October 10, 2006 at 19:24:14

LOCKS & KEYS

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By robert wolff (about the author) Page 2 of 3 page(s)

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Certainly, I can imagine a calm head slowly, carefully, making friends, shaking hands with neighbors, reaching out. And also, at the same time, getting rid of his own nuclear devices. That will take time. But where are the calm heads in a time of mass hysteria? Evidently it takes only one ruler to fan the fires of fear with ever more elaborate "security" measures, devices, warnings, and threats.

Either someone has to have enough faith to actually destroy his own weapons of mass destruction--unilateral disarmament--or disaster.

We made a big to do about "weapons of mass destruction," although it was never explained what weapons of mass destruction are. Chemical weapons like phosphoris? Quantities of the stuff that causes infectious diseases? Nuclear weapons?. What was never mentioned, or even commented upon, is that we ourselves have those weapons of mass destriuction. We probably have the greatest number and the most sophisticated WMD. We probably produce them and sell them to the highest bidder; our weapons industry is unmatched in the world. Are cluster bombs weapons of mass destruction? We sell those, we now know.

Locks and walls and checkpoints have multiplied exponentially now that we are in a war, as the president likes to remind us, a War on Terror.

We are still fighting another war, a War on Drugs. We make laws to protect us from drugs. 'Drugs' meaning only a certain class of substances that someone at some time considered harmful. It drove commerce in those substances underground, which means huge profits were (are) made by drug dealers, manufacturers and growers, but no tax collected. The War on Drugs led to many other, more stringent laws, punishing those who provided what the public was willing to pay for, but also users (abusers, who should be treated rather than prosecuted). After spending billions of dollars over the last however many years, the percentage of the population that uses drugs has barely changed--but the drugs have changed to ever more vicious and now truly dangerous ones. Professional athletes cannot use performance-enhancing drugs; yet records continue to be broken. According to what i read recently, the use of anabolic steroids (and other chemical enhancers) has spread to high school students, perhaps even younger eager athletes.

Are we safer from drugs? Safer from terror? Who knows. But it is obvious that we are more and more enmeshed in webs of secrecy and subterfuge. Life has become more dangerous, not because of some faraway terror organization, but because of our own laws. Supposedly to make us safer we have inserted our armed might in the hot spot of the globe. where, according to reports, terrorist organizations are finding many new recruits.
Our government identifies dangerous people, locks them up (all over the world, we are told) to keep them out of the game. These "detainees" are not accused of having done anything (yet), but we suspect they might want to, if we let them loose. Keeping a few hundred potential terrorists behind bars (or even thousands) is supposed to lessen the threat of terror attacks in this country. However, the number of young men, and women, who volunteer their lives as "suicide bombers" (martyrs, as they are called in Arab countries( has never decreased.
Are we going to lock up people who might perhaps want to use drugs? Should we lock up men--they match the profile--who might, perhaps, abuse their wives or children? Or lock away accountants who might, one day, do who knows what to the books of the company they work for?

It does not take much psychology to understand that such preventive detaining of people not charged with anything, must have an effect. Not deterrence, but rather the opposite: indignation, anger, that can only lead to more terrorists. Our secret detention and torture cannot but lead to more terror and greater torture if we ever were to fall in the hands of "the enemy."

There is a big debate about "illegal" immigrants. (The people are not illegal, but what they do is). A wall, or fence, is to be built, 700 miles long, which is supposed to keep people out. Private armies of vigilantes have been formed.
Our president says that the desperate peolple who literally risk their lives to come to this country are attracted by our democracy, our rights. No, they come to work hard and earn some money.
If we don't want Spanish-speaking people in our country, it would be much cheaper, and in the long run more effective, to invest the money we now spend to apprehend, prosecute, and persecute, in Mexico, creating Mexican jobs.

But we cannot think that way. All we can think of is making better locks.

We're not solving problems.
Our reaction to problems IS the problem.

Okay. So we have at least fifteen different intelligence-gathering institutions. Find the guy who put a razor blade in the apple. Charge him with a crime, put him in prison. Find the people who poison aspirin bottles, charge him, put him in prison. As to drugs, I suggest we ask some experts to make some distinctions between what we now call "drugs.' Some we now know to be fairly innocent, few if any people have commited big crimes under the influence of marijuana. Alcohol is a great deeal more dangerous, not just for the people who drink, but also to their victims. Crack cocain is really bad stuff, and so is 'ice.' if we want to control drugs, lets be more scientific and more selective.

Terrorism is a problem. But, people so motivated that they are willing--some say eager--to give their lives, have a problem. Let's find out what they are so angry about. I am sure they do not envy us because we have democracy, or rights (our rights are steadily bering squeezed away from us by our own leaders anyway). It must be something much more basic, of long duration. Let's talk to them. What are they mad about? I've heard it is a reaction to our rude, crude voices and actions all over the world, for the last fifty or more years. It is true that we have meddled in other people's governments, we have manipulated and bullied, we have put dictators in power and supported them, until we turned around and wanted them gone. It's true that our pop culture has little depth, and might offend people who have different ideas about what is proper (it offends people in this country). Let's talk!

But we don't talk.

And then a small group of people in the very heart of our country is attacked by a madman, killing five of their children, wounding five more. At one of the funerals the grandfather says to the family of the killer: We forgive you, don't fear us.
The Amish live their belief.
They have no locks, and accept that occasionally there are mad people who do gruesome things.

If they had reacted as we--most of us apparently--reacted to the horror of 9/11, they would have attacked the house the madman had sought shelter in. Killed the madman's wife and children, captured and interrogated (tortured) friends of the madman, or even suspected acquaintances.

But the Amish don't judge; who are we to judge? They talk to their enemies--no, they have no enemies, they forgive because they live their indomitable faith

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robert wolff lives on the Big Island, called Hawai'i

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