A Caveat

A while back I declared my abstinance from reading Right Thinking Girl in the future. This was a mistake, because it misrepresented my motivations for reading it these past three years or so. It was always a blog that represented not simply an ideology I regard as pedestrian and coarse, but also showcased the sense of entitlement that the right wing mentality proclaims for itself. From that perspective it was a perfect venue to explore a critical dimension of America. I wanted to figure out the underlying psychology and motivations of this new brand of pop jingoism and corporate cheerleading.

I don't want that investigation to stop, because there's still a lot that needs to be said - not about her personally, but about the type of American she exemplifies. Her attitude towards the administration of the blog chased me away, not her politics. And like it or not she's a perfect example of the mentality that not only created the conditions for a War on Terror but proclaims fealty to its core principles without reflection or ponderance. Since she can express her thoughts with some skill, those thoughts can be more confidently deconstructed and analyzed for hidden assumptions and values. These assumptions and values not only matter - they drive the world we find ourselves in. It's crucial to expose them and investigate them mercilessly.

So like I tried to do with my short-lived Wrong Thinking Girl blog, I will make a point of drawing out her more egregious or thoughtless statements for critique - just as I've always done on her blog. What will change is the venue, since nobody can possibly accuse me of using this blog to ride on anybody's coattails (as RTG did). I would have liked to have had a venue that gave all of the participants on RTG an equal voice in standing up to her. But unfortunately - as often occurs with right wing authoritarian types - dissent is something one is free to engage in so long as it is managed and marginalized, safely tucked away on the offending party's server.

Moving on...

With that said, let's address an especially clueless passage from a (not so) recent post of hers. In the course of addressing how 9/11 should be viewed, this gem pops up:

My viewpoint should be obvious: I believe that 9/11 is another in a long series of attacks against our country - and it's independent of any of our policies. When we start to attach motives (which, by the way, are incorrect according to the attackers) to 9/11, we start hiking up the We Deserved It road and that's some place I just won't go. Understand the nonsense of saying that a Windows on the World dishwasher deserved to die because the US supports Israel, or an Aon insurance analyst deserved to be immolated because the USA has ‘too much power'. I can't connect it like that. I can't write death warrants for random people because I may or may not agree with lawmakers and politicians about the best way to run our country (my emphasis).

I think it's incumbent on any honest writer to go down whatever road the truth leads him or her. That's what makes them worth reading - anything else is whimsical fiction and not truth. To label an entire area of inquiry off limits simply because it is distasteful or "unthinkable" reeks of immaturity and provenciality. Why must these hawks always see themselves as Americans first and human beings second?

Attaching motives to the enemy is the way in which you figure out what is causing the conflict. Obviously, this is a conflict for which America was totally unprepared - September 11, 2001 demonstrates that in spades, at least from a defense point of view. We need to understand this enemy better, even if that's unpalatable to shoot-em-ups like RTG who'd rather get the blood pumping and the flag waving. It's crucial to our survival to understand the threat and that need not convey sentimentality towards the terrorists (unless you insist on an artificially constrained mindset).

Whether or not "We Deserved It" is always a fair question to ask. Any question is fair to ask in the pursuit of the truth. That is the Western tradition that separates us from the more authoritarian cultures out there. The fact that RTG doesn't wish to ask it is irrelevant in the arena of judicious inquiry, or worse: it means she's afraid of the answer. If she has chosen not to examine her assumptions, others can do it for her.

Who "We" Are

The only way to conduct an honest pursuit of truth is to make plain one's assumptions. A core assumption I make deals with the "We" in "We Deserved It" - as well as the "We" in "We the People". The key is to make a sharp distinction between the government and the people. "We the People" are not the same entity as the government, and I believe the experience of the founding fathers with their government was precisely what motivated the authors to preface the Constitution in those terms. This is significant in two respects:

1. The only way citizens can hold their officials accountable is by having interests defined in completely separate terms. In other words, if the government and the people represent the same set of actors or ideals, then it's logically impossible for the people to hold the government accountable, since by definition the government's actions are the people's actions. The idea that the people are the state, embodied by governmental authorities, is the essence of fascism.
2. Making a distinction allows us to "go down a road" that explains many overarching foreign policy events, including islamic fundamentalist terrorism - without denigrating the memories of 9/11's innocent victims. In other words, the government is hardly "the victim" here - they are at best neutral bystanders.

It's precisely this distinction that explains why examining past government policies and actions does not, as RTG claims, translate into any innocent civilians "deserving to die". We are not our government, and if our government's behavior results in unsavory consequences - well, we're victims of it as much as those whom the terrorists claim to represent (who have legimitate griveances against U.S. interventions, which I will address below). After all, that is the anarchist insight: we are not the ones with the monopoly on force. The institution of the state is systemic violence, regardless of whether it's an authoritarian regime, a democratic republic, or some sick hybrid of the two.

The real question is not whether any of us deserved it, but whether any of us have any control over the whole mess. Representative democracy doesn't mean that we morally back any decision our elected officials make, simply because they're elected. And even then, in a system dominated by two major political parties where the laws are written to avor them over competitors, even less responsibility lies with us citizens. Who really feels their political choices as reflect in elections are truly authentic? I doubt any group who'd react positively to that question would constitute any sort of majority.

If American citizens are responsible for restraining domestic government, then their performance in overseeing foreign policy is that much more abysmal. As a rule, Americans have only been interested in the overseas activities of the U.S. Gov't when intervention was considered unavoidable, such as Vietnam, World War II, or the War on Terror. Crises involving foreign threats are plentiful when a citizenry allows the government a blank check to intervene overseas. Not only are conflicts inevitably created and fueled, but the lack of interest in the root causes prevents citizens from connecting the dots between government policy and actual tragedy.

Certainly there is cause for bringing the terrorists who committed 9/11 to justice. There is also cause for reexamining our role in the world - indeed, for beginning to examine it for the first time, in depth. We cannot be apathetic about our security. That is the line Republicans are selling: "Elect us and you won't have to worry about foreign policy and national security." But we should be concerned. We should educate ourselves about what's going on overseas. To the extent that we have troops in over a hundred countries, the world's politics are our politics. Oversight cannot be shifted to a proxy such as the state without consequences.

Victimhood and Moral Equivalence

My assertion that 9/11 is not a lone event disconnected from any context, but rather a product of U.S. hegemony, has a basis in fact, regardless of whether that interests RTG. Even her beloved Pentagon released a report concluding that our foreign policies are a direct cause of Muslim agitation towards the U.S. So when she makes blithe quips about moral equivalence, such as these, I find her very disingenuous:

...Understand the nonsense of saying that a Windows on the World dishwasher deserved to die because the US supports Israel, or an Aon insurance analyst deserved to be immolated because the USA has ‘too much power'. I can't connect it like that. I can't write death warrants for random people because I may or may not agree with lawmakers and politicians about the best way to run our country (my emphasis).

RTG is trying to connect understanding a motivation to endorsing a motivation. This is absurd. Criminal psychology would not exist if people could not understand the margins of human conscience where errors and depravities occur. The question, of course, is whether criminal behavior takes place in a vacuum.

RTG has said on many occasions that she is not interested in the reasons people commit atrocities. She is consistent, at least, in that she applies that indifference to her own government. U.S. policies, after all, are complicit in the deaths of many in the Middle East:

• The shooting down of two Libyan planes in 1981
• the bombardment of Beirut in 1983 and 1984
• the furnishing of military aid and intelligence to both sides of the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88 so as to maximize the damage each side would inflict upon the other
• the bombing of Libya in 1986
• the bombing and sinking of an Iranian ship in 1987
• the shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane in 1988
• the shooting down of two more Libyan planes in 1989
• the massive bombing of the Iraqi people in 1991
• the continuing bombings and sanctions against Iraq
• the bombing of Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, the latter destroying a pharmaceutical plant which provided for half the impoverished nation's medicine
• the habitual support of Israel despite the devastation and routine torture it inflicts upon the Palestinian people
• the condemnation of Palestinian resistance to this
• the abduction of "suspected terrorists" from Muslim countries, such as Malaysia, Pakistan, Lebanon and Albania, who are then taken to places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where they are tortured
• the large military and hi-tech presence in Islam's holiest land, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere in the Persian Gulf region
• the support of anti-democratic Middle East governments from the Shah to the Saudis.

The death toll of U.S. intervention in the middle east alone - putting aside other interventions around the world - dwarf the lives lost on September 11. That doesn't make our grievances less tragic, but it does demand that we not purposely avoid reexamining our activities. Regardless of whether you support these policies or not, you cannot deny the death toll, nor can you discount the provocation they represented. Indeed, understand the nonsense of saying that innocent Iranians, Iraqis, or Lebanese must die because American needs to preserve it's hegemony, protect a state that desires to keep its majority ethnicity, and keep oil flowing. It certainly is obscene in exactly the same way RTG framed the nonsense of radical islamic terrorism.

To complain about moral equivalence between Islamic fundamentalist terrorist activities and U.S. foreign policy terrorist activities is to try and make a distinction not based on morality but on the nationality of the target. Americans must realize that the families, friends, and fellow citizens of Iraqis, Lebanese, Iranians, and other middle eastern peoples are just as dear to those peoples as ours are to us. When we allow our state to attack innocents, we are as complicit in those deaths as Muslims are in not policing their religion and culture of radicalism.

Now, it may be that RTG, like many Americans, is simply not aware of the history of American intervention. If that's true, there's ample opportunity to educate oneself. Or, perhaps she feels these interventions were justified and right. We can disagree on that, but at least she would be acknowledging the basis for reciprocating terrorism which we (somehow justifiably) initiated.

What I can't accept is simply ignoring inconvenient facts. Doing so disqualifies one from any inclusion in any rational debate, mainstream or otherwise. And while it nearly drove me from paying attention to her at all, I feel it is vitally important to point out how anti-intellectual and unsubstantiated her point of view is. This idea that foreign policy should be made from the gut - facts be damned - must be fought fiercely. We cannot afford another abdication of citizen oversight in the realm of foreign policy. Ignorance must not be allowed to become an acceptable policy position.

Read this article