Must read

As I cleared the last of a two-day, 60-cm snowfall from the driveway and steps this afternoon, I spent a lot of time thinking about 9-11 and the US response to it.

I came to kind of an obvious conclusion -- 9-11 has been used as a wedge to drive millions of frightened Americans into cowardice under an opaque blanket of perceived protective power derived from an advanced technological military.

There is genuine reason to be concerned about the servings some corners of the world may one day kick back towards us. Unfortunately, the blanket makes all those under it blind and in a place where uncontrolled hatreds and desires for vengeance lash out in the dark. But the blind lashing only fans the flames behind the back-kicking.

Too many of our fine, intelligent neighbors in America are gripped with this fear. Our leaders pluck the strings on these scared souls at will. The Pentagon neocons justify a Bushian messianic vision of an aggressively violent and punishing America as a bulwark against monolithic radical Islam, whose cadres reflexively want to kill us because we are free Americans and for no other reason. The 9/11 Commission? Same way of perceiving the ``enemy." DLC/Beinhart Democrats? Same.

American violence, thus licensed, is free to ravage its targets at will without the slightest consideration that our enemies are just as human as we are, and likewise are the innocents that are caught in the same net. No amount of suffering caused because of our own country's conduct even registers. This is a condition of spiritual death.

Enter this by the amazing blogger, Digby. It's one of the most gripping things I've read in a long time. It captures the waking dream/nightmare state in which I walk at all times now.

I keep thinking I'm going to wake from this awful dream in which law professors (and former deputy attorneys general) of the highest reputation do not make arguments like this (from the important article by Jane Mayer in this week's New Yorker called "Outsourcing Torture"):

``In a recent phone interview, Yoo was soft-spoken and resolute. `Why is it so hard for people to understand that there is a category of behavior not covered by the legal system?'"

What would that category of behavior be? Mass Murder? Torture? Genocide? Medical experimentation? Eviscerating babies with a bobby pin? No, those are all covered by criminal statutes and international law. So, it must be something worse than that, musn't it? It must be worse than Hitler. It must be something so bad that Satan could only conceive of it. We call it "terrorism."

There is no escape for us long as our county plies its own insanely intense barbarism in the name of fighting barbarism.