December 01, 2006 (2): The Fear Factor Compounds

The impact of the "imams on a plane" story is still being felt. Reuters began a story with a Washington byline this morning as follows:

When radio host Jerry Klein suggested that all Muslims in the United States should be identified with a crescent-shape tattoo or a distinctive arm band, the phone lines jammed instantly.

The story then went on to describe a depressing sample of callers who reinforced Klein's suggestion in any number of vindictive ways. After an hour of this, Klein let the cat out of the bag:

At the end of the one-hour show, rich with arguments on why visual identification of "the threat in our midst" would alleviate the public's fears, Klein revealed that he had staged a hoax. It drew out reactions that are not uncommon in post-9/11 America.

"I can't believe any of you are sick enough to have agreed for one second with anything I said," he told his audience on the AM station 630 WMAL (http://www.wmal.com/), which covers Washington, Northern Virginia and Maryland

"For me to suggest to tattoo marks on people's bodies, have them wear armbands, put a crescent moon on their driver's license on their passport or birth certificate is disgusting. It's beyond disgusting.

"Because basically what you just did was show me how the German people allowed what happened to the Jews to happen ... We need to separate them, we need to tattoo their arms, we need to make them wear the yellow Star of David, we need to put them in concentration camps, we basically just need to kill them all because they are dangerous."

As far as I am concerned, responsibility for this culture of fear lies primarily, if not entirely, with our Federal Government, particularly in the Executive Branch, which has probably done more than any previous administration to achieve results through fear. Any number of analysts have discussed the extent to which this administration was planning its moves according to the Nazi playbook, but that kind of analysis tends to be too abstract for the general public. Klein had the guts to move from the abstract to the concrete, but it remains to be seen whether or not his demonstration will have any impact.

November 28, 2006: Terrorism 101

One of the things that makes Max Rodenbeck's essay on terrorism for the November 30 issue of The New York Review so compelling is his choice of introductory quotations. The one from Clausewitz could be expected: where else would we turn when having to confront the fiasco of our own military adventurism. However, it is the perceptiveness of the second quotation that is far more fascinating:

The actual reason for the failure of the US policy in its political field and international relations is their lack of information regarding the world's realities and also the enclosure of the decision making people of that country in their own fabricated and false political propaganda.

It would not be hard to imagine these words coming from the apologetic mouth of Robert McNamara in The Fog of War, but that guess would fall about as far from the mark as one might imagine. No, the author of that sentence is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; and the text is an entry from his personal blog written after his visit to New York this past September. Of course one of the ways in which we all deprive ourselves of "information regarding the world's realities" is through our assumption that those who disagree with us substitute fanaticism for reflection; and, as far as Ahmadinejad is concerned, the media (with the possible exception of Mike Wallace), do a very good job of fueling that assumption. I suspect that Ahmadinejad's blog is written in a language that I cannot read very well (if at all); so I have no idea how consistently reflective he is in his writing. However, Rodenbeck made a powerful rhetorical move by situating him next to Clausewitz as the "voices of reason" that preface his analysis.

His next rhetorical move resides in his choice of language to describe the current "state of play" in those military adventures:

What has happened … is that the mental construct that framed the Bush administration's reaction to September 11 as a "war" is beginning to fall apart.

At the end of the day, it is not a matter of the illogic of White House rhetoric about democracy. Instead, it is about a "mental construct," "fabricated" (to use Ahmadinejad's language) by virtue (sic) of "lack of information regarding the world's realities." We can, of course, address the question of whether this lack of information had to do with the willful decision to sublate information in deference to faith; or we can flip the coin around and blame it on the myopia of those "dogmas" of Western civilization that sublate other cultural perspectives in deference to "scientific" thinking. Whether we followed the faith-based path of fundamentalism or the rationalist path that consumed McNamara, we blundered badly; and there is a supreme irony that a blog entry by a supposed faith-based fundamentalist should reveal such reflective insight into our blunder.

Most of Rodenbeck's article has to do with why it took so long for the general American public to recognize this insight; but he never really factors in the role that media play in shaping public opinion (or the role that the White House played in controlling those media). Instead, he writes about books that will probably never come to general public attention. The core of the article focuses on a "Terrorism 101" textbook entitled What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat:

One of the best [recent explanatory books] is by Louise Richardson, a Harvard professor who not only has been teaching about terrorism for a decade, but brings the experience of an Irish childhood, including youthful enthusiasm for the IRA, to understanding the phenomenon. As she explains, she had always thought it wise for academics to stay out of politics. The sheer boneheadedness of Washington's incumbents, who have ignored decades of accumulated wisdom on her subject, prompted her to write a belated primer.

Nevertheless, we can see the problem in getting out Richardson's message when, at this point in the article, Rodenbeck's rhetoric fails him. He decides to outline a dozen points from the book, and I believe that contemporary rhetoric would do well to acknowledge the cognitive impact of honoring "Miller's magic number" (seven plus or minus two). The Macarthur Report on media literacy makes a similar rhetorical blunder; but, while each of the Macarthur items can be distilled down to a relatively manageable phrase, each of Rodenbeck's points involves (at least) one paragraph of subtleties that would impede such distillation. Whether we like it or not, the path to public opinion leads through quick slogans and compelling images; and there we have it. Those "boneheads" know how to play the slogan-and-image game; and, once again, analytic thinking, regardless of how powerful its message may be, is left out in the cold. Once again we must confront that postmodern world in which fiction rules with a double-edged sword.

November 25, 2006: Imams on a Plane

Today's Chronicle ran a follow-up to the story of the six Muslim scholars who were removed from a US Airways flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix. One of the imams was from Bakersfield; and yesterday, shortly after noon, Associated Press ran a story about his arrival at his final destination. The bottom line was that it took him 27 hours to get there, and one of the reasons was that US Airways refused to let any of the six men board any of its flights. I continue to read this as evidence of the culture of fear we have created. I know from my own experience how fear can breed anger (on both sides of the coin); so I have been particularly depressed by this particular item and the way things have been proceeding.

November 21, 2006 (1): The Culture of Fear

The real story behind the incident at UCLA's Powell Library is the way in which it demonstrated how successful those in power have been at turning American society into a culture of fear. Anyone considering denying this proposition should consider a breaking story from Associated Press concerning the removal of six Muslim scholars from a US Airways flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix. Here is how Associated Press reported the grounds for the removal:

A passenger raised concerns about the imams — three of whom said their normal evening prayers in the airport terminal before boarding the Phoenix-bound plane, according to one — through a note passed to a flight attendant, according to Andrea Rader, a spokeswoman for US Airways.

The Council on Islamic-American Relations has called for an investigation, and I hope they get a good one. As is the case with the UCLA story, we are in no position to judge the merits of this case on the basis of what the media feed us. Nevertheless, I am sure it will not be long before the Internet is flooded with expressions of mass indignation on both sides of the story.

July 14, 2006: Cole's List

In reviewing Bruce Ackerman's Before the Next Attack for The New York Review (July 13 issue), David Cole offered his own list of "measures that are legal and appropriate in responding to a terrorist attack and seeking to prevent another attack." Here is the list in bullet format (which Cole did not use) but otherwise in Cole's own words:

• increasing security at borders, airports, and other sites of potential attack, such as chemical plants
• using military force, detentions, and trials, so long as they are consistent with the UN Charter and the laws of war
• investigating potential terrorists pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
• prosecuting those who conspire to engage in terrorist acts or aid or abet such acts
• securing nuclear materials to keep them out of terrorists' hands
• improving coordination between law enforcement and intelligence officials
• increasing aid to foreign communities where poverty and resentment toward the US have been exploited by terrorists
• reducing US dependence on oil to offset the perverse incentives that such dependence creates for American foreign policy
• making progress toward global disarmament

Cole summarizes his list as follows:

Such measures, and they are only a sample, would increase US security without necessarily undermining constitutional principles, and most significantly, without encouraging the rampant anti-Americanism that the Bush administration's disregard of the rule of law has exacerbated around the world.

Personally, I think it is about time that the last remaining superpower show some signs of being a "responsible citizen of the world." I have my own list, which is of the key events that I felt led up to 9/11:

• Refusal to accept or negotiate the Kyoto Protocol
• Refusal to acknowledge the International Criminal Code
• Refusal to acknowledge the riots taking place at key economic summit meetings

Happy Bastille Day!