Religion of Peace

Where does cultural justification of violence meet historical revisionism? Well, this week those forces met in Norway, and the noise machine kicked into gear.

There are two views of the world. In one view, one accepts that human beings are capable of horrible things as well as wonderful things, while using their individual beliefs to justify extreme behavior on either side and all those in between. In the other view, human beings are capable of horrible things as well as wonderful things, but what marks the difference depends on how much they agree with your own beliefs.

Take the latter too far, and Andrew Sullivan explains what you get:

Both Islamism and Christianism, to my mind, do not spring from real religious faith; they spring from neurosis caused by lack of faith. They are the choices of those who are panicked by the complexity and choices of modernity into a fanatical embrace of a simplistic parody of religion in order to attack what they see as their cultural and social enemies. They are not about genuine faith; they are about the instrumentality of faith as a political bludgeon.

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No Drive List

I guess we now have the theme for Security Theater Season 2.

Anyone want to guess what Season 3 might have in store?

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Dozens

Two questions:

1) Do the majority of Muslims in the world really hate America?
2) How does the American media inadvertently make the case that they do?

Case Study.

We knew that, after the death of Osama bin Laden, there would be some individuals in the world who would take that opportunity to rally other discontented individuals against the United States. This is how attention-seekers get their attention: they do things they know the cameras will catch and broadcast. They know such things will overstate their importance.

Most of all, they know that if even one American flag is burned in the streets of Pakistan, then many Americans will go on to assume that represents all Pakistanis' opinions. The "Death to America" narrative is fed. This is all part of the "clash of civilizations" feedback loop that we can't seem to break.

Consider the article. If you look at the pictures associated with the story (on the front page of MSNBC when I opened my computer) you saw a crowd burning American flags. The story text itself shows a sunglasses-clad individual pointing an accusing finger at the camera.

Even the text is designed to further the narrative:

Muslims in the Philippines, Indonesia and Pakistan protested Friday over the killing of Osama bin Laden, with one cleric vowing the holy war against the U.S. "will not stop with the death of Osama."

Muslims protested. Not "individuals sympathetic to al-Queda." Not "Islamists," or "Fundamentalists," or even "disaffected citizens of." Nope. These people are Muslims, that's all the American people need (or want) to know about the protesters. I bet the same news outlet will later have a poll asking why viewers tend to think all Muslims are terrorists.

I think America would have a completely different view of religion and the clash of civilizations if a religious affiliation was included every time something unpopular happened. Or every single time there was a crime. Imagine it:

"Christian politician leaves wife with cancer, marries mistress."

"Christians protest at funerals of dead US soldiers in opposition to United States civil rights laws."

"Christian teens beat transsexual woman in McDonalds."

"Christians hold mock trial against Koran, burn Muslim holy book after guilty verdict."

"Major drug bust: Christians apprehended with twenty pounds of cocaine in hidden compartment."

"Meth Lab Discovered, 4 Christians arrested."

Could you imagine the outrage that would come from that? It would be incredible, especially among the mainstream Christian population, who would go to great lengths to prove that they were not affiliated with such behaviors. There is a great deal of social construct dedicated to describing deviant social groups or progress-resistant behaviors as "other." That's why the media and popular culture uses such terms as fundamentalist and controversial when describing certain Christian out-groups. That's also why the religion of crime perpetrators are never part of the story unless the accused adheres to an "exotic" religion which is already a group considered "other." Or if the accused is a pastor or leadership figure in a mainstream Christian organization.

Muslims in America have no such social protections, so it is very easy to attribute unpopular behaviors with Muslims generally. This does not help our nation understand the true problems our nation is facing, and allows our popular culture to set up a too-easy scapegoat to deflect self-criticism.

Back to the case study, from just those images and the headlines, one might be led to believe that huge crowds were gathered around the Muslim world condemning America. But here's what you would miss:

In Manila, Philippine police used anti-riot shields to stop a march on the U.S. Embassy by dozens of Muslims.

Emphasis mine.

Dozens, hunh?

While "dozens" might be a news-worthy protest in my hometown (population 12,000ish), the Phillippines are a nation of approximately 98,000,000 individuals, with 5% claiming Islam as their primary religion. So, out of an approximate population of 4,850,000 Phillipino Muslims, a few dozen protest in the capital city of over 11,550,000 residents, and it makes front-page news in America.

A few more protesters showed up in Pakistan, though. At least here we have some attempt to address the actual situation, and the actual identity of the protesters.

In Pakistan, about 1,500 people protested, saying more figures like bin Laden would arise to wage holy war against the United States.

Predominantly Muslim Pakistan has yet to see any major backlash after U.S. special forces killed bin Laden early on Monday.

But his death has angered Islamists, with one major hardline political party calling on Pakistan's government to end its support for the U.S. war on militancy.

Again, the 1,500 number exists in relationship to a nation of 187,000,000 people, of which 97% are Muslims. You'll note the headlines do not read:

While some individuals protested US action against Osama bin Laden within thier country, 181,388,500 Pakistani Muslims were busy doing something else.

So are there really widespread protests that required media attention, or did elements of the American media expect to report on protests and then find some small events to justify the story?

Bonus question: Now that some small groups have proven they can get worldwide attention through these actions, will other groups begin to behave in such ways as well?

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Torture Worked!

Well, at least in the delusional fantasy land of make believe that affects most American right-wingers these days. Folks, here's where credibility is important.

The people who brought you "Not One Drop of Oil [Spilled Due to Gulf Hurricanes in 2005]" proudly present:

"Torture Years Ago Killed Osama Earlier This Week."

(This of course creates the offspring narrative: "George W. Bush Had Much More To Do With OBL's Apprehension than Barack Obama.")

And you know what? They're going to repeat this as much and as often as is necessary to convince the American media consumer that this nonsense is true. Just like they did with the "Not One Drop" narrative. This is how they work, after all: create a talking point and repeat it until enough people have heard it so often they assume it is true. And they do it very well.

It doesn't even matter how easily their arguments can be deconstructed (NSFW Image).

[A]lthough neither torture victim gave up the correct information, and one gave an entirely false lead, it was their refusal to tell the truth that proves torture worked! Seriously. It was the failure of torture to get accurate information that proves the validity of the torture!

Update: The only thing that has been proven right in this episode of American history are the folks who warned us that, once our popular culture embraces torture in such ways, it was only a matter of time before the uses of torture were officially expanded.

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Cadaverism

Last night, it took the internet about 40 seconds to begin (jokingly) demanding to see OBL's "long form death certificate."

Of course, this only took about 12 hours to stop being a joke. Well, technically a joke.

SAWB's favorite unhinged leftist, Cindy Sheehan, chimes in to demand people "put away their flags and think."

She'll be teaming up with that paragon of right-wing credibility, Andrew Breitbart. But I'm sure all the national news organizations won't question it when he releases exclusive video of OBL in a pimp costume hiding out at ACORN world headquarters.

(HT: Andrew Sullivan)

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The Culture You Have

Not the culture you wish you had.

I was running errands this morning, and heard Glenn Beck on the radio playing "Glenn-downer" about the spontaneous celebrations last night at the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed. He asked, "who are these college students?"

The United States Naval Academy has at least one answer to that.

But let us not kid ourselves, Glenn Beck isn't the only one asking about the appropriateness of celebrating a killing after what we saw last night. There are plenty who went out to cheer, and there are plenty who say today that the cheering was inappropriate.

Me? I find it hard to do either.

On the one hand, I would love to think this is a spontaneous outpouring of joy and thanks to our men and women in uniform - a preview of the ticker-tape parade, if you will. I think that is a lot of it, yes. Our veterans and those serving overseas have accomplished a great deal in those combat zones, often without the strategic or tactical support necessary for a war effort of this magnitude. They deserve a great deal of thanks and recognition for that, and they deserve to have their ears ringing with the cheers of their countrymen when they return home.

I wish I could just stop thinking about it there and leave it at that.

But I cannot. I read the words of those people chiding the exuberant behavior. I think about where our culture has gone and how this kind of reaction should be expected after all the rah-rah over the last 10 years. This past decade has seen our popular culture devolve into controversies over American flag lapel pins, ribbon stickers on cars, the competition between sporting events to see who can unfurl the biggest American flag at mid-field with the loudest and closest flyover. If you didn't participate in the "USA" chant, or wear red on Fridays, or display appropriate mourning over everything September 11th, your patriotism was in question. One of the greatest condemnations in the past 10 years has been the idea that someone might be "apologizing" for America by looking at the world from different points of view.

Those folks cheering, you have to try and see it through their eyes.

For the young folks at least - those college kids Glenn Beck was talking about - they were between 8 and 15 on September 11th. This is the world and the culture they've grown up in. This is the behavior our culture has asked them to display. Before last night, anyone criticizing - or even questioning - behavior like that was considered un-American.

Think about the last decade and you'll see why spontaneous celebration comes from on the heels of good news. Between September 11th; Madrid, London, and Bali; the war in Afganistan continues; the war in Iraq continues; Hurricane Katrina and the Flood - and the rebuilding that continues; earthquakes and/or tsunamis in Indonesia, Haiti, and Japan; the Great Recession, the rising gasoline prices, the economic stagnation and insecurity that comes along with it; the BP Oil Gusher in the Gulf of Mexico; and our poisoned popular and political culture, where has the good news come from for the last 10 years?

And now, the face most associated with evil over the last decade was brought down. How can you expect people not to cheer? When talking about excessive celebration, there is an oft-heard suggestion to "act like you've been there before." For a lot of folks, they haven't been here before. For others, it has been a long, long time.

On the other hand, I remember the decade before the last and I grew up in the decade before that. As much damage as bin Laden has done to our nation and our world, as much damage has been done in our nation's imperfect pursuit of him and the clash of civilizations that he intentionally attempted to construct (and that so many in our own nation followed him into with froth at the mouths), I find it hard to celebrate with cheering.

We really have lost so very much, in so very many ways, as a nation and as a world, over the last 10 years. I know things in the past weren't as good as my memory thinks they were, and I know things in the present aren't as bad as they seem, but I can't help to think about where the world would be if this one madman hadn't had the wherewithal or means to disrupt and damage so much of what it felt we were working on.

And that does not make me feel like cheering.

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The Obituary of Record

bin Laden is dead. Reports are saying that Navy SEALs found him in a vacation manse in Pakistan, and instead of coming along peacefully, he decided to resist capture with the typical results.

The New York Times goes for seven pages of obituary, tying him to every recent terrorist attack we know by name, over the administrations of five United States Presidents.

Was he really that important to worldwide terrorism? Did his family really refer to him as the "slave child?" There is so much in that story that I want to believe, so much of it that seems plausible. Doing so might mean a real blow has been struck against worldwide terrorism, just by eliminating one man on a personal mission.

I pondered over how much damage one man can do, and how much damage that one man actually did. We heard his name before the day "September 11th" was seared into our collective consciousness. Just look at the irreparable damage he has left in his wake. That would be true, regardless of the words in the New York Times.

So, I'll also ponder the power of words, written on the page, to write history as it happens.

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Security Theatre's New Season

So, the new Department of Homeland Security wants to scrap the old, color-coded terror alert levels. Napolitano brought up a great point:

"We've been at 'orange' since 2006."

I always found that color-coordinated stuff nonsense, and I remember it changing every once in a while to remind Americans to fear, fear, fear. I believe it was counterproductive, the equivalent of crying "wolf" constantly for years.

Don't get me wrong, I don't expect to be a fan of the new system, either. All this is, in my opinion, more theatre. Maybe it comes from those American people who allow themselves to believe that they can outsource vigilance to a government agency so they don't have to worry about it personally. Maybe it is the government, who wants to advertise that they're doing something of value to the taxpayer without people looking too closely. Maybe it is a combination of both.

I only know this: you are never perfectly safe. Never. You never have been, you never will be, and no amount of complaining too or about the government is going to change that. They have limited resources to act proactively and reactively to those things that go bump in the night. While you are right to expect those actions to work effectively and continuously to help minimize risks to society as a whole and to work towards justice after the fact, you cannot abdicate your responsibility to participate in your own personal safety.

Now, you can let your fear of non-safety rule your life, or you can deal with it and pay attention to your surroundings, mitigating your risk as much as you can within reason, and understanding that sometimes no amount of preparation will ever be enough.

The answer isn't an overactive, color-coded government. The answer isn't to live your life in fear and never enjoy things because you're worried about events beyond your control. The answer is a society where everyone is, on average, a little bit vigilant; a society where people are more educated and less fearful, more involved in their communities and less alienated from each other, and use more common sense to pay more attention to their surroundings.

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The KSM Civilian Federal Trial Unicorn

Promised. Not delivered.

But let's not kid ourselves who is at fault for this broken promise. While the President and the Attorney General bear tremendous responsibility for it, you cannot excuse the cowardice of the political factions in this country who would use such a trial as an excuse to fan the flames of cultural panic, nationalist fear, and sectarian hatred all over America.

They are the same people who manufactured a controversey about a "Ground Zero Mosque," which was neither a mosque nor at Ground Zero, which an issue last summer (several of whom are running for President) to help them win elections through demagoguery. They are the people who, fearing the political fallout from that manufacture, choose to bow or cower before the altar of cultural panic instead of leading the nation away from it.

It is a shame that, when it comes to big decisions, the political calculus must include expectations of issue demagoguery by the opposition and allies. What is even more of a shame is that those calculations show the manufacture of fear to be more powerful than doing things the way they ought to be done.

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More Jester Than King

What an embarassment for the GOP. Representative Peter King of New York is getting ready to fan the flames of sectarian discord in the United States because he thinks all Muslims are terrorists while not all terrorists are bad.

That's right, I said it. Anyone who can defend the IRA because they "didn't threaten America" is one step away from defending the KKK because what they did is "in the past."

This is more of that state security nonsense under which too many Americans - and too many powerful Americans, especially in the Republican and Tea Parties - cloak their religious intolerance, xenophobia, racism, and bigotry all while calling their detractors out for nonexistant political correctness.

Political correctness, in this case, being the focus on non-threats and the willing disregard or intentional marginalization of real-threats in order to promote a political motive - such as winning support of an interest group.

You want political correctness? Look at the Islamophobes, who willingly disregard or intentionally marginalize the danger of the Timothy McVeighs, Eric Rudolphs, Ted Kaczynskis, Andrew Stacks and now Kevin Harphams of the world so they can go after the "Ground Zero Mosque" that is not a mosque, not at "Ground Zero," and NOT A THREAT.

As a matter of fact, if you compared body counts of radicalized American Muslims to that of radicalized American Christian white males, it isn't even a close comparison. And that's before you even factor in the historical body count of the Klan or the Citizens Councils who terrorized, raped, and burned their way across the country until about the 1970's. But that would require seeing African-Americans as fellow citizens, and we know how hard some people still have with that particular attitude.

But for Rep. King, this isn't even that complicated.

For him, this nonsense is a circus sideshow designed to play to the base, win elections, and raise money more than investigate actual threats to the United States of America. The numbers of actual, pragmatic, and effective conservatives in the Republican Party continue to dwindle as they are replaced by clowns like this.

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Insufficient Evidence

What has happened, and what still happens, in regards to our generations' "War on Terror," should be a shame on our national conscience as great as that of the Japanese American Internment. I could relate it to many of the historical injustices the people of this nation, through fear or greed, suspended the rights of fellow Americans for purposes that could only be described as illegitimate or lazy. But the Internment is the one that comes to mind the easiest, because that should have been our lesson on fear-based government overreach.

Maybe it would be easier to draw lines to our history if politicians, pundits and cultural harpies didn't spend so much time trying to rewrite or undermine the events and lessons of the past.

For those of you wondering, this is but one of the reasons I will never fully trust the government. I love my country, I respect my government, and I realize that anyone can make mistakes. But I also know that people who make mistakes don't like to admit it, and any human being can make assumptions. If that human being has some form of authority, he can do significant damage with those assumptions if he is able.

If someone in authority thinks you are a threat, and you have limited resources to defend yourself, they will come for you first. Vigilance is always necessary so that such things like this can be called out when the time comes, cynicism is always necessary to make sure you aren't being fed a bunch of bullshit when those in authority tell you about it.

It is also important from a real security standpoint. Behaving badly will always keep them from effectively focusing resources on the more legitimate threats - they will be too busy with the low hanging fruit.

This is one of the reasons I refuse to respond to the politics of fear.

This is also one of the reasons I find it abhorrent and intellectually sloppy to equate all Muslims or Middle Easterners with terrorism in our political discourse, our campaigns, our media and our culture. That helps cover up those in authority who make mistakes, it helps those mistakes make us less secure, and it only increases the ignorance necessary for our population to forget (and thus repeat) the sad lessons of our own history.

This is also one of the reasons I find it ridiculous that interrogations might involve torture, or that individuals can be held by our government for significant periods of time without formal charges being brought. If someone is a prisoner of war, they are a prisoner of war - obey those rules. If someone is suspected of a crime, bring charges against them in a court of law. It really is that simple.

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The Islamic Republicans of New Jersey

The same architects responsible for manufacturing the "Ground Zero Mosque" controversy (which was neither illegal, nor a mosque, nor at Ground Zero, nor controversial when first envisioned) are now furious with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R) for turning New Jersey into a hotbed of terrorist sympathy under the yoke of Sharia law.

Not my words, theirs.

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Tunisia

This primarily Muslim nation in North Africa just drove out their autocratic leader. Americans, still reeling from Tuscon, may not know what to make of this, but Hillary Clinton fairly spells it out:

"While some countries have made great strides in governance, in many others, people have grown tired of corrupt institutions and a stagnant political order," she said. She appealed for leaders to heed calls to rein in rampant graft and offer all of their people a better way of life.

"Those who cling to the status quo may be able to hold back the full impact of their countries' problems for a little while, but not forever," Clinton said. "If leaders don't offer a positive vision and give young people meaningful ways to contribute, others will fill the vacuum."

This is one of the most mature statements I've heard an American Secretary of State make about the Middle East in almost a decade, and it fairly sums up the situation. How does it affect the United States? Because some of those "others" filling the vaccum happened to be Osama bin Laden.

For a long, long time, the United States ended up supporting too many anti-Democracy autocrats in charge of oil-rich Arab nations in the Middle East. Our intention was strategic control of oil, and democratic institutions might have threatened that. Better to engage a client autocrat to keep the communists at bay than foster democratic sentiment and give them a chance to change government through voting.

In the absence of political enfranchisement, the populations turned to the "others," those selling false religious fundamentalism, that could not be effectively controlled by these nation's autocratic rulers.

Our greatest failures? Our support for the Shah of Iran, our support for the Mujahedeen in Afganistan and our support for Saddam Hussien in Iraq. All decisions which have cost American lives, and have been doing so for decades.

What will happen in Tunisia? Hopefully, a liberalization will occur, and this nation will get to embark on their own experiment with self-government. Hopefully, they will never have to experience a rash of political suicides and riots that come along with internal unrest and self-propelled regime change. Hopefully, the people who just gave their blood for economic and political liberty will not surrender that liberty to tyrants of a religious stripe.

Back home, failed neoconservatives - architects of our failures in Iraq, Iran and Afganistan - will point to the recent and ongoing Iraq war as the catalyst for the Tunisian revlot. "See!" They will say, "that's what happens when democracy is spread."

Do not heed their words, for we do not know how Tunisia will reinvent herself, and we know from experience that neocons would have rather played ball with a corrupt autocrat than with a messy but vibrant democracy. This is what happens when the people choose, not when a government is forced upon them.

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The Telling Response

After the shooting in Tuscon, we've been treated to yet another episode of American political culture tearing itself apart. Some men just want to see the world burn, and this guy is getting exactly what he wants.

Compare that, if you will, to Egypt's response to their latest round of terrorism.

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The Impossible Task (continued)

Today's must read is literally a probing piece of work by Christopher Hitchens at Slate.

If our country keeps going the way we're going, we'll voluntarily give up all our liberty with no security to show for it, thus completing Franklin's quote quite neatly.

We're sitting ducks for those who know how to expose our weaknesses, and we demand to be made so. We're going to continue to breathlessly exhort the government do the impossible, and in our next breath we'll complain that when they do what we demand of them, it pisses us off. Our media and political castes will continue to focus on who is to blame for the last meltdown, and why we should demand more sacrifices of liberty for less temporary security.

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The Impossible Task

Because people want the illusion of safety, not actual safety.

Because people want convenience, but blame others when something goes wrong.

Because other people are terrorists, not me, and the security people should know that just by looking at me.

That's why the terrorists got their box cutters onto the planes on September 11, and did what they did. Our system, at that time, was accomodating to encourage travel.

That's why afterwards, many Americans wanted to create a government agency to provide perfect security on airplanes. Even as perfect security is impossible. Every lapse in security since then has been made into a political circus and a media emergency.

That's why we have a color coded system of terrorism warning.

That's why, during these 9 years, Americans have complained loudly about participating in providing security on airplanes. And that's why, after 9 years, many Americans are losing their minds about the TSA.

Because they were not able to carry out the impossible task we asked them to do without our cooperation. Do this, we tell them, without our help or patience while we complain about it when they succeed and when they don't.

The government cannot handle everything, neither can businesses, so our expectations need to be reasonable. Political leaders and the media, instead of promising the impossible, need to assist in tempering expectations with reality. And Americans need to realize that, while they have the right to travel, when they get into a vehicle of any kind that can be turned into a speeding implement of death, they have to abide by whatever rules and regulations they demanded the government set for travelers in the first place.

So, what's it going to be, America? Essential freedom or temporary security?

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