> Yeah, I don't want to over state the case. Still, I think it is
> essential to emphasize what places like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib are
> (straight up police state gulags), in the face of what appears to me
> to be a kind news media and public ignorance or lack of
> understanding---perhaps denial.
Oh, go ahead and overstate! Let it all hang out! :-)
Actually, it's easy to understand this public denial, but perhaps the public is gradually coming around. The right-wing Repub counter-attack -- "Shut up on this Abu Ghraib stuff, so we can get on with the war!" -- doesn't seem to be resonating much with the public; the polls seem to be steadily going against Bush and the war.
After all, when the good German citizens were paraded past the piles of corpses of Buchenwald after the camp was liberated, they denied what they were actually seeing -- and smelling -- so it's not too surprising that it takes a while for the naive to be wised up, but we have to keep at it. Of course it's also important, as you imply, not to go all wild and crazy, so that the public begins to doubt us. A light touch is needed. That's why I don't agree with the "9/11 = Reichstag fire" sort of agitprop. It's just too obvious an exaggeration.
> Yeah there is something to this, but I can't quite figure out the
> pathology operating here. 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.
I don't think it's quite "at random," but they are flailing around. In the cases of post WW II Japan and Germany, they had a considerable amount of knowledge of both societies (Germany of course was a well-known country, since a very large percent of Americans came from German immigrants, and a lot of Japanese-Americans clued the government in on that country), but it seems that pre-9/11 the government intelligence folks knew practically zilch about the Arab world. They are still desperately short on Arabic translators and interpreters, and have had to hire extremely unqualified types. (As a translator myself, though not of Arabic, I can assure you that it takes a lot more than bilinguality to do a good job in this profession.) And as for infiltrating most of these terrorist cells, forget it. If you didn't grow up in the same village with the cell members, you won't get near them.
So the Bush people (and the Clinton people before them, for that matter) are in the position of a blindfolded giant being stung by gnats hitting him from who knows where, and who knows how many. Although the psychological mechanisms this situation calls up resemble the Nazi case to some extent, there is at least one considerable difference, in that the Al Qaida types did in fact attack the U.S. government, whereas the "Jewish threat" the Nazis conjured up was pure fantasy. I think this allowed the U.S. government to take the position that they were not targeting Arabs or Muslims in general (in the series of speeches Bush gave just after 9/11, for example), but I need to consider this part of my theory more.
On the other hand, as Dwayne says,
> 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”.
So there is a difference from the WW II situation -- then, the sides of the conflict were fairly well defined: the three Axis countries, with a few minor associates, against the Allies. Even the Cold War was reasonably well-defined: true, just about anyone could be a Commie (the "Reds under the bed" syndrome), but basically the big players one had to worry about were just the USSR and China.
But I think there is something else involved. Consider the self-image of the U.S. as the "shining city on the hill," acting as an example of democracy, justice, liberty, and general niceness to the whole world. Being the city on the hill, unfortunately, implies that there are all the lesser folks down there at the bottom of the hill. In other words, having this extremely idealized self-image also implies that one has an image of the opposite, half-civilized wretches festering down there in the darkness, constantly threatening our position. So Americans have always had in mind potential or actual adversaries: Native Americans, Brits, Barbary pirates, the South (or the North, whichever side you were on), blacks, and on into the manifold adversaries of the twentieth century. The problem is that, being the shining city, you have to think of yourself as loving human beings in a cozy, inclusive, liberal sort of way (even the right, at least the moderate right, has to feel guilty for being prejudiced against anyone). So the groups that you can think of as down at the bottom of the hill keep being promoted to "good guys," and you have to keep finding new ones.
Thus:
"But one member of the 377th [Military Police] Company said the fact that prisoners in Afghanistan had been labeled as ienemy combatants' not subject to the Geneva Conventions had contributed to an unhealthy attitude in the detention center.
" 'We were pretty much told that they were nobodies, that they were just enemy combatants,' he said. 'I think that giving them the distinction of soldier would have changed our attitudes toward them. A lot of it was based on racism, really. We called them hajis, and that psychology was really important.' "
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/29/international/middleeast/ 29ABUS.html?hp>
Arabs and Muslims have the bad luck of being the next group in line for the honor of Objects of American Racism. Eventually they too will be retired from that role, but who will be next?
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A gentleman haranguing on the perfection of our law, and that it was equally open to the poor and the rich, was answered by another, 'So is the London Tavern.' -- "Tom Paine's Jests..." (1794); also attr. to John Horne Tooke (1736-1812) by Hazlitt