"I must _____ or the terrorists will win!" steadfastness, or stupidity?

According to television, they seem to have become popular slogans and signs of nationalistic pride. "We can't change our way of life or our tactics, because if we do, the terrorists will win!" Or my favorite: "I'm not gonna let gas prices alter my way of life." I guess if you do, the terrorists somehow win. Are these signs of strength, or are they signs of ignorance?

Simple one first: "I'm not gonna let gas prices alter my way of life." I started with this one because you can easily throw it into the dumb-as-a-bag-of-bricks pile. That's like saying, "I'm not gonna let the price of Broadway shows stop me from going as much as I want!" (Do the terrorists win there too?) Broadway seats are about $90 a pop, and if you're working 9 -5 like most of us, looking for deals on chicken breasts at the supermarket, it's probably not the smartest thing to do to take your family out to the theatre every two weeks. Everyone would agree. But somehow wasteing money in our gas-guzzling, school bus sized SUVs has become a sign of National pride and resiliency (if we give them up, the terrorists will surely win!). If you stand on the outside and look in at it, it's more like complete senselessness than anything else.

If you wanted to look at it in a "War on Terror" sense, the very people our President is labelling as terrorists, like Hugo Chavez (who is practically giving away fuel-oil to poor American families, which is another issue all together), Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (President of Iran), and even Osama Bin Laden, are all oil profiteers. So if you REALLY want to beat the terrorists, ride a bike!

But this isn't an accident. Logically, telling Americans we can undermine governments and terrorists in the middle east more effectively by conserving fuel than by blowing up bombs would mean no more campaign contributions to the GOP from Big Oil. They're the Grand Oil Party. It follows. They have effectively used the media as a way of indirectly convincing the American public that owning a huge car and consuming oil regardless of price are signs of strength and resolution. And their rhetoric gives the impression that we are moving steadily into an age of oil independence. The President talks about "alternative energy sources" like corn and grass clippings. This gives people the impression that everything is fine, that one day we will all be flying around in cars fueled by our pulled weeds. So people simply wait to be ushered into that period. It is whitewash, and nothing more.

What the President fails to mention is that we already have the technologies to be completely independant from outside energy sources. Most of these technologies have already been implimented into many other countries as far back as the 80's. Switzerland has pledged to be completely oil free by 2020. We aren't Switzerland, but if the technology exists for them it exists for us. We have American auto manufacturers suing the state of California for mandating that all cars within the state meet China's emissions standards in ten years. China's emissions standards are one of the lowest in the industrialized world. That doesn't sound like progress to me. Sounds more like stupidity.

"I must _____ or the terrorists will win!" steadfastness, or just stupidity?

This is the next, and equally lame slogan: "We must not give in and change our way of life. If we do, the terrorists will have won!" When I say that this idea is wrong I don't mean that we should all avoid New York City and live in the woods. I am speaking on a much larger, and more important scale.

These people don't hate us because they are "haters of freedom". That idea is the most insane thing I think I have ever heard. They aren't just killing "infidels" simply because they are "evildooers". If they were just crazy and wanted to kill people, they wouldn't have to plan and sceme and travel acoss continents to do it. They could just stone some adulterers and hang some guys who didn't show up at grandma's house for Ramadan and be done with it. They are killing for revenge.

They hate us because years of US Foreign Policies have plunged their nations into poverty and near constant civil war. We have backed regime change after regime change in the middle east to suit our immediate needs, including backing both Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. The U.S.-led, UN sanctioned blockade of Iraq led to the deaths of over one million children, and since our invasion of Iraq (which we now know was based on falsehoods and deception), we have killed over 35,000 Iraqi civilians. This has led to an increase in terrorist activities world-wide. And it's no wonder why. Imagine that after Timothy McVeigh bombed the Feberal Building in Oklahoma City the US army started blowing up houses and shooting at people, taking 5,000 innocent lives before they found him? How much faith would you have in your government? Now imagine that it was another nation's government coming in doing the killing and telling you that it's for your own good? I would venture to say that some of us might start blowing things up ourselves.

As Mahatma Ghandi said (and as I have already previously quoted), "What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?"

This calls for a new solution. Violence as a reaction to violence has shown us that it simply leads to more violence when it is on such a large scale. After all, we have to remember this isn't us against Germany or Japan. It is us against... umm... oh yeah, we don't know who our enemy is! Bombing a nation of 26 million people to flush out out what was probably several thousand (if even that many) will unavoidably lead to thousands of innocent lives lost for each guilty one taken. Whatever beautiful image of a free and democratic nation the invader may be preaching, when all you want is the lives of your family back, freedom and democracy mean nothing.

My solution? Give them a drink of water. Being alive is more important than being "free", which is a relative term to begin with.

In the 90's, FBI agents gained valuable information from suspects in the first World Trade Center bombing by attempting to turn them against one another using a strange tactic: kindness. They hired interrogators and guards who had extensive knowledge of the Koran, allowed the detainees unlimited access to books and videos, and even gave an expensive surgery to an especially stand-off-ish al Qaeda member's sick child. Allthough it took a while for the effects of this to be seen, the results were reliable information that led to the capture of many people connected with that attack. Presently, torturing our detainees has only led to countless false claims of pending attacks against malls, schools, apartment buildings and nuclear plants, and the arrest and torture of thousands of innocent people named to stop the pain. Think back to spring and summer of 2002 and you will undoubtedly remember the barrage of information on possible terrorist targets within the US. Obviously these weren't a sign of successful interrogation, because no attacks actually occurred. On the contrary, they were based on the words of individuals being tortured into saying something, anything. It is reminiscent of Salem residents tracking down witches.

Our bullying of the entire middle east has led to increased terrorist activities worldwide and has undoubtedly sealed our fate to receive another one in due time. We have done nothing to ease the resentment felt towards us (indeed, we have worsened it), and our government has done nothing to increase our safety at home. Five years later New York City and Long Island still have not even an emergency evacuation plan on the table. Our preparedness and our prevention are both pitiful and disgusting.

So now imagine that the United States, instead of running around killing millions of people over the last twenty years in the name of freedom, had instead used our vast wealth to feed and give healthcare to anybody needing it, regardless of who their leaders were or was living among them? This would have taken real guts and genuine heroism. We would have had to be resolute and have the faith and courage to not seek retribution against many because of the actions of a few living among them.

If we had started doing this twenty years ago I would wager that animosity towards the United States would be on a considerably smaller scale than it was in 2001, and espeically smaller than it is at present. If anybody still generated enough hatred to come all the way to New York City to blow themselves up, exposing those involved in planning those attacks would be much easier with the general population of those countries on your side. There would have been millions of people saying, "The Americans are the reason my family is alive, so I am on their side." Right now, in many Iraqi households it is, "Americans are the reason my family is dead. They are the enemy." Iran is next.

Unfortunately, none of our fear is by accident. Though our leaders have told us that we must not be affraid and to go about our lives as normal, they have consistently and (I believe) strategically spread out the "reports of terrorist activity" just enough to keep us affraid, but not enough to make us think they aren't doing their job. Fear is the most powerful motivator of people in the political carnival, and politicians know that using people's fear as a political weapon is very successful, and a wartime president is the most difficult one to unseat.

In addition, I think that the present administration is shrewdly aware that many Americans have become more like gorillas than rational human beings. We don't care about results. We don't have the attention span to wait for results. What we want is retribution, which is immediate. We want to see bombs going off on TV and we take comfort in the fact that the guilty are being tortured. The fact that these tactics have led us further from safety is inconsequential to us. Swift retribution gives us the temporary feeling of satisfaction that keeps our heads comfortably nestled in the clouds. But if left un-checked, our habit of evading long-term visions will continually lead to short term solutions, and as history has shown us, these will lead to our downfall.

words worth remembering

"The greatest thing we have to fear is fear itself."
- Franklin D. Roosevelt


"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
- Benjamin Franklin


"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.
- George Washington


"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.

"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man that reads nothing but newspapers"

"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive."

"I have the consolation of having added nothing to my private fortune during my public service, and of retiring with hands clean as they are empty."

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."

-All of the above are from Thomas Jefferson (So many that I love)


"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?"
- Mahatma Gandhi


"Would those of you in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry."
- John Lennon


"A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one."
- Alexander Hamilton