Casualties continue to mount with war fever

http://latimes.com/tcn/ontario/opinion/la-iv0020584feb18.story

AT ISSUE
Casualties continue to mount with war fever
February 18 2002

Aside from the descriptions of a media-fabricated sense of international 
unity, the policies and actions spawned by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 
have been nothing short of tragic themselves. From widespread paranoia to 
encroachments upon civil liberties, the mood of civil pride in the United 
States has become almost fascist in nature. Such a society has not been seen 
in the U.S. since the height of the Cold War era.

Appeasing rabid patriots while catering to the hushed demands of "defense" 
contractors, the U.S. government and corporate media have proliferated a war 
fever throughout the industrialized world. Retaliation for the attacks of 
Sept. 11 have, according to recent estimate, claimed the lives of about 
3,000 Afghan civilians, leaving some to wonder if there really is a 
difference between hijacking passenger planes and dropping 25,000-pound 
bombs on civilian neighborhoods. Others dare to consider that an air war 
against a nation where two-thirds of the families in the capital depend on 
food handouts may contribute to establishing the social and emotional 
climate in which terrorism is bred. Such arguments are rarely addressed in 
the mass media, however, where the cry of pundits and editors is a hoarse 
"Now, Saddam!" On the home front, anthrax-fueled insecurities have led to 
the implementation of long-needed safety measures, while allowing the 
federal government to defend freedom from foreign enemies so that it may 
attack this "risky" concept itself. Having detained around 1,000 suspected 
"terrorists," the U.S. government had sought to give these detainees, whom 
they had conveniently deprived of the writ of habeas corpus, secret trials 
judged by military tribunals. A retired American military official, 
interviewed on the Fox News Channel, stated that he felt "certain liberties" 
could be taken with captured Taliban soldiers, in what seems to have been 
nothing more than an expression of spite toward the supposed aims of this 
unprecedented war on evil, international law and humanity.

Crackdowns on illegal immigrants, almost all of whom could be justifiably 
referred to as refugees from a world being ravaged by an unchecked 
superpower, have also given rise to the increasingly appropriate use of the 
term "police state" in describing the U.S. With its rights to perform what 
is essentially domestic espionage expanded under the Patriot Act, the FBI is 
becoming what would be referred to, if it were in most other nations, as a 
sort of secret police.

Aside from their immediate victims, the attacks of Sept. 11 have resulted in 
many equally heart-rending casualties. With 100,000 Afghan children in 
danger of dying this winter, according to a UNICEF estimate, and hundreds of 
American citizens being harassed or detained by their own government, the 
lesson to be learned is a simple, but somehow treasonous, one. No nation is 
secure, no wars are just and the most effective weapons against hate are 
understanding and compassion. Such ideas are represented by no flag.



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Yesterday we bowed for kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today, 
we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.
-Kahlil Gibran

The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans 
think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments 
of the dominant political mythology. -Michael Parenti

We declare our right on this earth ... to be a human being, to be respected 
as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, 
on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any 
means necessary. -Malcolm X
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