COUNSELS OF FEAR

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary".
--- H. L. Mencken

Not all of our hobgoblins are imaginary, but our responses to them are nevertheless bewildering.
For example, Al-Jazeera, the Arab broadcasting company is planning to open an English-language news channel that will be anchored from Washington, D. C., starting this Nov. 15. We should be excited by this access to Arab views and news, because it will provide important ways
to gain understanding of "those people." (The ones Sen. Lott complained that we have no way of understanding, as I cited in a recent blog.)

But we are afraid we can't handle the truth, as least as the Arab world sees it. A poll found that 53% of us are opposed to the launch of this new channel. And two thirds of us think our gov't shouldn't allow them into this market! Isn't that astounding? What in the world are we afraid of? Don't we need to see what the Muslim world sees going on in Iraq? Many reporters
say (off the record) that American TV doesn't show a fraction of the real destruction our people are doing there. Seymour Hersh does see more than most. He broke the Mai Lai massacre story from Viet Nam, and the Abu Ghraib revelations from Baghdad. He writes for The New Yorker (not known as a scandal sheet), and he has long been recognized for integrity. Although a Pulitzer Prize winner, he is now being slimed by the right-wing attack dogs for remarks he
made to the press in Canada. He alleged that the brutality against Iraqis done by our troops is much more common and widespread, and worse than it ever was in Viet Nam. Well, don't we need to know that, if it's true? Or if it isn't? Hersh may be mistaken. I certainly hope to God he is. But we need to know.

Another instance of unseemly fear is being manifested by our government in its efforts to keep our tactics used on detainees out of the courts, where they become public knowledge. The Bush administration has told a federal judge that terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons should not be allowed to disclose details of the "alternative interrogation methods" that their captors used to get them to talk. To reveal such knowledge, even to the detainees' attorneys "could reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage," government lawyers told the judge.
That's because the enemy could use this knowledge in their training to resist questioners.

That's clearly hogwash! Damage to whom, is the real question. There's no doubt that public knowledge of what our people do to detainees is not something they want out in world opinion. You can be sure the word is out and about at Guantanamo, where these people are now being held. Also, dozens, if not hundreds of prisoners are being released regularly from Gitmo, and are going home. So let's face it: the enemy knows what we are doing. The one's in the dark are our own trusting souls, who see no evil, hear no evil, etc. Former guards will write books, as will former prisoners. So it will all come out. It always does. This is damage control here, pure and simple.

jgoodwin004@centurytel.net if you wish to respond.