of guards with metal detectors in the municipal buildings of every podunk township busily confiscating nail files and booting up laptops to ensure they don't harbour a bomb. All this while I can still concieve of dozens of ways to cause havoc and death in places without a single guard, lock, camera or sensor.

Yet my soul is stained by the torture rooms in Abu Ghraib and the stink of rotting civilian corpses in the streets of Fallujah keeps me awake at night. This how we respond to terrorism? By becoming the sort of banally evil automatons who follow orders to march into hell and get promotions for doing so? I have nightmares about the next terrorist attack, which will come when no one expects it, where no one expects it, and by means no one anticipated (except perhaps in the PDB, where it will be studiously ignored). But I have come to terms with the fact that no matter how well we guard the doors, or how securely we lock the windows, or how advanced the alarms systems are, the mice will still get in the pantry.

We are living in a creeping police state and constant state of resigned anxiety: the alert level never drops below yellow, and never will. And if it does, that will be the day one of these hate-poisoned bastards will blow up a chemical factory and unleash a Bhopal on America. This is the reality that globalization, development, and technology has brought us: an unending litany of ways we are vulnerable, both to even the least of our enemies and our own worst tendencies.

There are only two possible outcomes of this new, post-9/11, reality. One is that we cope. We learn to apply appropriate counter-measures and precautions, set up sane and effective institutions, make the needed legal changes to address the problem, and get on with life, accepting the no solution is perfect. The other is that we let this latest 'War on' become an all-consuming, self-perpetuating, reality-distorting, political mine-field like the War on Drugs. Suddenly, it dawns on everyone that we have some sociological equivalent of the largest incarcerated population on earth, or that we're often spending more on prisons than on schools, or that entire sectors of our population have had their lives sucked up and spit out perpetuating sick cycles of hatred and greed and fear and exploitation that lie at the heart of every war. And nobody will know the way back. No one can point to the exit. There will be a cancer feeding off of us, growing and metastasizing, and it will have become so familiar that most will think the tumour is just a normal appendage - like the police state that has grown up around the 'Drug War', like the civil rights we've laid down in service to a 'drug-free America'.

The irony is that every time we go 'War on' we think we are fighting an enemy when we are really fighting ourselves. In the 'War on Drugs' that conundrum is obvious, there would be no supply without a demand. The shadow-boxing aspects of the 'War on Terror' aren't so obvious. But one has to ask why the media portrayal of a nigh-on omnipotent, ever-present, lurking and growing Al Qaeda finds such an enthusiastic and voracious audience despite a lack of any evidence? What is it about that terrible evil lurking out there waiting to pounce that is so compelling to us that we swallow it down unhesitatingly, uncritically?

The American psyche has ever embraced enthusiastically the 'other'. The embodiment of evil, corruption, primitive urges, bestial habits, and malign designs. Indians, blacks, jews, asians, hispanics, homosexuals, communists, the have each played and, in some cases, continue to play the 'other'. Now the most compelling enbodiment of the 'other' is a fundamentalist Muslim with a bomb strapped to his chest. But what trait is in us that this 'other' allows us to externalize so that we may ignore our own indulgence in it?

Intolerance. Intolerance of differences in others. Intolerance of other ways of thinking. Intolerance of different beliefs and different values. They are all part and parcel of the Fundamentalist Muslim. A hatred of secularism, which is really just the means to tolerance of other faiths, is a hallmark of both the terrorist enemy and the loudest advocates of making 'war' on him. Intolerance of political opposition leads the terrorist to violence, and leads the Republican to run over musical CDs with a steamroller - yesterday. What might it inspire tomorrow? Intolerance of other cultures and other values leads to English only laws, Prop 200 and other 'anti-immigrant' demonstrations, Freedom Fries, and the perennial appeal to 'American values', 'family values', and 'Christian values' with never the slightest doubt that all Americans, families, or Christians actually share the values or beliefs the panderers are pedling.

What defines the Conservative movement of the last 30 years more than anything? Intolerance. Al Qaeda and their ilk make the perfect enemy of the Conservative because they share the same disease at heart. Conservatives can project their most unattractive feature upon the enemy in the 'War on Terror' and hide their own deformity by denouncing it in others. They can continue to quietly indulge their appetite for inequality, authoritarianism, and hatred of differences so long as they can quote a body count in their wonderful little 'War on'. Assuredly, they cannot afford to allow such a condition to end unless there is a more useful enemy at hand. And that is why America cannot afford to get sucked into a perpetual 'War on Terror'; it distracts from the Conservative movement's most repellent feature. If they are able to institutionalize the 'War on Terror' as the 'War on Drugs' has been, Karl Rove will get his wish, a political realignment and a lock on power for the Republican party. Americans will be given leave en mass to ignore the beams in their own eyes as they damn the mote in Mohammad's, and America will cease to be the nation we know and love.

posted by Michael Bryan @ 12/03/2004 08:43:00 AM