Our fear-based foreign policy (Wallis)
September 6th, 2007 | Published in Politics, Quotes, War | 3 Comments
Today, in the United States, we have a foreign policy based primarily on fear. We move back and forth between new national color codes indicating the level of danger from terrorist attack. The Office of Homeland Security regularly moves the nation to Orange Alert—the second highest state of risk from terrorist violence.
September 11, 2001, changed our lives, and since then, we have become a nation always living in fear. We were terrified by the murderous attacks on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon, and even after dramatic war victories in Afghanistan and Iraq, America is still afraid. Indeed, the war in Iraq was argued and justified, entirely, on the basis of fear. It was the Trappist monk Thomas Merton who said many years ago, “The root of war is fear.”
–Jim Wallis, God’s Politics (2005), p. 88
September 7th, 2007 at 9:41 am (#)
I hear this often, but I never quite understand why it is a negative thing. I mean, if on 9/11 thousands of people died when they were just expecting to have a regular day at the office because some radicals managed to get control of a plane and crash it into their office building, and there are still plenty of radicals out there, and there are still endless ways out there to kill people, isn’t a little bit of fear justified?
I mean, of course the root of war is fear – if we never had to legitimately worry about others killing us then we would never be in a situation where killing them was justified.
I certainly agree that irrational fear, not based on facts, is bad. But why is it suddenly bad to fear a legitimate threat to one’s life or liberty? What is offered alternative? Blissful confidence that we can never be attacked again?
It’s one thing to rattle off the political slam, “politics of fear,” it’s quite another to give a coherent argument for why we have nothing to fear from terrorists.
September 7th, 2007 at 9:45 am (#)
What do we have to fear from terrorists? Has anything really happened in the last 6 years after 9/11 to justify all this fear? I don’t think so.
Now, I agree there should be some common sense fear, and so does Wallis. But it seems to me we’ve gone beyond that.
September 7th, 2007 at 10:35 am (#)
Well as long as you (and Wallis) agree that there should be some common sense fear, that’s really all that I’m concerned about. Some fear can be a healthy thing.
Regarding the amount of fear and what it has made us do in the realm of foreign policy, I’m disinclined to speculate. For example, I don’t think the war in Iraq was some fearful reaction to what the terrorists might do. Rather, I think it was a rational step to decrease the threat posed to the US. Of course someone from the other side of the political aisle would probably say the war was born out of fear – and that is fine – frankly, I don’t know, they may be right.
I guess I would just distinguish between actions taken so that we don’t have to fear and actions taken out of fear. Perhaps it’s a false distinction and certainly the line between them is very unclear, but if we want to talk about the politics of fear, I think it is important.
For example, when I move the pot handle on the stovetop from pointing straight out – where I could knock it over, to the side – where I can’t. I don’t think that’s necessarily done out of fear that I will knock the pot over, rather, I realize that I might knock the pot over (which I suppose is still a scary thought if it’s full of boiling water) and therefore I turn the handle to a safer location.
So I guess ultimately I think there is a difference between fear and between the more cognitive recognition that there is a threat.
Can we distinguish whether the pot handle was turned from fear or from cognitive recognition? Even if the pot handle was turned from fear, is that necessarily bad? Do we know if a war was engaged because we were afraid? Or because there was a purely cognitive recognition that there was a dangerous threat?
Fear seems to be a feeling in the presence of danger. It seems equally possible that someone could be in the presence of the same danger and not feel fear, yet still take action to eliminate the danger because purely rationally (i.e. without feeling), they realize that they are at risk.
I guess I just don’t see how we could tell the difference between the person who is actually feeling fear and therefore reacts and the person who doesn’t feel fear and therefore reacts. And it seems uncharitable to me to accuse someone of acting from fear, when in all possibility, they may be acting from a rational assessment of the situation.
Note: this does presume that terrorism is still a “pot of boiling water,” if you will, on the world scene and not something that has been totally eliminated. I think that just because we have not had attacks in the last 6 years does not mean there is not threat. Weren’t there two terrorist plots stopped just this week? Again, I’m not saying we have to be afraid I’m just saying we should mentally recognize that there is a threat, and probably do something about it.
I hope I made all that clear and sorry it was so long. Thanks for the discussion!