Editorial 6.5, by Deirdre Helfferich The Means Define the Ends “We must defend the American way of life!” cry columnists and politicians across the country, with the speaker’s unspoken assumptions that we understand just what that way of life is and that we agree that it is worth defending. Yet, after seeing the excitement generated by the opening of Fairbanks’ first Wal-Mart, and the absurd attention paid to it by the local news media, the military, churches, and everyday people, I have to ponder what, exactly, our way of life has become. What is it about something as tacky and banal as “Mall Wart” that has people so excited that they will actually sleep overnight in their car so they can be on time for the Big Opening of a chain store? Or perhaps I should ask, what is it that has happened to Alaskans that they think something like this is actually good, wholesome, and interesting? Why does Fairbanks seem to like the homogenized culture of cheap plastic crap offered by the chain stores and restaurants of modern America? Wal-Mart is one of several large corporations that, until the Wall Street Journal exposed them a couple of years ago, routinely took out life insurance on its employees—from the lowliest janitor to the upper management—without their knowledge or consent, and naming the corporation as the beneficiary should they expire. This is also known as “peasant’s insurance” because the “peasants” don’t profit, the aristocracy does. Wal-Mart recently made the national news from California during the extended and well-publicized supermarket clerk strike. Why? Because Wal-Mart’s policies of keeping its unions unorganized and its prices way, way low are resulting in a reduction in the number of supermarket chains across the country. They are part of the reduction of regionalism, of local flavor—and of good quality. This is a trend that goes hand in hand with commercialism. I can’t quite separate the “crass” from the “commercialism” anymore, because of ventures like K-Mart and Wal-Mart and McDonald’s and Jiffy Lube, nor can I separate it from American culture. These establishments that cover the American landscape are replacing stores and restaurants that base their operations on traditional values in American culture: independence, hard work, individuality, personality, pride in craftsmanship. It was the World Trade Center that was attacked in 2001, that and the Pentagon. Trade and war. Now, I don’t deny that it was a symbolic blow aimed at American strength and power, designed to humiliate and hurt us—and it certainly did that—but I remember the incredible hoopla and jingoism from the administration and the media, all boiling down to “The evildoers are attacking our way of life!” This was often accompanied by “They hate freedom!” and “They hate democracy!” But I kept wondering: if it was democracy and freedom they hated so much, why did they attack the world’s most potent symbols of financial power and military might? They didn’t hit us in the Capitol Building or the White House—in fact, they flew over the White House to get to the Pentagon. I suppose I’m quibbling, here, because the terrorists certainly were out to get us, and they succeeded. Thousands of people died, citizens of numerous countries. But it is clear that the terrorists were aiming at our symbols of power, and it is telling that they perceived that power as emanating from our money and our guns—not from our democracy. In the aftermath of the attack, there were admonitions from the very highest levels of the Executive Branch to spend money, to stimulate the economy, to “consume.” Yet Americans consume more than any other people in the world. And not just a little bit more—we are gluttons, greedy consumers of oil, of luxury goods, of food, of water, of air, of soil, of everything. We are pretty good at democracy, although not, as many here believe, the best. We have the highest percentage of our population behind bars of any nation in the world. There are many other countries whose democratic processes are more inclusive and more open than ours, and better at insuring the freedom of their citizens. In World War II, Americans were called on to be frugal, to sacrifice for the war effort, to conserve, to grow “victory gardens.” Now we are called on to go shopping, shopping, shopping. The banal has taken over even our war efforts. We are not urged to conserve, to become free of our addiction to foreign oil. We are not requested to do what we can to throw off the shackles of our profligacy—no. We are supposed to spend, buy, mire ourselves further in ways which suck up the world’s resources and increase our debt. Chains like Wal-Mart are icons of the national selfishness that blinds us to our responsibilities, where ministers bless the cathedral of Mammon, and troops come to offer their own symbolic approval. God and might for money. We have begun a “War on Terrorism” but is Wal-Mart and what it symbolizes really worth dying for? Worse, is it worth losing our humanity for? Now come revelations that Americans were using torture and rape (really just another form of torture) to humiliate Iraqi detainees—for months. Everyone is shocked—horrified that this could have been done, that “a few bad apples” could have gotten away with this awful, un-American abuse of prisoners. Yet, torture happens in any war, and Americans have committed it in every war we have been involved in. Americans, like everybody else, are human beings: good people, mostly. But, as Cal Thomas points in out his recent column, “Those Iraqi Prison Pictures,” it is the context in which this happens that needs to be closely looked at. Thomas was looking at only part of that context, however—we, the United States of America, were among Saddam’s biggest supporters. We in the West provided him with money, weapons, and looked the other way when he committed genocide with the poison gas we’d supplied. Likewise, we—and other members of the United Nations—support dictatorial regimes that commit torture. We are supporting Uzbekistan, which makes a regular practice of torture. Hell, we even ran a school that taught “interrogation techniques,” the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, recently renamed in 2001 and formerly known as the School of the Americas, a place long castigated by human rights organizations worldwide. A recent editorial in the Detroit Free Press (May 11, 2004) had this to say about it:
Interestingly—and deservedly, I believe—we later must often fight the very people we supported before. We trained Osama bin Laden! This kind of behavior is not new for us. Our prisons are violent places, particularly for members of racial, ethnic, or religious minorities. Prisons themselves are conducive to generating abusive and sadistic relationships between guards and prisoners (I refer to the infamous Stanford Prison Study). Strong and strict codes of ethics must be adhered to in any prison situation—and particularly a war prison—so that abuses, which will naturally tend to occur, do not happen. Hence we have codes such as the Geneva Accords on treatment of prisoners of war. But then why were reports of abuse made a year ago by the Red Cross, Amnesty International, and the military’s own personnel ignored? Why was it that Major General Antonio Taguba’s report, completed at the end of February, describing systemic abuse and torture, was not acted on until the pictures got out? Public awareness, as we have seen, and an alert, questioning, and analytic press, can stop such evil in its tracks. That’s one reason why the secrecy around the prison camp in Guantanamo is so dangerous to our nation’s spiritual health: it’s hard for democracy and freedom to survive in the dark, and it’s hard for despotism and torture to survive in the light. Further investigations show how, at very top of the executive branch, the Bush White House and the Justice Department decided that the Geneva Convention and the International Convention Against Torture are “quaint” and “intrusive.” The White House has been actively fighting restrictions on the use of torture—and pressing for its use in the case of suspected terrorists. Yet torture is a notoriously poor tool for extracting information. It’s great, however, for destroying a person’s spirit—both that of the perpetrator and the victim, although in different ways. That’s the national context that Cal didn’t look at. He also made the errors of equating Islam with terrorism, and of blaming Muslims for humiliations that we have perpetrated upon the Middle East. Yes, Middle Eastern countries and religious zealots have propagandized against the United States for decades. This does not absolve us of the sins we have committed there. This horrific context is not what the “Great Experiment” is supposed to be about. This imbalance of power is not acceptable. American ideals have been violated, by the Executive, by the Judicial, and by the Representative branches of government. The Fourth Estate has allowed it to happen, because it has been all but devoured by the God of Greed. We have allowed it to happen. When I was in high school, I read a book by T.H. White, The Once and Future King. It’s a retelling of the Arthurian legend. Arthur is portrayed as a bit of a dunderhead, mostly a well meaning and friendly kind of guy, but a bit thick. Merlin spends most of his time trying to get a simple idea through Arthur’s head: might is not equivalent to right. Might, however, used for right, can work great wonders and is a higher good. This distinction is a little difficult for Arthur to understand, because in medieval England, military might is the highest good, practically speaking. He who gets the gold is naturally the good guy, because goodness is defined by power. It is Merlin’s great triumph when Arthur finally understands the difference between right and might. Because of this understanding, Arthur goes on to become England’s greatest ruler. This idea, that might for right is far more powerful and longer lasting than simple might, has yet to get through to America’s leaders. We could use our tremendous resources, money, and power to set an example for the world—but we don’t. And our current administration seems infatuated with the idea of empire, forgetting that power does not automatically make the United States a Camelot. We espouse certain ideals, but we don’t live by them. This is our basic error, and has worked against us for decades. We have created our own enemies by ignoring Merlin’s lesson. How we conduct ourselves, as individuals and as a nation, in our domestic and our foreign endeavors, defines and creates our achievements—and our failures. They say the end justifies the means, but this is a fallacy. Yes, it is just a few people out of the entire military establishment who have committed the physical acts of abuse and torture. But it is the culture that surrounds them, that says, “Might is right, power is good, more is better,” that corrupts them. | ||
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