It's Not about Security

"I dread our own power and our own ambition. I dread being too much dreaded."

These are the words spoken by the Member of Parliament, Edmund Burke, at the advent of the English Imperium.

Following yesterday's carnage, I've listened in vain among hundreds of television and radio voices, waiting for words that approach the wisdom of Burke's.

The penultimate occupation of the "experts" seems to be encouraging acts of vengeance against anyone (or everyone), as long as they have brown skin.

Following the attack in New York City, the city that reviles John Rocker and rails against Southern "racism," any midtown or uptown cab driver with a "towel on his head" was pulled out of his taxi and beaten. (All the police are downtown, so the rest of the city is largely unpatrolled.)

This seems to echo the foreign policy analysis of our nation's brightest leaders. Among this analysis is the usual flatulence from one of the neocons' favorite warlords, Robert Kagan. In The Washington Post, he admonishes Congress to declare war … with someone … with anyone. He said "It does not have to name a country."

However, the first priority of the pundits is evidently to discuss security.

During a web search, I ran across this: "The World Trade Center’s security program is unmatched by any other commercial or government building in the U.S. … It is a national model for security." When I clicked on it, nothing appeared but a blank screen.

Surely the World Trade Center's "model" security was the perfect attraction for a hopeless act of terror.

Endless numbers of experts have crossed the television screen (including the widely respected Tom Clancy), every one uttering the same dreary pronouncements: More security, less freedom.

More security. We all know what that means.

We can look forward to more government intervention into the lives of those it purports to represent, and more government intervention into the lives it doesn't, continuing a vicious cycle.

I find discussion of security a particularly bizarre obsession in light of this specific act of barbarity. What were the implements of this destruction?

Will, and box cutters.

How is "security" going to eliminate this kind of threat?

And compared to this complex feat, which took extraordinary skill and planning, isn't bio-terrorism a much more simple method?

How many remember that the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center was "unsuccessful"? If the chemical bomb had deployed its poison properly instead of burning, that attack could easily have been as tragic as this one, perhaps more so.

And can anything better prove the folly of "Star Wars" missile defense?

Ever since Nimrod created The First State, and the first security system – the tower that was to reach the heavens and protect his throng from another devastating flood, man has sought security from The State.

But as thousand of years of human history have borne witness, security is an illusion.

Yes, we can put bars on the windows, and improve our intelligence, but what good is "security" in the face of waves of hate and chaos?

It reminds me of the fantasy of "the thin blue line." If some community decides, en toto, not to abide by any rule of law, no number of police can stop them. I think Los Angeles appreciates that fact.

And so it is with foreign relations. No amount of military intervention or "security" can control all the seething peoples who hate us.

"For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape."

So do we just fatalistically throw up our hands? Is hatred of America an Eastern ontology?

In recent years there have been no few number of warnings regarding the linkage of foreign intervention and domestic terrorism, and the voices have been powerful, but these voices often seem like voices crying in the wilderness. They have asked, "Will we soon ask the question, as a result of some horror: u2018Will we ever feel safe again?'"

Has anyone been listening? Does anyone remember the Founders' warnings about "entangling alliances"?

A gaze across the political landscape does not provide encouragement..

During the Republican primary debate of 15 Feb 2000, Larry King asked candidate Bush, "Governor, in what occasion could you describe where you would use arms?" He answered, "When it's in our national strategic interests. Europe is in our national strategic interests. The Far East is in our national strategic interests. Our own hemisphere is in our national strategic interests. The Middle East – protecting Israel is in our national strategic interests …" In sum, there is no corner of the Earth that is not in our national strategic interests.

King asked John McCain, "What if it wasn’t? What if it was a moral question, Senator?" The Senator replied "I just want to say, it's not that simple. It's not that simple because we are driven by Wilsonian principles as well as others. There are times when our principles and our values are so offended that we have to do what we can to resolve a terrible situation…"

He actually said "Wilsonian."

During the Bush-Gore televised presidential debates, George W. Bush proudly claimed he was an anti-interventionist; though, his own words betrayed his "non-interventionist" position.

The moderator listed eight military engagements, asking each candidate how they felt about them. On Grenada, Panama, the Persian Gulf, Bosnia, Haiti, and Kosovo, Mr. Bush and Mr. Gore both enthusiastically agreed with each intervention. Mr. Bush and Mr. Gore both expressed regret and caution with respect to Somalia. The only exception to their agreement was Lebanon, which Mr. Gore thought was a mistake, Mr. Bush did not. (President Reagan himself realized (too late) the folly of that adventure, and pulled out our troops.)

As if enough warning wasn't offered before the election, one doesn't have to look that closely to see that the interventionist policy of President Clinton is being continued by President Bush.

The big post-election question was: To whom will the president lend his ear? The interventionist Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz wing at Defense, or the less interventionist wing at State? (Supposedly, Mr. Powell wanted someone other than Wolfowitz in the Deputy Secretary of Defense slot.) We seem to have received our answer.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, most recent news reveals, is rumored to be increasingly pushed out of the inner circle.

Assuming for a moment that Mr. Bush truly is as non-interventionist as he claims, he certainly does not have the necessary intestinal fortitude to counter the predominant Beltway culture, in the Executive and Legislative branches, who have designs on every corner of the planet.

And suffer us not to forget the "conservative" press. While William F. Buckley was still heading up National Review, he could not tolerate the blasphemy of Joe Sobran – who questioned the wisdom of The Gulf War – and sent him into the wilderness (or so he had hoped).

And things have become much worse. We have the editors of The Weekly Standard who have been desperately mourning the arrival of The End of History, so have never seen a war they didn't like. We have National Review Online Editor Jonah Goldberg advocating the virtual colonization of the whole of Africa, etc., etc.

Assuming he wanted, can Mr. Bush stand against this great tide of "benevolent global hegemony"? I sincerely doubt it.

I know a number of right-thinking folks who consider themselves "conservatives," but are deceiving themselves into thinking that we have not reached the nadir of American political discourse. Before the election, these conservatives believed that they had "found their man" because some empty suit parrots a very few of their favorite soundbites, while avoiding an analysis of the symptoms that foretell the decline and fall of nations.

"Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits …"

Of course, I'm not laying all the blame at the feet of Mr. Bush – but as one president once said, "The buck stops here." The next time he summons his formidable "brain trust," we can only hope he asks the right questions, and we can only pray he listens to the right voices.

The president, in our hour of mourning told us, "America was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world."

Dead Wrong – America was targeted because its government diminishes the freedom of foreign peoples, murders its innocents, is the friend of its enemies, and whose press participates in the obfuscation of truth.

What can be done about terrorism? Nothing.

Nothing except one thing: America Come Home.

September 14, 2001