Food for thought
I get daily e-mails from OurFuture Today/TomPaine.com, and this article in yesterdays post caught my eye.
I think it's vitally important that people face reality - that our current "national security" strategies are working hard but still hardly working. The full article by Sara Robinson can be read here, but I've selected some of the, in my opinion, more important ones to highlight below.
1. "Islamofascism" is America's biggest national security threat.
Not hardly. This is the hot new idea among far-right demagogues who literally can't define who they are without a devil to contrast themselves against, and military hawks looking for an excuse to keep the military-industrial complex's big all-night party rolling in the bleary morning-after of a post-Cold War world. But, as the Center for American Progress notes in this article, it's a dangerous meme that disables our ability to think clearly, and it will almost certainly lead us into even more catastrophic misadventures.
To begin with, "Islamofascism" itself is an impossible idea, and those who promote it betray a fundamental political ignorance. True fascism can only occur within an industrialized nation-state, few of which exist in the Islamic world. And many of our most intransigent problems with terrorism come from the opposite problem: modern terrorists have no state affiliations, and are thus free to drift across international borders with fluid ease. Defeating them means coming to grips with this fact. Calling them "fascists" makes it that much harder to grasp.
Worse, "Islamofascism" suggests that the Muslim world is some kind of vast monolithic conspiracy, equal in might and will to the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany back in the day-and that's another dangerous delusion. Just like Christianity, Islam covers a widely diverse range of cultures and political attitudes. In fact, the overwhelming majority of the world's 1.6 billion Muslims are not jihadis, and consider terrorism abhorrent. Turning one-quarter of the world's people into The Enemy will blind us to the subtle but critical distinctions within Islam. It will doom us to serious blunders, alienate potential allies, and cost us important opportunities to make real inroads against terrorism.
Spencer Ackerman suggests the term "anti-Western Salafist jihadism" as a replacement. Less catchy, perhaps, but more specific and not nearly so fraught with wrong assumptions that can cloud our thinking.
Having dispatched "Islamofascism," though, the more important point remains: Anti-Western Salafist jihadism isn't even America's biggest security threat. It's on the short list-but so are global pandemics, loose nukes, our dependence on foreign energy, the catastrophic effects of climate change, the U.S.'s vast and bloated national debt, and our growing helplessness at producing essential goods for ourselves. As long as we're mired in an endless war to "defeat Islamofascism," we're going to remain weak, distracted, and grossly unprepared for the other serious security threats we face.
My thoughts: This couldn't be more true. Not only are we unfairly and inaccurately judging millions of people, we are clouding our minds to many other threats that are much more real. The term "Islamofascism" is nothing more than a scare-tactic that seeks to broad-brush a certain group of people to make our antagonistic acts toward them more palatable to the public. That's propaganda at its worst and needs to be stopped.
3. Military solutions are the only effective national security solutions.
Wrong. So wrong that Boston University professor Andrew Bacevich (who is nobody's liberal) has written an entire book on America's dangerously naïve faith in the military as the only viable solution to everything that ails us.
Which is ridiculous, when you consider all the things military force can't do. Smart bombs won't stop global warming. Battlefield nukes won't cure pandemics. Air strikes won't reduce our reliance on foreign energy sources. Sending in the Marines is no way to reduce the national debt. As we saw above in No. 1, terrorism is just one of a number of real national security threats we're facing-and as we'll see, it's not even clear that that the military is the right answer there, either.
On the other hand, there's a surprising level of consensus among security experts on both the left and right on what real, effective national security would look like:
- We need to beef up our intelligence agencies-in a way that's consistent with the Constitution-so they can monitor terrorist groups and keep dangerous technologies out of their hands.
- We need to provide consistent and effective domestic security around ports, chemical plants, and other high-risk targets-something that should have been done immediately after 9/11, but is still largely neglected.
- We need to revisit our national infrastructure for disaster preparedness and response. Whether it's floods or fires, evacuation or epidemic, insurgents or industrial accidents, we will be more secure if we have a well-planned, coordinated response, and trained people prepared and in place to handle it.
- We need our friends. Diplomacy, alliances, international cooperation, intelligence sharing and police work are the essential tools for pre-empting real threats to our security.
- We need to become more self-sufficient. Asked by the Foreign Policy Index to rate strategies for strengthening the nation’s security, 55% of Americans listed “Becoming less dependent on other countries for our supply of energy. Only 17% said “Attacking countries that develop weapons of mass destruction” would enhance our security.
America has very few problems that can best be solved by military means-and a great many problems that require us to look for other strategies.
My thoughts: Whenever I hear people hawking the use of military force as the one and only effective measure against security threats, it makes my skin crawl. I don't understand how anybody with a conscience can think this way - can think that killing thousands of people, destroying their homes and businesses and livelihoods is not just a viable way, but the only (and subsequently best) way to solve security threats. It really boggles my mind. When you threaten people with weapons and social disruption, not only are you stooping down to the levels of the terrorists you so claim to fight, you are also forcing many people who had never considered it before to turn to options like insurgency in order to protect themselves. They feel oppressed - and rightly so. Yes, there are bad people out there. Al Qaida needs to be hunted down; Bin Laden needs to be killed. But this useless display of our "military might" is helping no one and hurting too many.
7. Negotiating with "irrational" dictators is pointless, and a sign of weakness.
Catastrophically dumb. Conservatives condemn the idea of presidents talking to their counterparts from "enemy" countries, but 67 percent of Americans disagree, according to a June 2 Gallup poll. "Large majorities of Democrats and independents, and even half of Republicans, believe the president of the United States should meet with the leaders of countries that are considered enemies of the United States," the poll says. Fifty-nine percent of Americans, for example, would support the U.S. president meeting with the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
If FDR could confer with Stalin and JFK could negotiate with Khrushchev and Nixon could go to China and sit down with Mao, there's no reason whatsoever our current president can't arrange a meeting with Ahmedinejad. Bush's refusal to do this is a sign of his essential smallness of character and the narrowness of his worldview. The problem with all ideologues is that once they decide that "you're with us or against us," then no further discussion-let alone compromise-with the other side is possible. That's a dangerous trait in a president, and one we should watch out carefully for in the future.
My thoughts: Not much I can add to this, other than my complete agreement. To disregard the value of diplomacy when attempting to solve conflicts is twenty-seven shades of stupid. Many people will shoot back that "Speaking with those terrorist-harboring countries is pointless! It's not going to change their minds and only makes us look weak!" To those who think this way, I can only say that you, my friends, are greatly underestimating the power of words and the power behind such a simple action of reaching out a friendly hand.
8. Government spending on national security is different than pork-barrel spending on other programs.
Another myth busted. Recall that when the Republicans controlled Congress, they devised a formula that diverted security money from high-risk (and mostly liberal) states like New York and California to lower-risk (and mostly conservative) places like Wyoming and Nebraska. This made no logical sense from a security standpoint-the only explanation was that the Republican Congress was using 9/11 as an excuse to dole out pork.
Homeland security has grown up to become one of the biggest pork barrels in American politics. Security professionals are quick to point out that too many of these efforts aren't designed to provide objectively effective security-in fact, as we'll see below, many of them are based on flawed assumptions about how effective security works. Instead, the contracts are written in such a way that the only way to fulfill them is to funnel our tax dollars into the pockets of well-connected conservative cronies. The upshot is that we spend more than we should, and get less real protection than we deserve.
And perhaps worst of all: Seven years of this unregulated, unfocused spending has created a booming new industry that can only survive as long as it keeps selling us on new threats to fear-which has long-term implications for our entire national culture.
My thoughts: Not something that is brought up often, but this issue is one I felt was necessary to point out. There really is no doubt that much of this "war on terror" is fueled by the economic drives of the companies who have invested millions of dollars into it. It would be bad business for them if the war stopped. Well, news flash - it's bad business for human lives if it doesn't. The question is, which do we value more?
10. It's always necessary to give up our civil liberties in a time of war.
Wrong. So horribly wrong, in fact, that my very conservative eighth-grade civics teacher wouldn't have graduated a kid who failed this part of the exam. She put the fear of the Founders in us, along with a clear sense of our obligations and rights as citizens. There hasn't been a day since 9/11 that I haven't mourned the fact that America has not produced nearly enough Mrs. Hermans.
Last night, I was watching NBC's presentation of "9/11: As It Happened," a two-hour summary of its coverage that awful morning seven years ago. At one point, late in the broadcast, Tom Brokaw made a comment: "We are a country at war now....we're going to have to reconsider some of the freedoms we now enjoy." The smoke of the towers was still rolling up the streets of Manhattan, and NBC's senior anchor was already declaring a new era in which patriotic Americans must be willing to surrender their liberty for security. I was left wondering how someone who wouldn't have made it out of eighth grade at Home Street School ended up in a national anchor spot-and remembering all over again just what it was on that day that made me so deeply, truly afraid for my country.
Lincoln suspended habeus corpus during the Civil War, and FDR claimed extraordinary powers for himself during World War II-but neither of them ever tried to argue that being at war was a natural excuse for suspending the entire Bill of Rights. In fact (as we have seen) the more dangerous the times, the more important those liberties become. In times of huge social transformation or economic upheaval, when everything else is up for grabs, our worldview and our values-the internal qualities that define who we are, the things nobody can ever take away from us-move to the front and center. Everything else can go up in smoke; but as long as we hold onto those core beliefs, we will be able to survive the worst, and find everything we need within us to rebuild the world anew.
The Declaration and the Constitution are the defining documents of our country, expressing the central ideals that determine who we are. If we abandon those ideals, we will simply cease to be American-and, perhaps, lose the chance of ever restoring America again. If we are truly concerned about national security, this is, beyond a doubt, the worst thing we could ever allow to happen.
My thoughts: The second we are forced to give up our liberties in the name of and interest of war is the second we abandon the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and become not the United States of America, but the Military Nation of America. Nothing - and I do mean nothing can ever justify giving up our civil liberties, our inalienable rights. Not terrorists. Not oil. Not war. Not invading aliens from space.
I encourage everyone to read the rest of these myths - again, you can find the whole article by clicking here.