We all know from our personal lives that deep emotion can distort our perceptions, often making it harder to do what is in our own interest.
Stephen Harper is unusual in that he basks in his ignorance — making a laugh line out of seeking the “root causes” of terrorism in a speech on Monday. He’s not alone, however, in finding it difficult to think clearly about what has happened to us in the years since those airplanes struck the twin towers.
It’s probably true of most North Americans. And that makes it harder to make sensible decisions about what to do next.
Three examples.
On September 12, 2001, newspapers recounting the events of the previous day all reported on the startling phenomenon of people hurling themselves from the upper floors of the stricken buildings. In many cases, this fact was mentioned in the first line of lead stories and most newspapers carried photographs.
But the reaction from readers was fury — and, strangely, shame — as recounted in the remarkable documentary film The Falling Man. The public preferred the image of heroic firefighters erecting an American flag, with its echoes of the hard-won American victory at Iwo Jima in the Second World War. The photograph of the falling man was not so much forgotten as erased from the public record.
Recently, my wife and I took our children to the new 9/11 Memorial Museum at the Ground Zero site in New York. It was a sombre and moving experience for all of us, evoking the scale both of the physical destruction and the human suffering that day. But I was unable to find any reference to the horrifying fact that so many people in those buildings felt helpless enough to clamber out a window and fling themselves out from a hundred storeys up.
Helplessness in the face of terror is simply not sanctioned in the collective memory. Action is required. Fight back.
Which brings me to my second example. It’s not just the events of that day we still see through a warped lens — it’s what followed.
In a generally praised analysis piece in the New York Times last week, Peter Baker wrote that Barack Obama’s declaration of something like war on ISIS — or the ‘Islamic State’, as it now calls itself — is “the next chapter in a grueling, generational struggle that has kept the United States at war in one form or another since that day 13 years ago on Thursday when hijacked airplanes shattered America’s sense of its own security.”
But by far the largest war the United States waged over those 13 years was in Iraq. Except in the delusional rhetoric of the Bush administration, that war had nothing whatever to do with terrorism — news that should have reached even the New York Times by now.
Although it’s very hard to say what the course of history in Iraq might have been had the U.S. not invaded, the chaos, sectarianism and warlordism that followed surely must be among the “root causes” behind ISIS that Harper so disdains to contemplate. It was a war — a military adventure — we should remind ourselves, that Harper supported.
Obama has been derided for his policy refrain: “Don’t do stupid stuff.” It falls short of a comprehensive policy, of course. But it’s better that actually doing stupid stuff.
Which brings me back to my third example — Harper’s Monday speech, rallying the Conservative caucus before this pre-election session of Parliament. It rang with the moral clarity the prime minister brings to things these days.
“Canadians are rightly sickened by (ISIS’s) savage slaughter of anyone who doesn’t share their twisted view of the world,” he said. “It is evil, vile and must be unambiguously opposed.”
The images of Western journalists and an aid worker beheaded by a vainglorious British ISIS recruit are gut-wrenching. Savage, barbaric, disgusting: These are all appropriate words.
But while we’re on the subject of beheadings, Saudi Arabia recently indulged itself in a bit of a spree. The regime there, which adheres to a strict and exotic form of Islam called Wahhabism, executed more than 20 people last month — and beheaded eight of them.
The charges included crimes like sorcery — yes, sorcery — apostasy, adultery and possession of drugs, according to Amnesty International and the United Nations.
That too is vile.
Yet the Saudi regime is high on the list of Middle Eastern powers being recruited by the United States to join its coalition against ISIS. This would be the same regime to which the Harper government promoted a $10 billion sale of military vehicles earlier this year.
The prime minister may enjoy the thrill of bringing moral clarity to the Middle East of all places, but it’s interfering with clear thought. I’m tempted to say we won’t defeat the terrorists by throwing B.S. at them.
Terrorism is a genuine threat. It may threaten our lives, but in vast disproportion it threatens our sense of security.
The difficult first step to addressing it is being honest with ourselves.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca/
Author: Paul Adams
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