The fallout from the Capitol riot continues to expand, and we are now being told that the entirety of the Trump-voting populace should be labeled “insurrectionist.” With such a label comes, of course, the application of tools the government has at hand in response. Tools that were built for waging the Global War on Terror (GWOT).
Such is a good time to reflect upon the lessons and ethics of the Golden Rule, i.e. “do unto others…;” i.e. “love thy neighbor as thyself;” i.e. “how would you feel if they did to you what you did to them.”
This is a grim perspective through which to contemplate the GWOT. For Republicans, now concerned that they are the target of secret security plans and censorships, consider: we torched half of the Middle East for what 19 Muslims did on 9/11. Now, that precedent is blowing up in our faces: Team Red is having the machine it helped build applied to its ranks. We assembled the intelligence apparatus to do it, but more importantly, we expanded our imagination, our Overton Window of socially acceptable conduct, to the idea that warring on people for what we speculate goes through their minds is the right thing to do. Now, the GWOT experts are investigating the Trump insurgency. Which, they tell us, might be any of the 74 million people who voted for Donald Trump. Social media is de-platforming large swathes of the “Right.” In other words: “they” are “us.” The Golden Rule says they always are.
Our Muslim opponents/victims should also reckon with this irony of the Golden Rule: Muslim autocrats for decades deflected the rightful rage of their people into externalized, scapegoating anti-Western movements, rather than pursue reform. Pakistan cultivated nests of baby snakes (the Taliban), and found they got too dangerous to control. The Palestinians raised the same snakes to confront Israel any way they could. Those violent factions have gained strength to the point where peaceably sharing power with them is likely impossible. Movements against “them” turned into movements biting “us.”
The implications of the pronoun switch loom just as large for us: how would Americans like it if Muslim drones soared over our country, to zap anyone they deem worthy of zapping? How well could any American cooperate with an occupying Muslim army? There are nearly 2 billion Muslims, and granted, much of their creed is concerned with our undoing, to one degree or the other. But rarely does that degree involve an actual threat. Yet we did Second World War-level damage to the Muslim world over what 19 of them did to us. We turned their theoretical hate into reasonable opposition. The reality is that of the people who are motivated by hate, religious or political, righteous or mythological, the ones who actually take action is tiny. And there is simply no way to predict the likelihood of any action. Which is why attempts to use what amounts to dressed-up ESP to do so are always extra-legal.
And another irony: our attacking Muslim nations for their own good did not make them any more functional. Our way of dealing with Islamic radicalism clearly has been a cure worse than the disease (and it’s a macrocosm of the War on Drugs). Meanwhile, in the two decades of the GWOT, has the American system gotten more, or less functional? Is it likely further conflict over the Trump insurgency will make us more, or less functional? Why would we expect “them” (Middle Easterners) to better untangle this Devil’s knot than “us,” the more developed (but where are the trends taking us)?
The flawed principle that we used to fight the GWOT – that you kill insurgent ideas by neutralizing the ideas’ people – is now being used in our internal partisan fight. As unconscionable as the 1/6 insurgency was, the actual actors (at most a few thousand) were a fraction of the Trump rally being held that day. That is a minuscule minim of a percentage of the 74 million Americans who chose Donald Trump at the ballot box.
However, a few thousand divided by 74 million is a much higher percentage than 19 divided by 1.8 billion.
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Eugene… A very thoughtful article. We are living through an unthoughtful time, and have been for a while. While I think 19 as a number of actors minimizes the threat, our response falls short if we don’t manage to kill ‘em all, because if not, what’s the end game? As if eliminating “them all” would solve the whack a mole issue. Always appreciate your take, and my power is back on in Texas, although my pool is frozen and the golf course is closed due to snow.
I especially admire your commitment to being a lifesaver in a City that I visit occasionally, but would not inhabit unless there were bars on my door and I didn’t have a key.
Bless you.
Bless you too, sir.
War is compromise, which is why so few of them rectify the conditions that set them about (being “compromised”). Agreed, 19 is too few, but the true culprit, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, would be too many. We would topple the petro-dollar.
Our relationship with KSA is the ultimate compromise: the vanguard of liberalism in bed with a totalitarian secular monarchy. Me, a Protestant, is not permitted to set foot at the holy site their system guards, as their reason to exist. They are the Deans and founders of the school of religious thought that inspired the 9/11 atrocity. They hold us as unholy, barely above monkeys and pigs. Jews are not permitted to set foot in the kingdom. If we acted justly, they would answer for what they did (and we are still not permitted to know the extent of it). But we compromised: Syria and Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, in doctrine or in implementation. Yet their societies have been torn apart by our approach. By my lights, the cause of political reform in the region has been discredited by our approach, not strengthened.
Now, conflict with people over what they might do, over their associates, over what they think and say, rather than what they do, is biting us in the patoot in our own system. It is our keystone value of freedom of expression and conscience that is now compromised by our own precedent. Whenever I read Lincoln’s 2nd inaugural, I fear for the judgement due us, by a just God, for what we did to “them.”
Thanks for playing. I hope y0u get your power back.
Sun is shining, we’re above 32. Like all things, it shall pass. Best.
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Soon, I hope.