-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: September 17, 2007 12:30:34 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: The biggest threat to our freedoms comes not from al-Qaida
but from--
Oh What a Lovely War on Terror --
it's a song the arms dealers love
The biggest threat to our freedoms comes not from al-Qaida but from
the security bureaucrats and their cronies
Simon Jenkins
The Guardian (UK), September 14, 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/armstrade/story/0,,2168990,00.html
I admit it is a grim question for a fine autumn weekend, but is
liberty in decline? Have we taken the old girl for granted so long
that we cannot see her lined face, frayed garments and sagging
bosom? The swimming pool in Baghdad's Green Zone may be Liberty
Pool and American chips Freedom Fries, but the glory days are over.
Sex appeal these days has passed from liberty to power.
Anyone currently visiting the Royal Docks in London's East End will
see an extraordinary display. Sleek grey warships nestle close to
the vast Excel exhibition of weapons of mass destruction and
repression. Hidden away from the heart of the capital, arms buyers
from three dozen nations show why Britain is the world's second
biggest defence exporter after America.
Business is booming again following the post-cold war decline. Nor
is Britain squeamish about what it sells and to whom. Totalitarian
China, Saudi Arabia and Libya are welcomed, their purchases
subsidised by the British Treasury if need be.
I am no pacifist and support the right of sovereign peoples to
defend themselves, but I cannot see how this festival of weaponry
meets any foreign policy goal. It defies Britain's UN obligation to
reduce global militarisation, and aids repressive and undemocratic
regimes. Britain is helping to make the world a more violent place
merely because there is money in it, and "if we don't do it then
someone else will" - the smuggler's defence down the ages.
Governments can think of good reasons for doing anything, but they
rarely step back and wonder if they are promoting liberty, or
undermining it.
The philosopher AC Grayling is in no doubt of the answer. He has
produced the sort of book that meets Chesterton's test of "forcing
a man to change philosophies and religions" through a sharp blow to
the head. His weapon is history, presented 18th-century style as a
sustained tract - Towards the Light: The Story of the Struggles for
Liberty & Rights that Made the Modern West. Grayling argues
gloomily that the Whig view of history as a steady progress towards
human freedom no longer applies. It reached its climax in the
second half of the 20th century with the defeat of fascism and
communism. We all cheered and declared that history would die.
No chance, says Grayling. Though much about the world continues to
improve - like yesterday's reported fall in child mortality - "we
are beginning to descend the far side of Parnassus". Our parents
would be amazed that, in peacetime Britain, every public space is
monitored by police cameras; private movement is traceable by
satellites that follow cars and phones; misbehaving citizens can be
imprisoned on the say-so of neighbours; easily readable government
ID cards will carry a mass of personal information; suspects are
incarcerated indefinitely without trial; and torture has returned
to the armoury of the state. They might also find it incredible
that 21st-century Britain has revived the 19th-century invasion of
distant lands because it dislikes their regimes, or "to spread
western values".
Grayling's case is that this swelling infringement of personal
liberty is not a minor tweaking of law and order but a loss of
freedoms that "cost blood and took centuries" to acquire. They
drove Milton to war, Paine to exile and Cobbett to jail. Thousands
were slain, burned or tortured to death in their cause. Each
retreat from such liberty is defended by home secretaries since
"the innocent have nothing to fear". Tell that to the Britons who
were held in Guantánamo, none of whom has ever been charged.
The justification for all this is the threat of attack from
religious fanatics. Yet, as Grayling points out, this is a criminal
menace rather than anything on a par with past strategic threats.
While the Islamists may declare their ambition to be a "western
caliphate", this is as ludicrously implausible as the dreams of
19th-century anarchists. Modern cities are always vulnerable to
explosions, but the west is surely robust enough to withstand any
serious threat to the character or constitution of its states. The
rantings of Osama bin Laden cannot justify reversing the tide of
western liberty. Indeed, while arming against communism helped
defeat communism, arming against terrorism only feeds the beast.
The noblest testament to freedom is the American constitution, yet,
as Grayling points out, the latest statute passed under its aegis
runs contrary to its ethos. The mission of the Patriot Act is "to
deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the
world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for
other purposes". Montesquieu and Madison would have been appalled
at such generalised statism. Nor are the act's powers temporary,
wartime ones; they are permanent, as are Britain's myriad terrorism
laws. By extending state power to curb civil liberty they do the
terrorist's job (such as it is) for him. Never was Franklin's maxim
more apt, that he who would put security before liberty deserves
neither. Freedom cannot be strengthened by being weakened. That is
the sophistry of dictatorship.
Commentators have ascribed the chaotically belligerent aftermath of
9/11 to weak western leaders craving popularity in the glamour of
war. Tony Blair said he "believed passionately that we are at
mortal risk" from Islamism. It was the sort of threat that the risk
theorist Ulrich Beck describes as "always an elixir to an ailing
leader".
I think more sinister forces are at work: those on display in the
Royal Docks. In 1953 America's last true soldier/president,
Eisenhower, warned of a "military/industrial complex" in danger of
running amok. Its wealth could bend democracy to its will, using
paranoia to seize control of budgets and policies alike. The
outcome would be "a tragic waste of resources ... humanity hanging
on a cross of iron", with armies seeking war for their employment.
Elected leaders, said Eisenhower, fed such a complex at their peril.
The growth of Islamist terror, always described as "al-Qaida
linked" (as international crime was always "mafia-linked"), meets
Eisenhower's thesis. With the threat of communism gone, the
military/industrial complex needs a new cause. Allied to a booming
police and intelligence bureaucracy, it has grasped eagerly at
terrorism. It has no interest in keeping that threat in proportion,
and every interest in exaggerating it. To cover the bungles that
led to 9/11, this security/industrial complex portrayed the
terrorists as awesome and ubiquitous, capable of building vast bomb-
proof bunkers in the Hindu Kush, fake plans of which were dumped on
a gullible press. State security agencies dance to the tune of "Oh!
What a Lovely War." They enslave the language of freedom in the
cause of repression.
Seen in the light of history, I do not find Grayling's alarmism out
of order. It is simply true that in Britain and America arms
dealers, in league with security bureaucrats, have fuelled public
debate with extreme paranoia. Those who defend liberty are accused
of appeasing an unseen enemy. Those who plead democracy are accused
of threatening the state.
If the freedom show is to get back on the road, some battles must
clearly be fought over and again.
· The paperback edition of Simon Jenkins' book Thatcher and Sons is
published this week by Penguin
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COMMENTS
JohnCan45
Well put, except for the part about Eisenhower coining the term
"military-industrial complex" in 1953. It was in his farewell
address given at the end of his term in 1961, as he was clearing
the oval office for Kennedy.
The remark was so inflammatory he knew even he couldn't get away
with it until he was nearly out the door.
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