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Comments by YACCS

 

Irony, thy name is...

From a letter to the editor in Salon:

What you have to confront, in yourselves and in your nation, is the Culture of Fear.

Since 9/11, fear has enslaved your country. Your leaders are doing nothing to stop it. Neo-conservatives are using it to advance their own agendas and the rest justify their own cowardice by making sure that everyone else stays afraid.

Now you are embroiled in a war which, as Gary Kamiya pointed out in his excellent article three weeks ago, will have unknowable and possibly horrendous consequences.

It has actually been one of the most common anti-war arguments that the only reason the public supports Bush's liberation of Iraq is because we're so afraid after 9/11 that we'll agree with anyone who promises to make us safer, no matter what he or she proposes. That's plausible-sounding, certainly; fear often does make people more willing to accept extreme measures. But it works both ways; everyone is operating on the fear principle. The left is coming up with all sorts of world-is-going-to-end-if-we-do-anything scenarios, and if that's not fear, I don't know what is. What's worse is that it's paralysis-inducing fear. The administration is promising us solutions to our fear; the anti-war left is simply telling us we can't act because of fears of potential consequences. Is it really surprising that the public would choose the first of those two worldviews?
posted by David Nieporent at 4/04/2003 05:21:00 AM |