The Clipboard: The tragedy of terrorism

From an article¹:

What a difference a year makes. It's amazing what drastic changes can transpire over such a relatively short span of time. It is astounding how quickly a basically peaceable people can be led down the road to War. It is saddening, indeed sickening, to see how easily Americans, swept up in the emotional tidal wave of patriotism, can be persuaded to endorse and advocate the use of the mightiest military force on the face of the earth against people who have never done them any harm. In less than one year a desire for revenge has transformed peace-loving Americans into a nation of warriors who march in lockstep behind a my-way-or-the-highway leader. How many atrocities throughout history have been wrought in exactly the same fashion? (link)

A very moving article arguing that the true tragedy of terrorism is what our fear of it leads us to do.

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Complete text of the article, The tragedy of terrorism, by R. Lee Wrights

What a difference a year makes. It's amazing what drastic changes can transpire over such a relatively short span of time. It is astounding how quickly a basically peaceable people can be led down the road to War. It is saddening, indeed sickening, to see how easily Americans, swept up in the emotional tidal wave of patriotism, can be persuaded to endorse and advocate the use of the mightiest military force on the face of the earth against people who have never done them any harm. In less than one year a desire for revenge has transformed peace-loving Americans into a nation of warriors who march in lockstep behind a my-way-or-the-highway leader. How many atrocities throughout history have been wrought in exactly the same fashion?

And to think, it all began in a little impoverished country that has been a bloody battlefield for decades already called Afghanistan. How convenient.

In the aftermath of the horrible terrorist attack in New York City on September 11, 2001, American justice acted swiftly. On little evidence, or none at all as far as we know, the government determined that a group of religious zealots, based in Afghanistan, were responsible for the tragedy that shocked the world. Specifically, President Bush claimed to have proof, which he could not share with the people he works for, that a man named Osama bin Laden had ordered the mass murder of thousands of Americans. Within a month of the World Trade Center crumbling to the ground before our very eyes, America was preparing to make war in a country that not one of the hijacking terrorists called home. Americans cheered and bought more flags as bombs began to fall on innocent people in a nation that had not attacked us nor even threatened to do so. And some of us wept.

Then came our own elected representatives riding a Trojan horse called the Patriot Act, a gift to the frightened American people. The gift of Security was presented to them, purchased with the liberty of those that sought its refuge. Congress decided to make us safer by restricting our freedom more than ever before, and by removing some of our precious rights altogether. And sadly, once again the American people cheered and bought even more flags, while some of us wept.

In the beginning, we were told we had to go to Afghanistan because that is where the devil himself, bin Laden, was in hiding surrounded by his most treacherous henchmen. Bombs fell daily for months and continued to fall even after we were fairly certain that ol' Osama had left the poor Middle-Eastern country that now felt the fury of the greatest war machine on the globe. Innocent people died by the hundreds at the hands of a cheering, flag-buying nation and the dead were conveniently classed as collateral damage so patriotic Americans could keep their consciences clean. And far too few of us wept.

Now, as the one-year anniversary of what some have called the most horrific terrorist attack in the history of the world approaches, America is being prepped for another war in another poor, third-world country called Iraq. This time American leaders seek to produce sweet Security not only for the people of the United States, but also for the people of the whole world. This time the strike will be classified as 'preemptive' and we will try to kill another demon named Saddam Hussein.

This time America will strike first, with a terror that only the largest military on the planet can provide, so as to save the United States, and the rest of the world, from a madman who 'might' do 'something' sometime in the future. Let's see. Does that mean if I see my neighbor bring home a new shotgun I should immediately plot how I am going to dispose of him since he 'might' do 'something' with it sometime in the future?

So here we are on the brink of the next war. Will we allow ourselves to be fooled into believing it is justifiable to kill more innocent people just so we can go after one man that might do something to us? What have we become if we start killing everyone that might do us harm in the future? Are we really any better than the terrorist if we start bombing foreign countries preemptively? Herein lies the tragedy of terrorism.

The tragedy of terrorism is not the terrorist act itself no matter how catastrophic it may seem. The true tragedy is what fear does to human beings. You will not see me quote Franklin Roosevelt very often, but one thing he said is very true and is still applicable to modern-day America. He said, 'The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.' The fear produced by a handful of Islamic madmen armed only with boxcutters have turned the United States government into warmongers wrapped in the self-righteous warmth of patriotism and driven by the desire for sacred Security. And Americans cheer and buy more flags.

I will leave you with words I wrote almost a year ago shortly after September 11th that I believe illustrate the true tragedy of terrorism. I can only hope that the fear that has taken us from Afghanistan to Iraq will not continue to spread to the rest of the world.

'The tragedy that we now face as a nation is the State's manipulation of the effects of fear. Fear that causes people to act and think in ways they never would in its absence. Fear that turns brother against brother and allows politicians to rob citizens of their riches and freedom. Fear that causes citizens to willingly sacrifice their liberty before the great god Security, promised them by a government that seeks to enslave them. A government that uses fear as a deflection in the hopes that citizens will not notice the real terror that is produced by the parties that control its Houses.'

reference=http://www.rationalreview.com/archive/rleewrights/rleewrights090102.html