Scapegoats of September 11th: Hate Crimes & State Crimes in the War on Terror

Chapter 1: Talking About Terror

CHAPTER ONE Talking About Terror By repeatedly insisting that only he has the tools and the determination to fend off terrorism in the post-September 11 era, Bush has cultivated feelings of crisis, pessimism, anxiety, and a loss of control throughout the nation. He has instilled a sense of dependency in Americans. —Renana Brooks, “The character myth: To counter Bush, the Democrats must present a different vision of a safe world,” Nation, 2003 It makes no more sense to attack civil liberties to get at terrorists, than to invade Iraq to get at Osama Bin Laden. —Al Gore, “This administration is using fear as a political tool,” New York Times, 2003 I n so many ways, September 11, 2001, bisects history, altering the way people speak, think, and feel about the world around them. Whereas the United States has pockets of political violence scattered throughout its past, until recently it has yet to withstand the full force of a devastating terrorist attack. To say that America changed on September 11 is 3 01-R3894 7/28/06 12:46 PM Page 3 more than a cliché; the nation’s identity as a target—and victim—resonates both symbolically and substantively. As this volume sets out to examine , America is experiencing major shifts in its social, political, and cultural landscape as it searches for a safer society. The war on terror has become the most visible manifestation of that desperate need for security . However, as a social invention, the war on terror serves more than the manifest function of protecting the nation against terrorist strikes. There are other—deeper—latent functions as well, most notably the desire to exact revenge for the mass killings of innocent civilians on 9/11. Still, settling that score reaches beyond the mundane task of apprehending and punishing certain terrorists. The war on terror, as fiercely echoed in the speeches by President Bush and other political leaders, represents a continuation of a more ancient campaign against evil. Whereas grounding the war on terror within a mystical framework generates considerable popular support from people who view the world as a dangerous place with evil lurking in our midst, that way of talking and thinking about political violence undermines the formulation of sound counterterrorism policies. Such mysticism in understanding terrorism produces a good versus evil dichotomy rather than a right versus wrong morality. Consequently, the war on terror—lacking the moral bearings required to distinguish between right and wrong—recklessly produces two significant forms of collateral damage. First, current counterterrorism tactics victimize scapegoats, that is, people not associated with political violence but nonetheless targeted merely because of their ethnicity and religion, namely Middle Easterners, Arabs, and Muslims, as well as South Asians. For angry citizens in post-9/11 America, such scapegoats are easy to identify and easy to dislike. Second, the war on terror has weakened key democratic principles developed to protect all people against the abuses of government power. The USA Patriot Act along with a host of illegal and unethical actions in the war on terror continues to rip away long-standing values of justice. Scapegoating involves displacing aggression onto innocent people selected as suitable enemies due to their perceived differences in race, ethnicity , religion, and so on. As a social psychological defense mechanism against confronting the real source of frustration, scapegoating provides emotional relief for people racked with fear and anxiety. That solace is inevitably short term, prompting scapegoaters to step on a treadmill of endless bigotry and victimization. This book explores in-depth the scapegoats of September 11 by attending to hate crimes and state crimes in the war on terror; by doing so, it chronicles the mistakes and missteps in current 4 SCAPEGOATS OF SEPTEMBER 11TH 01-R3894 7/28/06 12:46 PM Page 4 counterterrorism tactics. In the face of popular and political cheerleading in the war on terror, this work presents a careful and sober assessment. With few exceptions, any comfort that the war on terror delivers is merely illusory, given the array of self-defeating strategies that fail to contribute to public safety and national security. As this work demonstrates, support for the war on terror involves a good amount of wishful—and in some instances magical—thinking, reducing the battle against terrorism to symbolic ritual in lieu of pragmatic policy. Setting the stage for a critical analysis , this chapter scans discourse in the war...