In a Mirror, Darkly:

Life Imitates Art as real life outdoes Hollywood, and America almost sees itself in the mirror of truth. 

ã Darren September 2001 (minor updates in September 2002, because the Iraq situation fits quite nicely under the motif of the essay.)

I will assume that the events in New York City and Washington DC are all too well known.  However, background information on the situation, and voices in dissent to the media campaign of ambiguous, anti-Islamic rhetoric and calls for war are sadly lacking.  Fox News produced the most inflammatory battle cries.  Once again, we have a TV program like the OJ Trial, the Gulf War, and Gulf War II, Clinton I: Whitewater/Travelgate, Clinton II: Sticky Cigars.  

Americans are junkies, seeking ever more sensational visuals and scandals.  CNN created a logo for the war, and a brand name, as well as a theme song.  Several commentators, including the illustrious Jesse Ventura, remarked on the Hollywood-like surrealism of the images of the second jet crashing full speed into the World Trade Center.  The irony was too thick to be true.   Over, and over again they played the images.  They sought out all the amateur footage, and replayed the horror from every obsessive-compulsive angle.  I can picture the death-defying photojournalists fantasizing about their moment of eternity in our collective psyche.  The sequel to this horror film will be the exciting "America Strikes Back." 

After the attack we were subjected to endless expressions of corporate condolences and patriotic pandering.  The consumers are dutifully buying and displaying the US(tm) brand logo.  They seem to be waiting anxiously for the CNN coverage of smart bomb videos and real-life video of commando battles in Bin Laden's network of caves.  Osama Bin Goldfinger in a Tomb Raider setting.  Sega probably has a crew working on a combined motion picture and video game.  While channel surfing I passed the E station, the one that pretends that Hollywood deserves its own full length news program.  They had a segment on a rampant Hollywood rumor that Bin Laden was planning to attack some major studio or theme park like Disneyland.  More irony. 

It's hard to get excited about sending American soldiers into a death trap where they might be infected with deadly, contagious germs or, if they're lucky, dismembered by an old Soviet land mine (or a US made one).  It's hard to get excited when you know that this clearly insane and sinister guru of death is inspired by and supported by that good old American-made lust for stardom at any cost.  Expert observers and social scientists have shown that there is a rapidly growing fad or craze of suicide warfare among youths in the Middle East.  Like rock stars, and contestants on Survivor (tm), they know they will achieve universal fame.  This isn't religion, it's Western Entertainment mentality, the very thing Bin Laden seems to resent.  The violent robots he creates are intoxicated with fame.  It's the ultimate in extreme sports.  Yet more irony. 

It's hard to get excited about kicking the shit out of a drought-ruined, bombed-out shell of a country, because hundreds, and maybe thousands of Bin Laden's killing machines are already scattered throughout the world, where they live among us and learn to use our technology against us.

What makes it even more difficult to get excited and patriotic is the knowledge that this Pope of Assassins was probably funded, supported, armed and probably trained by our own CIA, under the direction of our current president's father.  Bush Sr. & top Republicans still sit on the Carlyle group board with the Bin Laden family.  Dick Cheney's Halliburton made a 73 million dollar oil deal with Iraq in June of 2001--shortly before September 11th.  Besides the fact that this gives him an economic motive to declare war in Iraq, there are major questions as to the ethical and legal status of his trading with "the axis of evil."  Furthermore, he lied about the size of the deal.  Is this the kind of man you'd buy a used car from, let alone authorize to start a war? The Washington Post first reported this on June 23rd, 2001.  

The CIA and every administration since Carter has taken advantage of Wahabi Sunni Islamic fundamentalism and nationalism.  Saddam Hussein received his weapons of mass destruction from the United States.  He was a puppet to stem the flow of anti-Western Shi'ite fundamentalism in Iran and Kurdish Wahabi Islam in Northern Iraq and Eastern Turkey.  Dangerous and counterintuitive as it may seem, they devised a plan to harness the hatred of the fundamentalists, balanced by the oppressive governments of Iraq and Turkey.  The CIA and our government used a combination of Islamic fanaticism and violent training to create the Mujahadeem in Afghanistan--the predecessors of Al Qaida and the Northern Alliance.  America, through its CIA and propaganda loves to whip people into a fear frenzy by equating communism with atheists throwing Christians (and Muslims) into prisons.  The CIA denies directly training or supporting Osama, though there aren't many people who believe it.  It has been revealed that America did in fact use Osama and people like him to undermine the Soviet Union.  When the war ended, this psychological-pseudoreligion of destruction spread like a virus. The abandoned killing machines were left without food or education, so their resentment for the US grew.  Kissinger and various old men responsible for this half-witted diplomacy of greed defend themselves by saying that it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Various experts on the Middle East are pointing to the fact that the major oil producers are the countries with the most conservative Islamic religion AND the biggest split between the citizen's hatred for the USA, and their government's close ties with us.  Saudi Arabia and the the Taliban of Afghanistan are excellent examples of this, given that Kenneth Lay's Enron, Hammid Kharzai's UNOCAL, Condaleeza Rice's Exxon, and Dick Cheney's Halliburton all were dealing relatively covertly with Iraq and Afghanistan right before September 11th.  On the other end of the spectrum is Iran, where an overtly hostile government rules a population that is more pro-Western than most other Islamic nations.

This whole ugly story is an atavistic resurgence of the strange cult of al-Hasan ibn-al-Sabbah and his fortress Alamut, where we find Bin Laden's historical predecessor.  Dating from ~1100 AD, this rich terrorist demagogue bought a fortress in the mountains of what is now Iran and terrorized the Christian Crusaders and devout Muslims alike with disciples he turned into suicidal soldiers known as assassins.  It is the origin of that word.  History repeats itself in the strangest ways.  It seems more than slightly significant that the only real resources in Afghanistan are opium, the largest source in the world, and hashish, which al-Hasan ibn-al-Sabbah used to brainwash his doom drones.  

I just can't feel good about waving a flag because I see that except for the jungles and the Catholicism, the Middle East is very similar to Colombia and Venezuela.  Illegal drug production and oil wells coincide with constant violence, gut-wrenching poverty, neocolonialism, oppressive governments supported overtly by ours, and all sorts of clandestine CIA activities.   

Why should we feel patriotic about sending an expensive and probably ineffective dispatch of our best young citizens into this obvious death trap in the mountains?  Worse, it will have only an exacerbating effect on the global terrorism virus that extends from Afghanistan to the Philippines, to Canada, to Florida, to New York, to London, to Frankfurt, to Paris, to Kosovo, to Chechnya, to Israel, to Iraq, to Saudi Arabia, to Egypt, to Algeria, to Sudan, to Somalia and now to Basque Spain.  

The mere fact that our cowboy president would suggest that this is a war only shows how pathetic his understanding of global diplomacy is.  He even blundered into calling it a Crusade--I'm sure he really was sincere when he indicated that he didn't realize that it referred to that ugly time when Muslims had to fight savagely for centuries to maintain control of Palestine and Jerusalem.  No wonder he doesn't see the problem in declaring an indefinite war against anyone who isn't "with us." The truth is, the entire world barely tolerates America's boorish arrogance, greediness and heartless capitalism and lack of regard for the environment.  But they do fear our cruise missiles and B-1's.  Fortunately, most of the world, including Islamic Arabs and Pakistanis really do want to eliminate the terrorists, even if only because they can't control them.  

Mussolini in Italy used right wing politics, aggressive imperialism against a weak country (Ethiopia), and blurred the boundaries between monopolistic corporations and the government.  (Read my essay comparing Bush and Mussolini)  Bush is using our military and government to undermine the United Nations, and invade destitute, weak countries rich in oil.  How can we be excited?  It might give us cheaper polluting fuel for those suburban SUV's, but at what cost?  

In spite of my lack of patriotic war cries, the global collaboration to eliminate violent, organized psychokillers truly merits all of our support.  BUT, the main reason I believe that it demands our full support is so that we can all be keenly aware of how this menace came about in the first place.  More important perhaps, we need to understand and evaluate the mechanisms by which they plan to undertake this elimination of terrorists.  This new genii of high security and monitoring of the population could escape from the bottle and become Big Brother fascism on a global scale.  America has produced in the Third World, especially in the Islamic world, a living and growing fire of hatred that feeds on American foreign policy.  Mr. Bush doesn't seem to understand that Bin Laden wants an American invasion.  (After the invasion quickly routed the Taliban from Kabul and Kandahar, terrorists and Taliban are throwing bombs at our oil man puppet dictator.  Perhaps Al Qaida is joining the Iraqi army to await us for "the big one." Are we ready for mushroom clouds and missiles loaded with small pox?)

These are crucial and frightening times.  We are at an important crossroads, and it seems to Sandy and me that the worst possible action we could take now would be to send military forces into Afghanistan (or now Iraq). It also proves most clearly that a missile defense system is a total waste of money, except for the profits it would generate for the weapons industry that has close ties to the Bush family and cabinet.   Rumsfeld can't stand the fact that Al Qaida has no national territory.  No targets.  No president.  It's invisible and everywhere.  Still, the foolish corporate warmongers are begging for worthless missiles.  If  they can use a single suicide soldier infected with small pox, or an airliner and box cutters, what good is a space based missile defense system?  

We ought to make sure that the espionage/intelligence/security industry (various agencies like the CIA, and the companies that develop their tools and weapons around the world) finally learn that sponsoring revolutions, guerrilla warfare, supplying deadly weapons and technology to pissed off victims of our global policies and bad manners are really, really bad ideas.  It seems that they don't learn from their mistakes, unless perhaps these are the sort of results they want to create.  Whether intentionally or not, the aftermath of 9/11 assures job security if you're in this espionage/intelligence/security industry.

Bad Religion

It is easy to think of the Bin Laden's attack on America as a radical act, the likes of which we have not seen, and which it seems is linked to a strange, distant culture.  But, this attack is not more evil than the attack on the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, perpetrated not by foreign agents of a different religion, but by Christian Americans.  It is not more sinister than the work of Hitler, also a religiously and racially motivated lunatic.  Both wished to overthrow the government and wipe out a group of people.  The Attack on America™ is simply another act of the very same kind and degree.  There is no difference.    

Perhaps these other acts of violence and hatred will help give us a clearer perspective.  Take the example of the extreme right wing survivalist, poor, racist, anti-immigrant, government hating, 2nd Amendment fanatics in their bunkers with their Bibles and Fundamentalist faith--like Randy Weaver, like Timothy McVeigh.  Not all Christians are hateful, racist wackos.  Not all conservatives are in bunkers.  BUT,  there are some extremists who do fit this profile.  McVeigh was inspired to his murderous faith by the repulsive Turner Diaries.  William Pierce--aka Andrew McDonald wrote this disturbing work that encouraged fascism.  Pierce belongs to the Aryan Nation, and supports the Church of Jesus Christ Christian.  He wants to see a white, Christian, right wing America.  He described detailed plans for blowing up a federal building, contaminating a nuclear power plant with nuclear waste, and driving a nuclear bomb in a private airplane into the Pentagon.  All of this was followed by horrid Nazi/Stalin-like round-ups of Jews, Blacks, liberals and other undesirables.  Not many Christians think like Pierce and McVeigh.  Nor do many Muslims think like Osama.  

What in our society creates such monsters?  Why are they willing to kill, and even die for their beliefs?   Click here to read Timothy McVeighs thoughts on his actions. In this interesting article by Charles Sheehan-Miles, a Gulf War vet, he gives interesting psychological analyses of why the Gulf War created so many crazy killers: McVeigh, John Allen Muhammed, and a number of soldiers who became rapists and wife-killers.  Aryans For 9/11: An Excerpt From The Terrorist Next Door, Pulitzer Prize Nominee Daniel Levitas

After the September 11th attacks, the Aryan Nation's official web site briefly carried a ghoulish message of praise for the attackers--obviously inspired by their hatred of our government and the many Jewish people killed in the attack.  Religiously inspired hatred and violence is not the specific domain of Muslims.

On at least one point, Marx was completely right: religion is a manifestation of the social and economic situation.  Bad religion is a product of a sick society.  That goes for America, as well as the Middle East.  Clerics from both sides are explaining the world's problems in terms of demons and irreligiosity.  Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson helped prove this point--religious fundamentalism was certainly a major factor causing the attacks, and it is also an important element in the violent American reaction, which was clearly an attempt to channel their anger toward the ACLU, feminists, homosexuals, pagans, pro-choicers and anyone who is trying to secularize America.  (Click here for CNN article on the disgusting, fascist remarks of Falwell and Robertson.)  We haven't heard this kind of inflammatory hate speech since the Dominicans harangued the masses before the Inquisition, and Puritan Christians triumphantly watched alleged witches swinging from the gallows.  Typically unreflective in his remarks, Falwell and Robertson fail to notice the similarity between these words and those of Bin Laden, nor the irony of attacking the ACLU, which must protect them from being prosecuted for federal hate crimes by limiting the scope of that legislation.   

Falwell and Robertson have added fuel to the fire into which they gleefully cast the liberal components of their own nation.  Sure, they apologized, but it's clear that they only apologized for saying it, not for thinking it, and the damage has been done.  In the jargon of a Neopagan, they are surfing the hate wave, opportunistically guiding it toward the elements they would most like to attack.   

After the Oklahoma bombing I recall seeing jubilant responses on the Internet from Americans who called themselves Christians.  I doubt that many of them weren’t of the Aryan Nation ilk.  These extreme right-wingers understand very well the theory behind terrorism--it leads to the entrenchment of hatred and extremism, which is exactly what they want.  That's precisely the way the neonazis and K.K.K. work to attract new members.  The recent attacks will undoubtedly increase membership in those groups.  (Click here to read TJ Leyden's account of how the Neonazis recruit by stirring up hatred.)  Pat Robertson is taking a page right out of their playbook--inflame the public, incite violence and hatred combined with religion and patriotism, and you can get rid of your political enemies while simultaneously circling the wagons of other religious nutcases.

Instead of asking ourselves how to STOP terrorists, we ought to be asking ourselves why these terrorists exist in the first place.  Instead of funding expensive and futile military campaigns to destroy innocent humans and a fragile environment, we ought to be trying to find proactive solutions to the economic and political problems that created these terrorists in the first place.  Not only would this stop the terrorism, but it would also cost a great deal less money and create goodwill instead of perpetuating the hatred of America that so many Americans find so perplexing because the mainstream media has persuaded us that there is no explanation for the attacks.  There is an explanation, even though there is no justification.   Far more inexplicable and immoral is the notion that giving our global economic policies a conscience would reduce profits for multinational corporations.  When quick profits result in a cycle of violence and severe taxation to support a parasitic military industrial complex, then this capitalistic argument against neocolonialism falls flat on its face.

There is no race that is innocent, not even the Saudis.  Arab states aligned themselves with Nazi Germany in World War II after Mussolini invaded Ethiopia and Somalia (hey, aren't those black African Muslims deserving of Arab Muslim support??).  It is class and race warfare, and they are fomenting political, ethnic & religious unrest to facilitate the extraction of oil and profits from these countries.  Indeed, many of the worst enemies of these impoverished and abused Muslims are the wealthy sheiks and oil executives in their own countries, who have persuaded them that the citizens of America and Israel are their oppressors, and that religious extremism and terrorism are the only solutions.  Representatives of the status quo fear most these words: "class warfare."  They don't want us to think about it.   They want us to think that it's Islamic monarchists and religious extremists who are attacking America's freedom and democracy--the same sort of crap they spewed about the Soviet Union.  They seem to miss the irony of the fascist intolerance and rabid hate speech of Jerry Falwell, who would like nothing better than to see democracy replaced with theocracy.  I find it interesting that he has attempted to replace his listeners' distrust of Islamic Fundamentalist practices like their treatment of women and suppression of democracy to an attack on the kind of modern, liberal, secular world that the terrorists also deplore.  The difference between Bin Laden and Falwell et al. is largely superficial.

Naturally, the astute reader could accuse me of stooping to the same level of hate speech by turning the tables on Falwell and Robertson.  Since I too am protected by the same laws that protect their hate speech, I can only reply "It couldn't happen to a nicer pair of closet Nazis."  I am an out-of-the-closet pro-choice, pro-gay rights, secular humanist quasi-pagan, and I'm pissed-off.  

Perhaps the most shocking “coincidence” of the week of September 11 was the arrival of a subscription promotion pack from the Economist.  On the 8x10” cover, duplicating the glossy cover of a recent issue, was a close-up photo of a tightly veiled Muslim woman (probably Afghani), with fearful brown eyes.  The caption reads: “Can Islam and Democracy mix?”  This arrived on Friday, three days after the attack.  The timing, and the obvious hint at war disturbed me.   I looked more closely at the image. Something else disturbed me, but I couldn’t put a finger on it.  Two hands, only the fingers visible in the shot, pushed the drab gray-green veil over her nose and mouth, and she is looking sidewise at the camera.  Then it struck me—the two hands pushing the veil were not her hands, but rather those of someone standing in front of her.  The thumbs were together over her mouth. The subtle, subliminal message was obvious—an appeal to liberal feminists to jump on the war wagon.  I don’t wish to defend the Taliban’s horrid treatment of women, but I doubt that missiles and soldiers will be effective in getting Afghani women out from under the veils and out of their domestic prisons.  Bad religion is a product of a sick society.  They did not used to treat their women so badly--before the CIA backed the Taliban and before the corrupt government of Saudi Arabia invited our forces in to help assure the flow of cheap crude oil for our insatiable energy thirst.  (9/2002 After the war, the situation for women is better, but there is still much pressure to wear the birka.  9/2003  Never mind--it's all going to hell in a hand basket.  Now even Iraq, which previously outlawed the veiling of women, is slipping into that same misogynist religious extremism.)

The rich Bin Laden will probably survive the attack, just as Castro and Hussein.   The Afghanis, already weakened by starvation, will be annihilated so that the Petrol Gods and apparently the conspiracy of hatred can have their way.  I can see it already: Islamic Fundamentalism will replace Communism as the greatest threat to democracy.  (9/2002 Bin Laden's whereabouts are completely unknown.  9/2003  Saddam Hussein's whereabouts are also unknown, and Islamic extremism is on the rise.)

Finally, we have an enemy we can hate and fear, and it should produce lots of great video footage.  

Thank the gods we sinister simpletons have CNN and the Fox network to keep us drugged with propaganda.   

[paragraph inserted November 2002] As an example of the ethical convictions of American Republicans, who not so secretly situate themselves as "more Christian than the Democrats", I provide this disgusting little anecdote.  After the October 25th death of Paul Wellstone in a plane crash, a co-worker of mine's wife had a profoundly disturbing encounter with right wing religious conservatism.  She is a teacher at a wealthy high school in a very wealthy suburb of the Twin Cities in the Hennepin County area.  I won't mention the school or the suburb, because the story is shocking and embarrassing.  Besides, it does not matter.  I'm sure this was much more widespread than this one school.  

On that dark, cold Friday, when the news was announced to the students at this school, quite a few of them went out into the hallways shouting and dancing for joy.  Wellstone is dead!   Naturally, the parents were more restrained, and knew that this could easily turn against them in the election.  They did not behave in this way.  These same Republicans criticized the memorial service turned rally, claiming that the Democrats had tainted their mourning.  But, we must ask ourselves, where did their spoiled and sinister kids learn to hate a hardworking liberal who has done so much for women and for the working families of Minnesota?  Where did they learn that it is acceptable to rejoice when someone they disagree with is killed?  

If we are to evaluate moral actions, which is more dubious--to turn the potentially suspicious death of one of the last bastions of liberalism in government into a political rally, or to turn that event into a cause for rejoicing?  Is it reasonable to make a link between the conservative religious convictions and the behavior of these children?  Is this the fault of "bad religion"?  I vehemently assert that it is.  This is the kind of compassion and love that Republican Christianity creates.  Let me qualify that remark by saying that there are certainly many Christians who would be horrified by the story.  Perhaps some of them even voted Republican.  However, nobody can deny, after listening to the hateful rhetoric of AM talk radio that vile partisanship and hatred are blended blithely with Christian ideology.  " You can't pray in school, but you can get a condom."  Then in the next breath, "We need to get rid of all these liberals!"  These are examples of bad religion in the mainstream of America.  It is why I rhetorically spit boldly in the face of right wing conservatives who wrap themselves in superficial trappings of Christianity.  

Darren's Religion and Ethics Links page