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I am so resonant with this piece – it's what I have been posting about, brought up to the present moment, and eloquently expressed. The writer is not only articulate, but also is female, and the agony of our times comes out especially poignantly in the women's voices that are crying at this time. "...dividing the world into good and bad, returning to domestic spying tactics from the last half-century – is reminiscent of the Cold War. This reflex to look backwards for strategies and responses comes at a real peril. Such easy answers to complex problems verge on denial and tend to minimize the severity of our current plight. They also keep us removed from the world's current ills...Without insight and foresight, I'm afraid our future prognosis is bleak, perhaps, even terminal."
-Suzanne-

June 3, 2002

Terror's Prognosis
Jill Rachel Jacobs

When my father was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago, we were shocked. After all, he was always the picture of health. By the time he sought medical care, the cruel and unforgiving disease that would later take his life had already spread significantly, drastically reducing his treatment options to either painful and toxic chemotherapy treatments that were not expected to be successful, or palliative care.

Like many afflicted with this insidious disease, we lived under the erroneous impression that illness only happens to other people. And while no one deserves to be sick, the truth is, no one is immune to illness.

The same cautionary tale, of real and imagined responses, applies to our major national predicament: how to purge terror and terrorists from our midsts.

When terrorists turned commercial airliners into murderous missiles by using $5.00 box cutters, Americans were shocked. After all, we didn't deserve this and although we had been warned and even attacked in the past, we somehow had come to believe that we were immune to terrorism.

Like a cancer left untreated, the seeds of hatred are sown long before violence occurs, and when ignored, options for survival are drastically reduced. Much has already been said about this administration's failure to address, let alone acknowledge, the role that U.S.-fed disparities in wealth and political power contribute to the seeds of hate around the world.

The administration's diagnosis of the problem, summed up as, "We are good. They are bad" has hardly been a panacea. But now, with the just-announced FBI makeover and the Department of Justice's resurrection of domestic spying on political activists as a 'new' tool, it seems as if the prognosis is anything but promising.

Everything I've read about the FBI's failure to detect the 9/11 bombers points to Information Age problems: too much data, not enough analysis, no-one connecting the dots nor connecting case managers in the federal bureaucracy. But the administration response – dividing the world into good and bad, returning to domestic spying tactics from the last half-century – is reminiscent of the Cold War.

This reflex to look backwards for strategies and responses comes at a real peril. Such easy answers to complex problems verge on denial and tend to minimize the severity of our current plight. They also keep us removed from the world's current ills, and sadly, they also do a great disservice to the innocents who lost their lives – here and abroad.

When examined more closely, the administration's pledge to rout out terror offers little hope for success. It's like trying to stop a cancer that's already spread beyond control, where the treatment ravages the body without striking at the disease's root.

We can bomb evil, increase military spending and undermine First Amendment rights in an attempt to obliterate terror wherever it may be, but until we deal with the underlying issues that spawn terrorism – and until we deal with federal law enforcement's apparent inability to trace terrorists – we will not be safe. The never-ending terror warnings from federal cops will simply become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yes, we'll be hit again.

While hindsight may reveal what should have been obvious all along, what we expect from our political leaders is foresight ­ – not reruns from the '50s and '60s when g-men in crew cuts showed up at anti-war rallies and attended church meetings. Without insight and foresight, I'm afraid our future prognosis is bleak, perhaps, even terminal.

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5721


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