Faith
September 21st, 2008. By Andrew“Whoever can see through all fear
will always be safe.”
You know, religious folk like to talk about faith a lot. They have faith in God, yadda yadda bs. Here’s the thing; I don’t think these people have any faith at all. I think that faith is a tool to use against fear. So, when something scary is happening you can have faith that you’ll get through it. But these same faithers also want to control everything. They want to go to war because they have no faith in other forms of coercion. They want to legislate morality because they have no faith in people to be good. When faced with a fear, they always choose the most direct coercive action, they never let things play out. Sometimes, if you overreact to something you make things worse. Sometimes your overreaction blinds you to the fact that what you’re afraid of really isn’t as threatening as it first seemed. So you start walking these paths of fear, and once you do that you have lost control of your own life because anyone can get you to do anything just by eliciting frightening consequences for not listening. Eg. “We have to invade Iraq or we’re all gonna die” or “We have to let the govt buy up shitloads of bad debt, or we’re all gonna die.” And when they put it like that, we always listen. We need to stop being so easy to manipulate. We need to have faith that we don’t always need to control everything. Because we can’t control everything. And taking the scarier rout is what we call a leap of faith.
September 21st, 2008 at 6:07 pm
You make an interesting point, but when taken too literally your approach is not always the best course of action. Look at the terrorist attacks that led up to the worst of all attacks on 9/11. The Clinton administration (and then the early Bush administration) did nothing of significance to address the gathering storm. You state “Sometimes your overreaction blinds you to the fact that what you’re afraid of really isn’t as threatening as it first seemed.” On the contrary, sometimes an under-reaction also blinds you to the fact that real threats are even worse than they appear when we try to rationalize them away.
Reply to Paul
September 22nd, 2008 at 9:30 am
Yes you can under react too. Just in this case I don’t think that’s what happened. Pretty sure we overreacted with that whole Iraq thing. And the whole, military officers with automatic weapons on the subway all the time now thing. I’m not sure how having army men on the subway would have prevented 9/11. Oh yeah, it wouldn’t have. Nor would having the terrorists take off their shoes before getting not hose flights. Nor would have the giant surveillance system of camera’s they’re building in NYC. I mean, basically, they attacked us and we promptly began to lock down our free society, talk about letting the terrorist win. They got us to voluntarily give up our freedom. And for someone who says “government is the problem” I should hope you don’t think “government surveillance is the solution” because that would be pretty inconsistent.
Reply to Andrew
September 22nd, 2008 at 7:30 pm
The “Iraq thing” was about much more than just reacting to 9/11. People seem to conveniently forget that Iraq had been violating UN Resolutions put in place after the first Gulf War. I personally think it was a mistake for Bush to try to tie Iraq too much to 9/11, but there was some validity in the idea of Iraq providing a haven terrorists in the form of state sponsored terrorism. 9/11 aside, we had plenty of reasons to go into Iraq in my opinion.
Now, as far as military officers on the subway…not sure where you live (NY I presume), but I am in DC, and with the exception of just after 9/11, you don’t see armed enforcement on the subways. Also, to suggest it wouldn’t have stopped 9/11 implies that every terrorist attack would take the form of 9/11 (airplanes). I think that is pretty short-sighted. Look at the train bombings in Italy and Great Britain.
As far as the Government being the problem, not the solution…don’t take it too far our of context. One of the things that the Government is charged with is the common defense of the country. The problem is that we now face a terrorist enemy who uses asymmetric means to attack us (things that traditional armies were not prepared to defend against….i.e., commercial airliners used as weapons, truck bombs, etc). It is a tough thing to defend against, and I don’t believe that we have found the right balance between maintaining a free/open society and having appropriate security measures in place to prevent another attack. In that respect, the terrorists have accomplished something. However, our freedoms are still the envy of most citizens of the world. I personally do not mind some of the “inconveniences” of the new world in which we live if it helps improve our security posture. There are limits however, and therein lies the conundrum.
Reply to Paul
September 23rd, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Yeah ok, Iraq violated UN resolutions. Since when was it our job to enforce those? As we can now hopefully all see, and as we should have known five years ago, a war is a dangerous and expensive thing. has it really been worth all the lives and money it has cost? Was it worth all the animosity, and thus new terrorists, it has generated? Iraq was not an imminent threat. War should always be a measure of last resort and there are other ways to influence people and countries than putting a gun to their head, so to speak.
As for our counter terrorism measures, well maybe I just think we should be trying to stop these people before they’re already on the train with a bomb. You know, with intelligent intelligence, and law enforcement. Also, we should accept the fact that we will never be able to lock down our society to such a degree to such an extent that 5 guys with box cutters will never slip by airport security. We do need to guard against that kind of thing, but we have to realize that if that is what saves us, we let them get too far already. Personally I think a better strategy would be to try and be loved by the world. To do good things, to give aid and stay out of people’s business. Then, maybe not as many people would want to blow us up. It’s like, would my personal plan for safety be to be a big jerk, and carry a gun so that when people want to knife me for being a jerk I can shoot them? Sure, that might work, but who wants to live like that? And what kind of person have I become then? A much better plan might be to still have the gun just in case, but in general be a nice guy so people don’t want to knife me.
And a thing about the surveillance. Since anyone can technically be a terrorist (ie, any citizen can just decide one day that they want to blow something up) this surveillance rout makes every American citizen a suspect. Suddenly, everyone in America is a potential threat to the United States. And I think it’s a dangerous and perverted situation when we are all under suspicion by our own government.
Reply to Andrew
September 23rd, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Ok, we will likely have to agree to disagree. However, a few counterpoints to your latest comments:
1) War IS a last resort, and there are other ways to achieve an end. But in Iraq, 10+ years of sanctions and failed diplomacy got us nowhere. Saddam Hussein thumbed his nose at UN Resolutions that were put in place as a condition to ending the first Gulf War. We (and our allies) let his disregard for these resolutions go on way too long, and we gave plenty of warning as to our intentions and resolve. Saddam threatened the stability of the region, which is an area that we derive much of our oil from. Stability of the middle east was and is very much a vital national security interest, one that we should be willing to go to war to protect. Iraq’s strategic importance was further amplified by an increasingly bellicose and dangerous Iran, who stated that Israel should be wiped off the face of the earth because of their religious beliefs. This is a dangerous world, and one in which the application of force is sometimes a necessary evil to keep other evils in check. Diplomacy is always a better course, and should always be exercised to the maximum extent before power is used. Nonetheless, when you talk about terrorists and terrorism, how does diplomacy fit in? In these cases you are usually talking about groups that are not overtly associated with a country. How do you deal with these people? Should we all abandon our current religious beliefs and freedom and become fanatical Islamists to appease these people and try to earn their love?
2) I do not ascribe to your desire to be loved by the world as it implies that we should abandon principles of freedom and democracy and appease every fanatical despot and tyrannical ruler out there. I hope that is not what you are suggesting. There will always be bad guys, and there will always be those that seek to do us harm no matter how much we try to love them. Do you realize that the radical Islamic terrorists seek our destruction not because we don’t love them enough, but largely because we do not share their same religious views and democracy and freedom threaten their power base? Should we have turned our heads on Saddam Hussein who gassed a whole town of his fellow countrymen? Or further back in history, should we have shown Hitler more love and just brushed aside his genocide as not our business? We are doing good things when we rid the world of these types of dictatorships that threaten our national security and deprive people of their basic liberties and freedoms. Would you have preferred that we appease the Hussein regime? Would you have preferred that we appease Hitler? After all, what was the threat to our borders? Should we also appease all of the insurgents that flooded into Iraq to fight America because they viewed a free and democratic society amongst them as a threat to their religion and power? Lastly, as far as doing good things and giving aid, there is no greater country on this earth than the United States when it comes to providing aid all around the world. To suggest otherwise is (in my subjective opinion) an ignorant view of the world.
There, those are my points and I will leave it at that. While I think I took your point to an extreme, I did so to try and illuminate the end game of such an approach.
Reply to Paul
September 29th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
“Stability of the middle east was and is very much a vital national security interest, one that we should be willing to go to war to protect.”
In this case, war made the middle east less stable.
“Nonetheless, when you talk about terrorists and terrorism, how does diplomacy fit in?”
Just generally not being thought of a “the great satan” would hinder terrorist recruitment efforts. Occupying a middle-eastern country? That helps terrorist recruitment efforts
“I do not ascribe to your desire to be loved by the world as it implies that we should abandon principles of freedom and democracy and appease every fanatical despot and tyrannical ruler out there. I hope that is not what you are suggesting.”
No that is not what I’m suggesting. But that is what’s happening. Warrentless wiretaps, an inarguable affront to freedom, are because of the threat of terror. That’s just one example.
“Do you realize that the radical Islamic terrorists seek our destruction not because we don’t love them enough, but largely because we do not share their same religious views and democracy and freedom threaten their power base?”
Do you realize they seek our destruction primarily because of our troop presence in their lands? And that George Bush lies to us every time he says they hate us for our freedom?
“Would you have preferred that we appease the Hussein regime? ”
No, I would have preferred that we used other methods of coercion, like sanctions, which in fact we were already doing. And they were working, he was contained. He wasn’t threatening to invade anyone, and, may I remind you that we didn’t find a trace of WMDs.
“Would you have preferred that we appease Hitler? ”
No, WWII is one of the only examples I can think of in recent history of a war worth fighting.
I think the endgame of our current approach is perpetual war, declining economy, declining freedoms, and more violence. There’s very little that has happened since Bush took charge of this country to convince me otherwise. All his approaches have failed.
Reply to Andrew