Thursday, March 20, 2003

An Ocean of Paranoia I have been in Canada for the last few days as the war started.  One speaker at a conference I attended said Canada was now isolated by four oceans.  To the East was the Atlantic, to the West, the Pacific, to the North, the Arctic, and to the South, an ocean of paranoia in the U.S.   It is not comfortable to be an American abroad anymore.  I am afraid that this war is opening up fault lines in our country and the world that will not be closed for a generation.    The most apt analogy I can think of is the start of the cold war.  After the allied victory in WW2 and the founding of the UN many people looked towards an era of peace.  Instead, U.S. anti-communism quickly put the country back on a war footing only this time with an adversary who was strong.               We also had our short period of peace and prosperity following the collapse of the Soviet Union, but now this is likely to be a short lived era as well.   What does it mean when Bush talks of endless war—It means that the U.S. has adopted the right wing Israeli strategy of crushing political opposition by sheer military force.               There is no question that the U.S. will gain military victory in Iraq.  The U.S. will fire thousands of missiles, while the Iraqi’s may manage to fire a dozen or so in their defense.               Then what?               As in Israel, when faced with overwhelming military strength, the Palestinians devised a new weapon, suicide bombers.  So should we expect Muslims, when defeated militarily, to turn to new weapons, weapons against which stealth bombers and cruise missiles are totally ineffective.               What will happen to our country after the first suicide bomber in a shopping mall?  Already people aren’t flying out of fear.  Soon they may be afraid to shop in public places.                The reason I am opposed to the war, to everything Bush stand for, is that I believe our security and prosperity lie in creating an open, tolerant, mutually dependent global society in a climate that promotes prosperity and peace.                         Bush’s decision after Sept. 11th to declare global war will go down in history like the Smoot Hawley Tariffs – a disastrous policy decision that has been universally condemned as making the 1930’s depression much deeper and worse than it otherwise would have been.               In the same way, Bush is making a disaster out of what started as a political act of terror.   Bush’s paranoia, which comes from his political bosses, not any vision, will create a world of hardship and isolation for Americans.               Here are four stories from the Canadian papers (Toronto Globe and Mail) today:   1-     The U.S. would turn into a police state should patriot act II be passed into law. 2-     Canadian international law experts view the war as illegal.  It does not have UN sanction, and resolution 1441 specifically left further steps to the security council, which was against going to war. 3-     America has been accused in the EU of bugging the conference room where an EU summit of heads of state is to take place, after electronic security monitoring revealed the listening devices. 4-     Canadian businessmen fear the U.S. is becoming a fortress, and that the open border with Canada will become a relic of the past.   These stories will never make it into the mostly jingoistic American media.  We are creating a world in which people are terrified of America.  There are people in Newfoundland who are now terrified to set foot in the U.S., who will no longer visit relatives or friends.  Its just too dangerous, they say.   They remind me of the stories my mother used to tell me about being afraid to travel to Germany in the 1930’s, for fear of Nazi thugs and police surveillance and questioning.   Is this how the world now sees us:  as thugs creating a police state? 10:31:39 PM   comment []

© Copyright 2003 Toby Sackton. Last update: 4/2/2003; 11:23:15 PM.