I remember way back when it seemed like I was the only person worried that the Patriot Act might give the law enforcement people in this country more power than should have. That was back in the days when I would put my mail on the back porch, and open it with latex gloves and a dust mask. In the days following September 11th, most of Washington was stunned and terrified, making it easy to pass some hurried piece of law that some Senators didn't even read. Most of them had evacuated the office buildings that had become lethal to anyone who breathed, and believe it or not, that included most of them, except maybe Strom Thurman, who I suspect at that time was already gone, I think they just propped him up like that guy from Weekend At Bernies, so they could count on his vote.
It's not ever a good idea to make decisions when you're completely freaked out, and that was what Washington was like in October 2001. The city we lived in became a war zone, everything closed, National Airport, a lot of the Memorials, and we began to see riot fencing and cement barricades where we once saw buildings and sculpture dedicated to freedom and bravery. And we were truly afraid. The climate of fear made us long for protection, the idea that our great nation could be so vulnerable was more than we could cope with. We did the thing that was easy to do, we left these most important decisions about our safety and our way of life to those who we thought would keep our way of life safe from those who would destroy it. My first glimmer of real fear came from walking down Pennsylvania Avenue and wondering if I might be mistaken for someone of Middle Eastern descent because of the coloring of my skin, (and my nose is kind of big, a lot like Yasser Arafat's) and the peace sign around my neck.
Back in those crazy days of fear, I wondered if we might be signing away our Constitutional rights for protection. I worried that a guy like John Ashcroft could not be trusted with so many new ways of harassing the people who paid his salary. As it turns out now, I had every reason to be worried, the Pentagon spied on the Quakers for God's sake. The Quakers are some of the nicest people in the nation, they call each other "friend", and are completely non-violent and loving. The Pentagon also spied on the Raging Grannies, those elderly women in funny hats and shawls. I don't know why Donald Rumsfeld considered these grannies a threat, but once you begin to spread fear, it becomes irrational, and you can see the boogy man everywhere, in your mailbox, on the corner, even in some pathetic gulf state that has already been so utterly defeated, they couldn't threaten Rhode Island if they wanted to.
We know today that we were wrong to give in to the fear. We could have made rational decisions about all sorts of things if we had just taken some time to think things through. The fear we face today is not from terrorists, but from our own elected leaders who use the power we have given them to search out those Americans who do not fear terrorists, but fear that war waged without the utmost caution and deliberation, cannot be won, and if by some reason it is, the victory will never be moral. The Americans who believe that it is the moral duty of every citizen to use force only when absolutely necessary have been treated as common criminals. Americans who under the Constitution are perfectly within their right to gather peacefully to protest have had their civil rights violated, and by the very people we have elected. The threat to freedom hasn't come from the terrorists, but from our fellow Americans.
Even as Bush spoke tonight about the flawed reasons for going to war, he thought that we might still win. In my mind, there is no way to win in Iraq, the war began with lies and fear, it was dead wrong, and even if we win militarily, there is no way we will ever be right. Our best bet right now is the courage to admit we were wrong, at home and in Iraq, we should face the cancer that has invaded the nation, we need treatment, anything to get us back to the place where we trusted religion and old people. Our Democracy is sick and failing, the cancer needs to be cut out, or the nation and the freedom we cherish will die.
