Biggie as a fearmonger

Zbigniew “Biggie” Brzezinski, National Security advisor to Jimmy Carter during the decade of National Security advisors with heavy European accents, decides to provide his worthless opinion in the Washington Post on the dangers of the PATRIOT Act and the general and vague dangers of having Republicans fighting terror that he calls “Terrorized by the War on Terror”;

The “war on terror” has created a culture of fear in America. The Bush administration’s elevation of these three words into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious impact on American democracy, on America’s psyche and on U.S. standing in the world. Using this phrase has actually undermined our ability to effectively confront the real challenges we face from fanatics who may use terrorism against us.

The damage these three words have done — a classic self-inflicted wound — is infinitely greater than any wild dreams entertained by the fanatical perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks when they were plotting against us in distant Afghan caves. The phrase itself is meaningless. It defines neither a geographic context nor our presumed enemies. Terrorism is not an enemy but a technique of warfare — political intimidation through the killing of unarmed non-combatants.

The only damage these three words have done has been propagated by the Left in denying that there is a terror threat. The Left’s pooh-poohing of the threat of terrorists against Americans is the greatest danger to our security.

But the little secret here may be that the vagueness of the phrase was deliberately (or instinctively) calculated by its sponsors. Constant reference to a “war on terror” did accomplish one major objective: It stimulated the emergence of a culture of fear. Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue. The war of choice in Iraq could never have gained the congressional support it got without the psychological linkage between the shock of 9/11 and the postulated existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Support for President Bush in the 2004 elections was also mobilized in part by the notion that “a nation at war” does not change its commander in chief in midstream. The sense of a pervasive but otherwise imprecise danger was thus channeled in a politically expedient direction by the mobilizing appeal of being “at war.”

So, by describing the war in simplistic terms that everyone can understand, the Republicans are coming for our children under the guise of fighting Islamists. Biggie continues on describing in simplistic terms why we should be afraid of our Republican government while he doesn’t provide one concrete example of the government’s abuse of it’s newfound power in those three magic words. He contends that by calling it a War on Terror, it somehow has the force of law. If that’s not fearmongerng, I don’t know fearmongering.

If you wade through Biggie’s idiot rant about security checkpoints at the Washington Post, you discover that somehow security checkpoints in Washington are worthless symbols of this administration’s fearmongering. The Washington Post is a private company who sells it’s stock on the New York Stock Exchange – President Bush didn’t personally or indirectly erect the metal detectors in WaPo’s foyer. In fact, most of Washington was hiding behind metal detectors and security badges when I first moved to Washington DC in 1999 – more than two years before the evil Republican neocons attacked the poor Muslims, Biggie. That was when government employees were afraid of another attack by the Michigan Militia.

The record is even more troubling in the general area of civil rights. The culture of fear has bred intolerance, suspicion of foreigners and the adoption of legal procedures that undermine fundamental notions of justice. Innocent until proven guilty has been diluted if not undone, with some — even U.S. citizens — incarcerated for lengthy periods of time without effective and prompt access to due process. There is no known, hard evidence that such excess has prevented significant acts of terrorism, and convictions for would-be terrorists of any kind have been few and far between. 

Ya mean like these poor innocent muslims have been victimized, Biggie? How about how Arabs are inflicting their barbaric forms of justice on the rest of us? How many terrorists have we beheaded on video? Have we dragged any of the Guantanamo residents through the streets or hung their bodies from overpasses? Do you recommend that we just let the Islamofacists do what they please like they do in Thailand? And how about some examples of this alleged abuse of the civil rights of the people who don’t believe in civil rights anyway? Others can’t find examples either, Biggie, no matter how hard they look.

Where is the U.S. leader ready to say, “Enough of this hysteria, stop this paranoia”? Even in the face of future terrorist attacks, the likelihood of which cannot be denied, let us show some sense. Let us be true to our traditions.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. This from the guy who didn’t get exercised about 10,000 Soviet combat troops stationed 90 miles from our coastline to prevent us from reacting to the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The guy who let communist guerillas run rampant throughout Central and South America and Africa. The guy whose President was able to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue on his inauguration day in full view of his constituency, but who’s successor, four years later, had to make the trip in a bullet-proof limosine because the Carter Clowns had made the world too dangerous for our leader to walk in his own country amongst the people who’d elected him.

Why shouldn’t there be a reasonable attempt to protect our citizens, Biggie? Just because you don’t give a tiny rat’s ass, doesn’t mean the rest of us shouldn’t. I don’t see how a reasonable person can even think that our government is a bigger threat to our citizenry than a culture that already plans our irradication. Honestly, I hope you’re next.

Category: Antiwar crowd, Jimmy Carter, Politics, Terror War