“We have met the enemy, and
they is us.”
~ Pogo Possum, aka Walt Kelly
There was a time when the American
character could be represented as “realistic” and “pragmatic.” This was
altogether fitting for a nation of people preoccupied with industriousness,
inventiveness, and other traits associated with the pursuit of material
well-being. But in recent years, such qualities have begun to erode.
The “reality” of men and women living together in society is presented on
television with people in a pseudo-primitive locale eating worms to survive.
“Pragmatism” – grounded in the awareness of causal explanations for behavior –
has given way to “opportunism,” in which luck and inexplicable forces combine
to produce events in the world. The erstwhile “practical” American has
become “delusional.”
Nowhere is this more evident than
in the post-9/11 frenzy that has infected the minds of most Americans.
People who were once able to figure out that Uncle Willie’s emphysema was
probably brought on by his habit of smoking three packs of cigarettes each
day, are unable to find causal connections between hijacked-airliner attacks
on skyscrapers and the foreign policies of the United States government.
Indeed, most Americans have been so taken up with the pursuit of material
wealth, that they have had no interest in knowing of the deeds being done in
their name throughout the world.
Events of that mid-September morn
nearly four years ago were like a rock thrown through one’s picture-window,
the view of a carefully landscaped world now shattered. Would those
whose lives had been obsessed with increasing the equity in their homes be
amenable to realistic, causal explanations for these terrible acts, or would
they insist upon answers that posed no disquiet upon their minds? Were
they prepared to acknowledge the interconnectedness of practices they had
heretofore been content to leave to “experts” or, like Uncle Willie, would
they be inclined to look for the source of their ailments in the wicked
motives of others, be they cigarette manufacturers or the victims of American
foreign policies?
Statists, desirous of shielding
their clandestine activities from members of their own public, began spinning
the most fantastic tales to explain the 9/11 atrocities. The nation’s
story-teller-in-chief – who, at the time of the WTC attacks, was rehearsing
for a larger audience by reading stories to schoolchildren in Florida – was
quick to satisfy minds eager for cheap and easy answers. We were told
that the deadly events of that day were brought on by crazed Muslims, who
resented America’s materialistic culture and its insistence upon treating
women as human beings! What better way to avoid thinking about the
interconnected causes of our difficulties than to imagine them the products of
disordered minds.
Americans were formally introduced
to the “suicide bomber,” a man or woman whose willingness to die for their
cause was all the evidence one needed for the religious fanaticism that was
said to motivate their actions. We feign shock at the suicide-bomber
phenomenon, choosing to distance ourselves from support of the practice when
utilized for ends we value. Do we not speak of “a principle worth dying
for,” the same sentiment upon which the jihadist acts? We do not talk of
“a principle worth living for.” Is this because such words are
not sufficiently expressive of our commitment to a cause? Nor do the
words “a principle worth killing for” cross our lips. We are
willing – in some cases, eager – to kill others, but killing imposes costs on
others, while dying internalizes costs to ourselves.
It is the willingness to die that
energizes all active participants in wars. I recall, during World War
II, how Japanese kamikaze pilots were looked upon in the same way as today’s
suicide-bomber: crazed fanatics for their cause. And yet, American war
movies were filled with similar acts by American servicemen: the soldier who
threw himself on a grenade to save his buddies; and the Navy or Air Corps
pilots who intentionally crashed their planes into enemy aircraft carriers or
supply trains. The Congressional Medal of Honor, or the Silver Star, or
the Navy Cross are held out to servicemen as posthumous awards for suicidal
acts that inflicted great damage upon the enemy.
The war system is humanity’s
improvement upon the lemmings’ suicidal marches into the sea. The major
distinction between the two is that, what lemmings do by instinct, we humans
accomplish through thought that mobilizes our dark sides. We divide
ourselves into mutually-exclusive herds, and in the process delude ourselves
that “our” purposes and actions are nobler than “theirs.” Such a retreat
from reality makes it easy for us to distinguish “our brave troops” from
“their evil suicide bombers.”
Such is the underlying logic of
the war game. Our thinking becomes institutionalized; mutual-exclusion
generates the conflict that leads to mutual-destruction, all to the
gain of state systems whose well-being, as Randolph Bourne reminded us, is
found in manipulating people into playing this game. Having separated
ourselves from others, we fail to grasp the symbiotic nature of war. As
the “good” guys, we believe we are morally entitled to attack the “bad” guys,
who are obliged to accept our attack as just punishment for various “wrongs”
that we have defined!
We should have remembered from our
childhood how attacking another causes him to retaliate against us, using
whatever weapons he has at his disposal, including himself. But state
officials override the truth known to every playground warrior, and convince
us that our victim’s retaliation is an act of “aggression,” to which we must
respond. Our subsequent attack produces yet another violent reaction
from our enemy, to which we make another forceful response, and so on in an
endless recurrence of death and destruction.
Our wartime suffering is causally
connected with the suffering we inflict upon others. If we are to
understand the nature of our blood-stained world, we must abandon our
self-righteous definitions of “good” and “evil” and see our problems in terms
of their interconnectedness. Only fools will accept the “they hate us
for our freedom and our values” rationale for this war. The reality is that
others hate us for the wrongs our government has inflicted upon them; and we
hate those who retaliate against us for such wrongs.
Seen in the light of
interdependency, everyone who supports the war system takes on the character
of a “suicide-bomber.” Such people are often prepared to die – and to
send their children to die – to perpetuate the “necessity” and “glory” of this
self-destructive ritual. So, too, are those that the state defines for
us as our “enemies,” and who are prepared to give their lives for such
madness.
The suicide-bomber is but the full
extension of what is implicit in politics: institutionalized violence. In
order to expand their reach over the lives and property of people, political
systems must continually find new enemies as fear-objects. Frightful
enemies coalesce the fear-ridden into obedient and manageable herds.
War, then, is the necessary vehicle by which the state mobilizes itself for
the infusion of the human energy upon which it depends. Like a vampire,
the state nourishes itself on the blood of others.
Politics, in other words, is a
mutual suicide system, the truth of which can be found in the 200,000,000
corpses offered in sacrifice to the state in the 20th century.
The man or woman who straps explosives to his or her body in order to kill or
maim faceless “others,” is but another weapon available to those warring
participants who, unlike their opposition, do not have tanks, bombers,
missiles, or other sophisticated tools with which to carry out their butchery.
The suicide-bomber – like other
individualized warriors – is an omen of at least two trends upon which
intelligent men and women ought to focus their attention. The first has
to do with the increasing decentralization of social behavior. 9/11
confirmed what H.G. Wells tried to tell us over a century ago in
The War of the Worlds, when microbes – rather than the powerful
weaponry of the state – provided the most effective defense against invaders.
Secondly, the suicide-bomber
should serve as a warning for all of us to be concerned about victims of
wrongs who have nothing to lose even by the most desperate means of
retaliation. Perhaps it is time for thoughtful people to cease dealing
with the rest of the world with the assumption that they are to be the
recipients of our arrogant authority.
We must also become aware of the
extent to which we have become participants in our own destruction.
Those who praise government soldiers for making “the ultimate sacrifice,” are
invoking the suicidal impulse no less than the families of dead jihadists.
Those who counsel their children to invest their lives in this mad,
dehumanizing project, as well as egalitarians who encourage the mothers of
small children to leave home for the battlefield, share the consequences of
this mutual suicide pact.
To champion the war system – with
whatever weapons or tactics employed – is to embrace the suicidal mindset.
Soldiers and insurgents alike operate from the premise that their lives exist
so that they may be serviceable to the systems for which they fight and for
which they are prepared to die.
If you would like to meet a
suicide-bomber, try looking in a mirror. You may discover a reflection
of the anger you now direct toward those who tape bombs to their bodies rather
than flags to their cars.
