Frozen In Time
Watching the people in Europe who paused for two minutes today out of respect for the victims of the latest terrorist attack in London, I recalled an episode of Twilight Zone in which a man discovers that he has the power to stop time. When he uses this power, everyone and everything stops, frozen in time.
It seems like a fitting metaphor for what happened in New York, Madrid, Bali and London. The suicide bombers behind the terrorist attacks in these cities seem to think that they can stop time and topple power structures by lashing out indiscriminately at innocent people, most of whom have little to do with the world as it is. These victims are mere pawns in the game of political chess that is unfolding in the early years of the 21st century. Unthinkingly, perhaps, many accept the world as it is, unconcerned with or unable to connect intellectually with the long march of human progress out of the Dark Ages.
The criminals behind these murderous acts are living in another world, a medieval world of magic, fantasy and superstition. They seem to believe that their actions will somehow affect the course of history. They are not concerned with scientific explanations about human nature, political discourse or rational discussion, which question the validity of their religious ideologies. Like the tale told by an idiot, their doctrines are full of sound and fury, fire and brimstone, signifying nothing but destruction. They see themselves as the modern avengers for a 1000 years of gradual decline of their worldview. They believe that self-sacrifice is a virtue and a potent political weapon. They are religious fanatics first, foremost and forever. Theirs is a world of make-believe in which wishful thinking, rote and religious doctrine deny the very existence and efficacy of the scientific method, secular education and the rule of law. They are fantasists and they are frozen in time.
If this is the case, then the solution to irrational terrorism would seem self-evident: the promotion of rational thinking -- in the classroom, on the shop floor, in the boardroom and, especially, in the corridors of power.
Unfortunately, the man who could exercise the greatest moral influence in the world decided, after 9/11, to fight the terrorists on their own terms. President Bush declared war on terror, not on terrorism. He quickly announced a crusade against religious fanatics, apparently unaware of the implications of his words. No state would be safe, he said, if they harbored terrorists. He talked about an axis of evil, naming three fairly innoculous dictatorial regimes, totally ignoring the country from which the 9/11 terrorists came -- Saudi Arabia. He promised Americans that he would find the people responsible for 9/11. He would "hunt 'em down" and "smoke 'em out." He sent American bombers across the skies of Afghanistan, put marines on the ground and bargained in smoke-filled rooms with tribal leaders who deal in opium and horse-trade political alliances, the way some people buy stocks. Bush drove the Taliban out of Afghanistan and Bin Laden into the mountains. He took away the terrorists' training camps -- and then created a new and better one, by invading Iraq.
Arguably, for every step the Bush Administration has taken forward in the fight against terrorism, it has taken two or three steps backward. The Patriot Act raises serious questions about civil rights and the government's need to scrutinize its own citizens without court authorization. Listen carefully and you can hear the whispers of theocracy in the air and echoes of discrimination in the American night. If the current powers-that-be have their say, America may end up in the not-too-distant future as a military fortress at home and abroad, a cold-warrior nation fighting the present and the future with the tools of the past. There has been considerable rhetoric about fighting terrorism but, so far, there have been few concrete successes. The most visible domestic effort has been the so-called terrorist warning system, an array of colored lights that go from green to amber to red, supposedly to alert the public to impending danger. Most of the "shock-and-awe" effort, however, seems to be designed to increase the fears of the general public, not the terrorists. The bottom line is that we seem to be doing everything possible to exorcise terrorism, not combat it.
The Bush Administration has unleashed the full power of the American military on the people of Iraq, not quite sure who are their friends and who are their enemies, unable to locate or defeat their adversaries, putting our soldiers in harm's way to fight an invisible enemy for the wrong reasons -- frightened, like the proverbial elephant of the proverbial mouse.
So far, unlike the strict law-enforcement efforts of countries like Spain, Germany and Britain, America has not made much progress in identifying, arresting and trying terrorists for their crimes. Almost every policy undertaken by this administration has backfired and proved counterproductive. America has captured and put a large group of combatants in Guantanamo Bay without charging them of any crime or giving them access to legal representation. In this so-called war, human rights' organizations now question the legality of some of America's actions, the one nation on earth that should be setting examples for the rest of the world, not rewriting the rule book on torture and civil rights.
In short, Bush has done very little to combat the terrorist threat. And, as we saw last week in London, that threat is very much alive and well.
Like a cancer, the danger posed by pre-Enlightenment mullahs living in caves needs to be eradicated at the core. And the core of this new variant of terrorism is an irrational belief in an other-worldly, fantasy view of human life, human history and human aspirations. The war on terrorism, like the war on drugs, won't be won by searching caves or coveting dictators. It will only be won by ideas. And ideas seem to be a commodity in short supply among the current political leaders of the democratic world, particularly the USA.
In an odd, almost surrealistic sense, the ideas, ideology and foreign policy of the Bush Administration inadvertently fan the flames of groups like Al-Qaeda and religious fanatics everywhere, like opening a window when the house is on fire. For all the pious mutterings on both sides of the coin, like the man in the Twilight Zone, the terrorists and the cold warriors of the Bush Administration all seem frozen in time.
It seems like a fitting metaphor for what happened in New York, Madrid, Bali and London. The suicide bombers behind the terrorist attacks in these cities seem to think that they can stop time and topple power structures by lashing out indiscriminately at innocent people, most of whom have little to do with the world as it is. These victims are mere pawns in the game of political chess that is unfolding in the early years of the 21st century. Unthinkingly, perhaps, many accept the world as it is, unconcerned with or unable to connect intellectually with the long march of human progress out of the Dark Ages.
The criminals behind these murderous acts are living in another world, a medieval world of magic, fantasy and superstition. They seem to believe that their actions will somehow affect the course of history. They are not concerned with scientific explanations about human nature, political discourse or rational discussion, which question the validity of their religious ideologies. Like the tale told by an idiot, their doctrines are full of sound and fury, fire and brimstone, signifying nothing but destruction. They see themselves as the modern avengers for a 1000 years of gradual decline of their worldview. They believe that self-sacrifice is a virtue and a potent political weapon. They are religious fanatics first, foremost and forever. Theirs is a world of make-believe in which wishful thinking, rote and religious doctrine deny the very existence and efficacy of the scientific method, secular education and the rule of law. They are fantasists and they are frozen in time.
If this is the case, then the solution to irrational terrorism would seem self-evident: the promotion of rational thinking -- in the classroom, on the shop floor, in the boardroom and, especially, in the corridors of power.
Unfortunately, the man who could exercise the greatest moral influence in the world decided, after 9/11, to fight the terrorists on their own terms. President Bush declared war on terror, not on terrorism. He quickly announced a crusade against religious fanatics, apparently unaware of the implications of his words. No state would be safe, he said, if they harbored terrorists. He talked about an axis of evil, naming three fairly innoculous dictatorial regimes, totally ignoring the country from which the 9/11 terrorists came -- Saudi Arabia. He promised Americans that he would find the people responsible for 9/11. He would "hunt 'em down" and "smoke 'em out." He sent American bombers across the skies of Afghanistan, put marines on the ground and bargained in smoke-filled rooms with tribal leaders who deal in opium and horse-trade political alliances, the way some people buy stocks. Bush drove the Taliban out of Afghanistan and Bin Laden into the mountains. He took away the terrorists' training camps -- and then created a new and better one, by invading Iraq.
Arguably, for every step the Bush Administration has taken forward in the fight against terrorism, it has taken two or three steps backward. The Patriot Act raises serious questions about civil rights and the government's need to scrutinize its own citizens without court authorization. Listen carefully and you can hear the whispers of theocracy in the air and echoes of discrimination in the American night. If the current powers-that-be have their say, America may end up in the not-too-distant future as a military fortress at home and abroad, a cold-warrior nation fighting the present and the future with the tools of the past. There has been considerable rhetoric about fighting terrorism but, so far, there have been few concrete successes. The most visible domestic effort has been the so-called terrorist warning system, an array of colored lights that go from green to amber to red, supposedly to alert the public to impending danger. Most of the "shock-and-awe" effort, however, seems to be designed to increase the fears of the general public, not the terrorists. The bottom line is that we seem to be doing everything possible to exorcise terrorism, not combat it.
The Bush Administration has unleashed the full power of the American military on the people of Iraq, not quite sure who are their friends and who are their enemies, unable to locate or defeat their adversaries, putting our soldiers in harm's way to fight an invisible enemy for the wrong reasons -- frightened, like the proverbial elephant of the proverbial mouse.
So far, unlike the strict law-enforcement efforts of countries like Spain, Germany and Britain, America has not made much progress in identifying, arresting and trying terrorists for their crimes. Almost every policy undertaken by this administration has backfired and proved counterproductive. America has captured and put a large group of combatants in Guantanamo Bay without charging them of any crime or giving them access to legal representation. In this so-called war, human rights' organizations now question the legality of some of America's actions, the one nation on earth that should be setting examples for the rest of the world, not rewriting the rule book on torture and civil rights.
In short, Bush has done very little to combat the terrorist threat. And, as we saw last week in London, that threat is very much alive and well.
Like a cancer, the danger posed by pre-Enlightenment mullahs living in caves needs to be eradicated at the core. And the core of this new variant of terrorism is an irrational belief in an other-worldly, fantasy view of human life, human history and human aspirations. The war on terrorism, like the war on drugs, won't be won by searching caves or coveting dictators. It will only be won by ideas. And ideas seem to be a commodity in short supply among the current political leaders of the democratic world, particularly the USA.
In an odd, almost surrealistic sense, the ideas, ideology and foreign policy of the Bush Administration inadvertently fan the flames of groups like Al-Qaeda and religious fanatics everywhere, like opening a window when the house is on fire. For all the pious mutterings on both sides of the coin, like the man in the Twilight Zone, the terrorists and the cold warriors of the Bush Administration all seem frozen in time.
posted by J. DeVincent at 8:11 AM
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