The United States of Fear
by Tom Engelhardt
The National Security State Cops a Feel: Taking
Off the Gloves (and Then Everything Else)
It's finally coming into focus, and it's not even
a difficult equation to grasp. It goes like this: take a country in the
grips of an expanding national security state and sooner or later your
"safety" will mean your humiliation, your degradation. And by
the way, it will mean the degradation of your country, too.
Just ask Rolando Negrin, a Transportation Security Administration (TSA)
screener who
passed through one of those new "whole body image" scanners
last May as part of his training for airport security. His co-workers
claimed to have gotten a look at his "junk" and mocked him
mercilessly, evidently repeatedly asking, "What size are you?"
and referring to him as "little angry man." In the end, calling
it "psychological torture," he insisted that he snapped, which
in his case meant that he went after a co-worker, baton first, demanding
an apology.
Consider that a little parable about just how low this country has sunk,
how psychologically insecure we've become while supposedly guarding
ourselves against global danger. There is no question that, at the height
of Cold War hysteria, when superpower nuclear arsenals were out of this
world and the planet seemed a hair-trigger from destruction, big and
small penises were in play, symbolically speaking. Only now, however,
facing a ragtag set of fanatics and terrorists – not a mighty nation but
a puny crew – are those penises perfectly real and, potentially,
completely humiliating.
Failed Bombs Do the Job
We live, it seems, in a national security
"homeland" of little angry bureaucrats who couldn't be happier
to
define what "safety" means for you and big self-satisfied
officials who can
duck the
application of those safety methods. Your government can now come up
with any wacky solution to American "security" and you'll pay
the price. One guy brings a failed
shoe bomb on an airplane, and you're suddenly in your socks. Word has
it that bombs can be
mixed from liquids in airplane bathrooms, and there go your bottled
drinks. A youthful idiot
flies
toward Detroit with an ill-constructed bomb in his underwear, and
suddenly they're taking naked scans of you or threatening to grope your
junk.
Two bombs don't go off in the cargo holds of two planes and all of a
sudden sending things around the world threatens to become
more problematic and expensive. Each time, the price of
"safety" rises and some set of
lucky corporations,
along with
the lobbyists and politicians that support them, get a windfall. In
each case, the terror tactic (at least in the normal sense) failed; in
each case, the already draconian standards for our security were
ratcheted up, while yet more money was poured into new technology and
human reinforcements, which may, in the end, cause more disruption than
any successful terror attack.
Directly or indirectly, you pay for the screeners and scanners and a
labyrinthine intelligence bureaucracy that officially wields an
$80 billion budget, and all the lobbyists and shysters and pitchmen
who accompany our burgeoning homeland-security complex. And by the way,
no one's the slightest bit nice about it either, which isn't surprising
since it's a national security state we're talking about, which means its
mentality is punitive. It wants to lock you down, quietly and with full
acquiescence if possible. Offer some trouble, though, or step out of
line, and you'll be hit with a
$10,000 fine or maybe
put in cuffs. It's all for your safety, and fortunately they have a
set of the most inept terror plots in history to prove their
point.
By now, who hasn't written about the airport
"porno-scans," the crotch gropes and breast jobs, the
"don't touch my junk" uproar, the growing lines, and the
exceedingly modest protests on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, not
to speak of the indignity of it all?
Totally been there, completely
done
that; totally written about, fully read. Shouldn't we move
on?
Taking Off the Gloves (and Then Everything
Else)
And yet there are a few dots that still need to
be connected. After all, since the beginning of George W. Bush's second
term, Americans have been remarkably quiet when it comes to the national
security disasters being perpetuated in their name.
America's wars, its soaring Pentagon budgets, its
billion-dollar military bases, its giant
new citadels still called embassies but actually regional command
centers, its ever-escalating CIA
drone war along the Pakistani tribal borderlands, the
ever-expanding surveillance at home, and the incessant
"night raids" and
home razings thousands of miles away in Afghanistan, not to speak of
Washington's
stimulus-package spending in its war zones have caused no more than
the mildest ripple of protest, much less genuine indignation, in this
country in years.
American "safety" has, in every case, trumped outrage. Now, for
the first time in years, the oppressiveness of a national security state
bent on locking down American life has actually gotten to some Americans.
No flags are yet flying over mass protests with "Don't Scan on
Me" emblazoned on them. Still, the idea that air travel may now mean
a choice between a spritz of radiation and a sorta naked snapshot or –
thrilling option B – having some overworked,
overaggressive TSA agent grope you has caused outrage, at least among
a minority of Americans, amid administration
confusion. (If you want evidence that Hillary Clinton is considering
a run for president in 2012, check out what she
had to say about her lack of eagerness to be patted down at the
airport.)
Local authorities have
threatened to bring sexual battery charges against TSA agents who
step over the line in pat-downs. Some legislators are denouncing the
TSA's new security plans. Ron Paul has
introduced the American Travel Dignity Act. And good for them
all.
But here's the thing: in our deluded state, Americans don't tend to
connect what we're doing to others abroad and what we're doing to
ourselves at home. We refuse to see that the trillion or more dollars
that continue to go into the Pentagon, the
U.S. Intelligence Community, and the national security state yearly,
as well as the stalemated or losing wars Washington insists on fighting
in distant lands, have anything to do with the near collapse of the
American economy, job-devastation at home, or any of the other disasters
of our American age.
As a result, those porno-scanners and enhanced pat-downs are indignities
without a cause – except, of course, for those terrorists who keep
launching their bizarre plots to take down our planes. And yet whatever
inconvenience, embarrassment, or humiliation you suffer in an airport
shouldn't be thought of as something the terrorists have done to us. It's
what the American national security state that we've quietly accepted
demands of its subjects, based on the idea that no degree of danger from
a terrorist attack, however infinitesimal, is acceptable. (When it comes
to genuine safety, anything close to that principle is absent from
other aspects of American life where – from
eating to driving, to
drinking, to working – genuine danger exists and genuine
damage is regularly done.)
We now live not just with all the usual fears that life has to offer, but
in something like a United States of Fear.
So think of it as an irony that, when George W. Bush and his cronies
decided to sally forth and smite the Greater Middle East, they exulted
that they were finally
"
taking the gloves off." And so they were: aggressive war,
torture, abuse, secret imprisonment, souped-up surveillance, slaughter,
drone wars, there was no end to it. When those gloves came off, other
people suffered first. But wasn't it predictable – since unsuccessful
wars have a nasty habit of coming home – that, in the end, other things
would come off, and sooner or later they would be on you: your hat, your
shoes, your belt, your clothes, and of course, your job, your
world?
And don't for a second think that it's going to end here. What happens
when the first terrorist with a suppository bomb is found aboard one of
our planes? After all, such weapons
already exist. In the meantime, the imposition of more draconian
safety and security methods is, of course,
being considered for buses, trains, and boats. Can trucks, taxis,
cars, and bikes be far behind? After all, once begun, there can, by
definition, be no end to the search for perfect security.
You Wanna Be Safer? Really?
You must have a friend who's extremely critical
of everyone else but utterly opaque when it comes to himself. Well,
that's this country, too.
Here's a singular fact to absorb: we now know that a bunch of Yemeni
al-Qaeda adherents have a far better hit on just who we are,
psychologically speaking, and what makes us tick than we do. Imagine
that. They have a more accurate profile of us than our leading
intelligence profilers undoubtedly do of them.
Recently, they
released an online magazine laying out just how much the two
U.S.-bound
cargo-bay
bombs that caused panic cost them: a mere $4,200 and the efforts of
"less than six brothers" over three months. They even gave
their plot a name, Operation Hemorrhage (and what they imagined
hemorrhaging, it seems, was not American blood, but treasure).
Now, they're laughing at us for claiming the operation failed because –
thanks reportedly to a tip from Saudi intelligence – those bombs didn't
go off. "This supposedly 'foiled plot,'" they wrote, "will
without a doubt cost America and other Western countries billions of
dollars in new security measures. That is what we call
leverage."
They are,
they claim, planning to use the "security phobia that is
sweeping America" not to cause major casualties, but to blow a hole
in the U.S. economy. "We knew that cargo planes are staffed by only
a pilot and a co-pilot, so our objective was not to cause maximum
casualties but to cause maximum losses to the American economy" via
the multi-billion-dollar U.S. freight industry.
This is a new definition of asymmetrical warfare. The terrorists
never have to strike an actual target. It's not even incumbent upon
them to build a bomb that works. Just about anything will do. To be
successful, they just have to repeatedly send things in our direction,
inciting the expectable Pavlovian reaction from the U.S. national
security state, causing it to further tighten its grip (grope?) at yet
greater taxpayer expense.
In a sense, both the American national security state and al-Qaeda are
building their strength and prestige as our lives grow more constrained
and our treasure vanishes.
So you wanna be safer? I mean, actually safer? Here's a simple
formula for beginning to improve American safety and security at every
level. End our trillion dollar wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; set our
military to defending our own borders (and no, projecting power abroad
does not normally qualify as a defense of the United States); begin to
shut down our global
empire of bases; stop building
grotesque embassy-citadels abroad (one even has a
decorative moat, for god's sake!); end our overseas war stimulus
packages and bring some of that money home. In short, stop going out of
our way to tick off foreigners and then pouring our treasure into an
American war machine intent on pursuing a generational global war against
them.
Of course, the U.S. national security state has quite a different formula
for engendering safety in America: fight the Afghan War until
hell freezes over; keep
the odd base or two in Iraq;
dig into the Persian Gulf region;
send U.S. Special Operations troops into any country where a
terrorist might possibly lurk; and make sure the
drones aren't far behind. In other words, reinforce our war state by
ensuring that we're eternally in a state of war, and then scare the hell
out of Americans by repeatedly insisting that we're in imminent danger,
that shoe, underwear, and someday butt bombers will destroy our country,
our lives, and our civilization. Insist that a single percent of risk is
1% too much when it comes to terror and American lives, and then demand
that those who feel otherwise be dealt with punitively, if they won't
shut up.
It's a formula for leaving you naked in airports, while increasing the
oppressive power of the state. And here's the dirty, little, distinctly
Orwellian secret: the national security state can't do without those
Yemeni terrorists (and vice versa), as well as
our homegrown
variety. All of them profit from a world of war. You don't – and on
that score, what happens in an airport line should be the least of your
worries.
The national security state is eager to cop a feel. As long as Americans
don't grasp the connections between our war state and our
"safety," things will only get worse and, in the end, our world
will genuinely be in danger.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/engelhardt/engelhardt411.html
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