The ILLUSION of Safety

We have heard the republicans talk a lot in the last national elections as well as this one that we are now “safer”, but are we really? I think that what we’re dealing with here is not safety, but the ILLUSION of safety. When I made that comment to one friend, she said “Isn’t that better than nothing?” Well, let’s see…

If you drive your car on to the illusion of a bridge over a thousand foot deep crevasse, rather than an actual bridge, is that better than nothing?

If the person about to remove a tumor the size of a walnut from near your brain stem is the illusion of a doctor, rather than an actual doctor, is that better than nothing?

And if your fourteen year old daughter presents the illusion of not being pregnant, rather than actually NOT being pregnant, is that better than nothing?

No. The illusion of safety is not better than nothing. It is very, very dangerous.

First off, I’ve said before and I’ll likely say again that I do not buy the world as the “dangers around every corner” place that the republicans want to sell it to me as. I think that, as a whole, the world is a pretty darned safe place. What we DO need to recognize, is that, after no terrorist attacks on American soil between 1941 and 1993, we have experienced three in the last fifteen years. This is only counting the first WTC attack, the Murrah Federal Building attack and the 9/11 attacks, not things like the Columbine school shootings, the Virginia Tech massacre or the Olympics bombing several years ago. I am only counting those acts CLEARLY terrorist in nature.

So why do I say that it’s only the illusion of safety? Well, let’s start by asking ourselves what things have changed between 1941 and 1993 that may be inciting these attacks. Yes, yes, I know, I’m “blaming America first”. Personally, I think that part of the problem, at least internationally, is that not only do we not really “blame America first”, we don’t even “blame America when appropriate”. We continue blithely supporting the corrupt Al Saud royal family in Arabia, although the people of that country are clearly dissatisfied with the royal family. We even have troops in what the Muslims call “The Land of the Two Holy Places”, Mecca and Medina, preventing a democratic overthrow of the royal family. We now have the amazing “Bush Doctrine” in place that allows us to beat up anyone at anyplace at any time simply because we want to, more or less. We continue to support whatever little penny-ante regimes that will help us beat up on the people that we want to beat up on and/or give us cheap oil without thought to how corrupt that regime is. See Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan. Not to mention, in their times, Mohammar Khadaffi, Saddam Hussein, and yes, Osama Bin Laden. We continue to allow our corporations to enslave the residents of foreign countries in violation of US law, including children, to make our cheap shit for us so that we can continue living a life of relative luxury from their toil and sweat.

Brothers and sisters, until we make an effort to truly BE a Christian country and correct these injustices, we are always going to be in danger of attack. People don’t like what we’re doing, and they’re going to continue doing their best to stop us from doing these things that they don’t like.

The next stanchion of this illusion is airport security.

I do not fly anymore, although I truly LOVE to fly. This is not because I am afraid of terrorists. Your odds of being killed by a terrorist are roughly the same as your odds of being struck by lightning while standing on one foot and holding the winning lottery ticket. I do not fly because I find the “safety precautions” put in place after 9/11 to be kind of an inconvenient joke. When I commented about this to a loved one of mine, she said that she would fly because she didn’t “feel the need to protest” the balderdash airport security. Let me be clear… I do not fly for the same reason that I do everything in my power not to be on a freeway at rush hour. It is not a protest, it is simply something that I do not enjoy, so I do not subject myself to it. NOTHING that we are doing now vis a vis airport “security” would have stopped what happened on 9/11. NOTHING. You are no safer flying now then you were on September 10th, 2001.

The next leg of this rather shaky, illusory bridge is the “war on terror”. According to republican politicians, this “war” is not only working, it is making us safer.

Killing terrorists does not reduce the number of terrorists in the world… it increases it. Let’s say that we kill one middle eastern terrorist, right? If that terrorist has any sons, they are now HONOR-BOUND to try to kill us back. As are any sons of his sisters. The bond of nephew and maternal uncle in Muslim societies is very strong. I heard one Muslim once refer to his maternal uncle as his “second father”. So now THEY are honor-bound to kill us back. So even if he has one of each (unlikely in a society where men are permitted multiple wives and expected to reproduce with each of them) then we have created TWO shiny new terrorists.

So what do we need to do? We need to examine and change our foreign policy so that it looks beyond the convenience of tomorrow to the safety, security and compassion of a year from now. We need to STOP making me arrive at the airport three days early for my flight and making nursing mothers drink their own breast milk to prove that it’s not acid. And we need to stop any military action in the name of a non-existent “war” on terror and actually start doing things with and for these countries that will bring them peace and security. We need to reduce our oil consumption so that we can get our troops the hell out of the middle east permanently. We need to elect politicians who will strike down the Bush Doctrine.

Think about it. That’s another thing that it would benefit us to do more of… THINK.

Peace.

Randal