It might be that because Bush et al. can't get the real perpetrators and can't acknowledge decades of US complicity in oppression of the Muslim and Arab worlds and the now realized fears of reprisal that have naturally followed (i.e. terrorism), they have set up a system to scourge people at random as members of a boogie-man class. I just don't know.
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I believe the idea of a boogieman class is a predictable outcome of the language the Bush administration has used since 9/11 and the notions that inform this language. There is, for example, a “War on Terror”, not a series of ongoing counter-terrorist actions against finite groups.
Counter-terrorism sounds reasonable and levelheaded - the work of professionals doing a necessary job. But “War on Terror” sounds like an impossibly large event – perhaps cosmic in implication as the “evildoer” rhetoric of Bush and his ideological followers – such as the clumsily urbane Hitchens with his “islamo-fascist” formulation - suggests.
Something as large as a “War on Terror” surely cannot begin and end with the nullification of sinister group A or B but must be a struggle against a whole class of people – the terrorists. But the problem is, anyone and his peg legged grandmother can, at any moment, decide to take terrorist steps and become a member of this barbarian horde. This makes the effort to prevent terrorist action – as defined by Bush and co. – an action against the possible thoughts and deeds of nearly every person on the planet over a certain age. Everyone is (potentially) guilty and must be surveilled, examined, scanned and, if somehow (and only this tenuous “somehow” is necessary) involved with the possibility or fact of terrorism, detained for “intelligence gathering”.
This is why DARPA projects like Total Information Awareness received a serious hearing. This is why the limitless imprisonment of men (are any women held?) at Gitmo seems logical to believers. Indeed, the rationale for the entire Iraq war was the potential threat – evidence was unimportant, he hated us and therefore was spiritually linked to our terrorist adversaries. I think, taking into account the material conditions of occupation, which strongly motivate abuse, this is also why holding and torturing Iraqis seems like a sensible protective move to the national security apparatchiks of Bush world and their frontline workers.
In the twinkling of an eye, the people you’ve come to “liberate” can be transformed within your thoughts from innocents to terrorists – the suspicion mind-object is latent yet virulent, impatiently waiting for a physical presence to serve as a target.
And there is also, it must be said, the racism factor though this should not be leaned on as a sole support for explaining what we’re witnessing.
.d.