“The Only Thing We Have To Fear is Fear Itself”

Franklin Roosevelt famously said, “The Only Thing We Have To Fear is Fear Itself” The present Republican Administration and Al Qaeda urge us to be afraid.

Why do they do this? The Administration because they believe that if the country is sufficiently afraid it will cede a degree of power to them, unprecedented in American history, and support their goal of maintaining power ad infinitum.

Al Qaeda because they do not have the power to win against us militarily. They have no armies; they can only commit acts of terror. And what is the purpose of terror; it is to make people afraid. And making people afraid is their main and only weapon, for as Roosevelt said in that famous speech, “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” Would bringing down the Trade Center and killing over three thousand civilians bring America to its knees. Hardly! That could not be done by the destruction of two Trade Centers, nay not by the destruction of ten. But if Americans are afraid enough, become suspicious of each other, can be made to turn against each other, and against it’s Muslim inhabitants of somewhere between 2 and 6 million, -----Ah but what a victory- if they could turn those people or even a small portion of them into terrorists-, what a victory for Al Qaeda that would be.

Throughout the world there are between 700 million and 1.2 billion Muslims, most of whom now are on the sidelines trying to lead their lives peacefully, trying to feed their families. If they could turn those people, or even a small portion of them, into terrorists-, what a victory that would be.

But how can they accomplish this. The answer is they can’t. Only we can do that for them. And we will only do that for them if we are afraid enough.

In fact if we are afraid enough we will stop traveling by plane, and then by train and then hesitate to lead normal lives and our economy would collapse. What a victory that would be.

The Administration says those who criticize it are lending “Aid and Comfort to the enemy” No, it is this Administration that is “lending aid and comfort to the enemy.

They say they want to make us safe but they didn’t take the threat seriously enough to prevent 9/11. They say there was no magic bullet that could have prevented it. That is a lie. Long before 9/11 the Israeli’s had Air Marshals on their planes. They had reinforced cockpit doors on their planes. Why didn’t we do that? They say why didn’t Clinton do that? But Clinton foiled an attack on the Trade Center; On June 24, 1993 the Clinton Administration foiled a plot to bomb several New York City landmarks. The targets were the United Nations building, 26 Federal Plaza, and the Lincoln and Holland tunnels. The plotters were connected to Ramzi Yousef and Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman. If the bombing, planned for later in the year, had been successful, thousands would have died. Eight people were arrested. Clinton recommended extensive legislation to thwart future attacks but the Republican Congress said No! They wanted to get Clinton not Al Qaeda.

Bush had eight month before 9/11 with a friendly Republican Congress and he did nothing. Terrorism simply wasn’t on his agenda. He was planning to invade Iraq to show his Daddy that the egg was smarter than the chicken. But he knew the American people wouldn’t go along. And then 9/11 happened and he saw his opportunity. With the trauma of 9/11, and carefully orchestrated lies, he led the country to war. He sent our troops there without adequate equipment and without any plan for the post war. He believed in war but not nation building, and so he created a mess so bad that “all the horses and all the kings men can’t put Humpty Dumpty together again”

He sent our troops to Iraq where they are accomplishing nothing and are sitting ducks for the insurgence. Does he think that if he gives our enemies sacrificial lambs to slaughter, they will be less interested in hitting the homeland?

He talks about protecting the homeland. But when Democrats proposed the creation of a Department of Homeland Security he opposed it, and when the public demanded it, he made it appear that it was his idea all along and that was a lie. But then he insisted that all the employees of the new Department be stripped of Civil Service protection and when Democrats objected he turned it to his political advantage by claiming that Democrats only wanted to protect unions. In fact what he wanted, and what he did, was to turn the Department into a huge patronage mill of incompetents, as became apparent when the first test for the Department came before and after Hurricane Katrina. “Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job” has become immortal as symbolic of the incompetence and the president’s detachment.

Proposals to protect our ports by checking for radioactive devices before ships leave for our land are opposed by the Administration and the Republican Congress. They say it is too expensive and inconvenient. They refuse to institute measures to protect our chemical plants from attack.

And now it turns out that our president has ordered people to disappear. They call it rendition. People are kidnapped from anywhere on the globe because somebody thinks there is something suspicious about them and they are whisked to a secret location to be tortured, only it isn’t torture, it is, well its inflicting pain, its inflicting humiliation, but the president tells us it isn’t torture. Mr. President what is torture? What kind Orwellian world are you trying to create? How does Abu Graib differ from what you admit you have sanctioned.

And we will have courts where people, who the president has decided are guilty, will be tried to find out if they are guilty. They will not be allowed to see the evidence against them so they can’t rebut it, they may not even be allowed in court some of the time, and at the end they will be found guilty. Since we know they are guilty why do we need trials at all? Or as Alice in Wonderland said, “First the sentence, then the trial.”

Shades of Pinochet in Chile. He too was protecting the home front, and so was Alberto Fujimori in Peru. And so was the military in Argentina. They are always protecting us. Only who will protect us from them. Now Pinochet is facing trial in his own country, Fujimori is a fugitive and the military in Argentina are facing an uncertain fate.

I take it back! We should be afraid. We should be afraid of people in power who want more and more power to protect us. They are the real threat.

And that is not all. The lies have already started about Iran. They are not a government any of us like, and hopefully the Iranian people will take matters into their own hands and depose them, but do we want to go to war again. What would be the consequences of war? Iraq would be a picnic by comparison. Our oil supplies would be decimated and quite possibly, maybe even likely, we would face a worldwide recession or possibly even depression. But Bush has his mission and he will scare us with a little truth, a little half-truth, and a lot of lies and he will tell us, “Be Afraid”

Are the American people really so afraid and so naïve as to be taken for this ride?

The article in the Los Angeles Times entitled, "Bush Fails to Recapture the Nation’s Post-9/11 Unity" which can be found here is recommended reading.