Tag Archives: terrorism

Be Free or Be Right In America. Choose One.

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Like his vision-thing, Mr. Bush's freedom-thing is a hard thing to get right. Hardly anyone in America really wants to be free. Instead, we'd rather be right–about our religious and political beliefs, our versions of patriotism, and our lifestyles.

We want our rights-and-wrongs black and white, settled once and for all, and predictable, with no raggedy-edged uncertainties. We absolutely must be right about our versions of elemental things: the Pledge, the Flag, the Ten Commandments, the Constitution. We must know with finality–Are we or are we not the good guys in the white hats? Is our country and way of life the best, as we learned in elementary school? What about our god, our church, our religion, our form of government–they're the right ones, right? We did and do fight on the right side in every war, right? We are the land of the free and the home of the brave?

We'll slash campaign vehicle tires, print misleading election leaflets, make harrassing phone calls to election boards, slow down voting, spread rumors of infidelity, lie, cheat, and steal to elect our right guys. Anything goes, it seems, for the right to be right about America on election day.

Americans love freedom, but we'll trade freedom, to be right. Speak freely, we insist, say what you want, write what you please, research any area–except, of course, controversial ones that question our basic assumptions about ourselves, our leaders, and our foreign policy, about history, values, gender and racial differences, about Jesus and Jews and terrorism, about the war in Iraq, and whether or not we're all turning into fascists.

As long as we can be right, we'll leave our loved ones and travel around the world to shoot complete strangers in the face beside their families and homes in the lands of their ancestors. We'll rain bombs down from miles up, upon exotic civilian populations–as long as we're right. We'll imprison, maim, and torture, if it's necessary, if we're right.

But Americans cannot be right and free at the same time.

Living in a free country means being right is up for grabs. Living in a free country means giving other religious and political and social and economic systems the same respectful attitude and tone we want to hear toward our own. Living in a free country means not insisting, or even wishing, that everyone else think and act like we do. Living in a free country means winning elections with no dirty tricks, because when you win that way, you're no longer free. Living in a free country means listening to all other sides, and supporting their right to be heard. Living free means working to be educated inquirers, and not just to reinforce the stuff we already think we know. Living free means accepting complex humanity in all its messy and glorious diversity, not hating other Americans, or Jews, or Arabs, or liberals, or conservatives, or Christians, or atheists. Living free means holding to and speaking out about our beliefs, values, and allegiances, without insisting on being right about them.

The road to this American freedom-thing may be a long and hard one for everyone.

 

What Are We Getting For Our Pentagon Dollars?

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We have a huge Pentagon budget which pays for neither the costs of wars nor for protecting our homeland. So what do they do with all that money? To be sure, someone still needs to have the financial wherewithal necessary to protect and defend America’s economic and strategic interests abroad, as well as (on occasion) our heedless or haplessly wandering citizenry.

 

But America’s global economic and strategic interests could be far better attended to by a well-funded Commerce and State Department. Our citizens should stay out of countries where they’re not wanted, and behave as polite guests where they are invited. And if they find themselves innocently threatened? Well, that’s what the marines are for. Keep on paying them.

 

If America redirected just half the amount of funding we give to the Department of Defense to Commerce and State, we would all reap the rewards of wise, mutually advantageous longterm trade deals and proactive diplomatic dialogues. We’d be far less likely to feel any need to throw our unrecognizable, camouflaged firstborns into the maw of all those foreign hellholes we ourselves created by having a military budget so huge it dwarfs any other country’s tenfold. America’s primary diplomatic tool is a hammer. No wonder foreign countries all look like nails.

 

Which leaves us still with the necessity of defending our homeland. If our foreign policies precluded pushing smaller countries around to suit our pride and greed, if we refrained from occupying other lands with hundreds of farflung military outposts, not to mention callous and inequitable trade policies, then perhaps we’d have fewer terrorists angry at us because our governments underwrote their despots, our tycoons pillaged their resources, and our national interests left their families in danger, economic slavery, and without rights. I don’t see any terrorists threatening Canada, or Norway, or Sweden, and they top most lists of being the so-called envied lands of the rich and free. Now why is that?

 

It is our present policy to give great unaccountable gobs of money to a Department of Defense that cannot keep us safe from terrorists, cannot win unwinnable wars, and can only add terror and injustice to the terror and injustice already caused by others.

 

Our beloved America can do better, must do better if we are to live up to our wonderful traditions and ideals. I hope Americans soon decide to spend our taxes more wisely, for our own sake, and for the sakes of so many others.