During one of my classes this quarter, the discussion turned toward the politics of fear in a post-9/11 world. As one fellow student argued that infringements upon our civil liberties were justified by the prospect of new terrorist attacks and as another argued that racial profiling is justified by the preponderance of terrorist acts committed by those of Middle Eastern descent, it struck me just how much our culture has changed since September 11, 2001. In a pre-9/11 world, Americans valued their civil liberties, and racial profiling was taboo in most circles. All of that has gone out the window now, as the politics of fear promoted by the Bush administration have created a new culture of bigotry that most Americans don't even realize they're participating in.
There can be no question that the Bush administration has promoted politics of fear. Immediately following the attacks of September 11, the administration took radical steps to curb our civil liberties through the Patriot Act of 2001 and other legislation. The warrantless wiretapping of international phone calls was also justified in the name of preventing terrorism. Those within the administration and their allies in Congress have justified acts previously known as torture by arguing that these acts will yield information that may prevent further attacks. No national or international law is too sacred that it cannot be violated if homeland security justifies such a violation.
The magnum opus of these politics of fear is the Iraq War. We were led into the Iraq War with promises that we would be fighting terrorists in Iraq so that we wouldn't have to fight them within our own borders. Saddam Hussein, we were told, either had weapons of mass destruction or was very close to obtaining them. Moreover, we were told that Saddam Hussein had ties to the al-Qaeda terrorists who attacked us on September 11. We have now discovered that Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, was not close to obtaining them and did not have any significant ties to al-Qaeda. Still, we are told that we are in Iraq to fight terrorists who are, for the most part, insurgents resisting an occupying force in their own homeland. The Bush administration and its anointed successor, John McCain, continue to use the politics of fear to justify an unjust and unlawful war.
What are the results of these new politics of fear? They are the same results we have always seen when fear prevails over reason. Just as we interred Japanese citizens in prison camps during World War II, so we are now unlawfully detaining enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay. Just as Adolph Hitler marked Jews with the Star of David so they could be easily identified and singled out as enemies of the Nazi state, so a Middle Eastern skin color or a name that merely sounds Muslim identifies possible enemies within our midst ' whether these potential enemies are law-abiding citizens or not. Just as the British used the rhetoric of terrorism to justify all manner of imperial impositions upon other peoples and their lands, so we are now using that same rhetoric to justify imperialistic intervention from sea to shining sea so that the sun never sets on the American empire.
And Americans are barely batting an eyelash. Just as Americans sat idly by while their Japanese neighbors were interred, just as Europe ignored the unspeakable acts committed by the Nazis against the Jews, so today's Americans are turning a blind eye to the crimes and outright atrocities committed by their government. Why? Because, as my own classmates affirmed, these acts can be justified if there is even a possibility that they will keep us safe. Anything is acceptable in the name of national security, at least to some Americans; and while many would repudiate such a statement, they are the quiet masses who sit back and do nothing while these crimes are committed in their names. To both the vocal and the passive who have allowed bigotry to penetrate our culture, there is only one thing to say: We are entering a new chapter in American history, and history is watching to see what we will, or will not, do. Let's think carefully about which side of history we'd like to see our generation cast its lot with.
17 Archives
Nathan Nelson
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