It has been quite troubling to me the extent to which we have begun to use the term “war” to refer to the events of Tuesday. I commented that this cedes a power to the terrorists they do not have if they have merely committed a “terrorist act” of whatever magnitude. Our hyperbole, seemingly a way to articulate the extent to which we feel overwhelmed, blows back. Even more troubling has been our configuring our intended response as a “war on terrorism” and calling for a “declaration of war” from the Congress. Apart from the justification it provides for what is euphemistically called “collateral damage” (which I discuss below), I’m not sure it makes much sense in helping us to envision the nature, the scope or the difficulty of taking appropriate action, to speak of declaring war on the abstraction “terrorism”. (Semantic difficulty suffuses our other “wars” as well — the war on crime, the war on drugs, the war on cancer even — but in a far less malignant way.) Phil Agre is concerned as well:

“Referring to the attacks on the east coast as “war” gives expression

to our emotions about them, and feels proportional to the magnitude

of the atrocity. But if the definition of “war” has shifted beneath

us, then a declaration of war is an even graver matter than it used to

be. Let us take a moment, then, to ask what we are getting ourselves

into. The Bush administration started using the language of “war”

well before they were willing to say who they thought was responsible

for the attacks. That in itself is probably not unprecedented; the

idea of something mysteriously blowing up is hardly new. What is less

precedented is the lack of any clear suspect who was either a foreign

nation state or a domestic organization…

What does it mean as a *political* matter to declare war on a network?

This, it seems to me, is the greatest danger of all. The only moral

justification for war is to preserve the conditions of democracy.

Revenge is not a sufficient motive, except insofar as it preserves

the conditions of democracy by serving as a deterrent. Otherwise the

matter should be treated as a crime and handled by the institutions

of the police and criminal courts. Are the conditions of democracy

in fact under threat? It is possible that they are, and I would

expect the government to present enough evidence of such a threat

before placing the country in a condition of war. The question of

justification is particularly important in the present case given

the dubious conditions under which George W. Bush assumed the office

of the president. His continued rule is also a significant threat

to the conditions of democracy, even though his methods were largely

nonviolent.”

Agre’s essay, Imagining the Next War: Infrastructural Warfare and the Conditions of Democracy, does not appear to be online yet, but when and if he posts it it will probably be at the Red Rock Eater Digest site. Addendum: here.

FBI Cannot Rule Out Shootdown of Penn. Plane, It is still not clear why United Flight 93 was the only one of the four hijacked planes not to reach its target. The national consensus seems to have settled around the comforting and plausible evidence that a heroic group of passengers struggled with the terorists onboard, causing it to go down short of its objective. But it had occurred to many early on that the plane might have been intercepted and shot down by U.S. warplanes. None of the eyewitness accounts I’ve heard so far from the Pennsylvania crash site have hinted at this. But would the government tell us, just now, if they had judged that they had to bring the plane down to save, say, the White House? The flight data recorder from the plane, reportedly just found, might have the answers, but would we know?

Want to read David Horowitz’s latest inanity, reacting to 9-11? Scroll down past the Michael Klare essay. Salon

“Purge our society,” online bigots shout “Post-disaster threats and expressions of racism bubble up on the Web.” Salon

Net fails key test during clamor for information: “At a time when information-starved Americans needed it as never before, the Internet failed miserably in the hours immediately following Tuesday’s terrorist attacks.” Detroit Free Press And: America’s technology crumbles during crisis: ‘In what amounted to the first test of the hugely popular World Wide Web under wartime conditions, people found they had been sold a bill of goods when the likes of Bill Gates had pledged a future of perpetual, always-on “information at your fingertips.” ‘ SiliconValley.com

An FmH reader wrote me, in part,

I am curious and bothered by your comment that you don’t agree with the comment

that “we are the real terrorists and got what we deserved and its hypocritical to

think otherwise.” Seems to me and a lot of the radical left (Chomsky, Zinn, the

usual suspects) that there is no question that we supply more terror and

possibilities and support for terror than anyone else in the world. I don’t get how

you can say you don’t think we deserve it. I believe that the American people have

been tacitly supporting our foreign policy for decades without directly and

powerfully saying “I will not let this stand!”

I’m going to respond publicly both because I should clarify what I meant, and because the email address to which I tried to reply privately had permanent fatal errors. I realize that one should not post someone else’s private correspondence without prior permission, but at least I’m maintaining the writer’s anonymity.

I did not mean to disagree with the premise that the US is the world’s major exporter of terrorism. US officials decrying terrorism are indeed, inherently, hypocrites in this respect. The part of the syllogism which I cannot abide is that there was anything deserved about such indiscriminate civilian carnage. The tacit support shown by the American people for our policies is innocent, ignorant, pitiful or even contemptible, I’m convinced, rather than malevolent. They are inherently victims, not perpetrators, and were so long before any hijacked airliners smashed through their office windows and incinerated them or crushed them beneath tons of rubble.

Understand I’m a psychiatrist, I believe in unconscious motivations.Readers of FmH know that one of my enduring subtexts is the unmasking of covert control, and a word count of my postings would show the simple but profound word “thoughtful” to have great prominence. People largely do not know why they do the things they do without insightful introspection (“consciousness-raising”), and the manipulation of their opinions, the exploitation and cultivation of that inherent ignorance largely precludes such introspection. It is the major tool of social control in modern capitalist society, which I think (in contrast to the clumsiness of the 20th century’s experimentation with totalitarian dictatorships) has perfected social control through mind control in a transparent, Orwellian sense, brilliant for the ways in which it leaves people thinking they are agents with freedom and free will. It’s damned difficult to awaken from the cultural trance (and I’m not trying to come off with anything like the hubristic claim that I’m one of the awakened!) It’s as if, if the public were an individual criminal on trial for a heinous crime, they should be found incompetent to stand trial and not responsible for their actions. They certainly would not deserve the death sentence.

By the way, I’ve also gotten alot of mail objecting to my position that we should rein in our vengeful bloodlust. If I were not already overcome with sorrow, this would make me very sad… In like fashion to what I’ve said above, while I think the perpetrators of these acts must be hunted down, as should those who have directly, culpably harbored them, given them aid and comfort, we would be perpetuating the ascendency of terrorism and evil in the world to wage war on the civilian populace of Afghanistan or whichever people against whom we decide to vent our collective spleen. I fear this is what the dangerous incompetent in the White House, or his handlers, intend in proclaiming a policy of ‘ending states’ that sponsor terrorism.

“If there are Americans clamoring to bomb Afghanistan back to the Stone Age, they ought to know that this nation does not have so far to go. This is a post-apocalyptic place of felled cities, parched land and downtrodden people”, said Barry Bearak in yesterday’s New York Times. While I suspect the cynics will see the Taliban plea to the U.S. not to bomb Afghanistan as a self-serving attempt to exploit American bleeding-heart compassion only, we should have the courage to remain more compassionate than our enemies.

“AlterNet believes that millions of Americans, while outraged and

disgusted, are wary of the vengeful rhetoric that many politicians

and pundits have adopted. Therefore, we have put together a series

of articles to provoke thoughtful debate and healing, rather than

hasty scapegoating and revenge.” And another

Thoughtful Response to Tuesday’s Terrorism: “Tuesday’s catastrophic events in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania left the world in shock. We offer here a package of reporting, analysis, opinions, and resources designed to help you sort it all out.” Utne Reader

It just occurs to me to say: I apologize to any of you who, usually enjoying FmH’s diversity and variety, are disappointed by my one-track mind in recent days. It goes without saying, I hope — I can’t think of anything else just now…