Mirror, Mirror on the wall
November 14A leader claims to possess a divine sense of moral clarity. He intends to rid the world of evil and bring an end to global conflict by spreading his society's inevitable and benevolent values to people in every country and on every continent. In order to accomplish worldwide salvation, the savior state uses tactics which tragically rot its very own values from the inside out and undermine its global claim to a monopoly on morality. This standard narrative of ideological fundamentalism is familiar because of its unfortunately frequent appearances over the past 100 years, in the form of totalitarian, communist and fascist states, and now in the transformational program of radical Islam. As much as defenders of current American foreign policy will decry the accusation as liberal demagoguery and sensationalism, it is unavoidable: over the past three years, the United States has started to become a pale version of that which it has historically claimed as its greatest enemy. American foreign policy consists of a fundamental and somewhat religious belief in the power of western liberal democracy to alter the nature of international politics and end historically ubiquitous interstate conflict. This alone, though, does not qualify the United States as a fundamentalist state. Sadly, in pursuit of the noble, if na??¶?, goal of a global utopia, American leaders have resorted to tactics of terror eerily similar to those employed by its avowed enemies. The willingness to torture prisoners is a characteristic of the type of ideologically fundamentalist regimes of terror to which the United States has historically portrayed itself in polar opposition. Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, reports of American abuse of detainees have been common. The Abu Ghraib incident is the most famous of these, but it is certainly not alone. Recently, it was reported that Iraqi major general Abed Hamed Mowhoush was suffocated to death in a sleeping bag during interrogation. The incident has been ruled a homicide by the U.S. Army. Although there is wide consensus among experts that torture is likely to yield unreliable intelligence, support for a policy of violent interrogation remains strong at the highest levels in Washington, particularly in the office of the vice president. Another characteristic of fundamentalist and tyrannical regimes is their willingness to dismantle civil rights and protections of individual freedom in the name of the utopian vision. The most obvious American example of this is the Patriot Act, but a more dangerous and sinister instance is the recent amendment to an appropriations bill proposed by Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. The amendment would strip detainees of their right to appeal their detention in U.S. federal court and suspend the writ of habeas corpus as it would apply to prisoners designated "terrorists." This fundamentally alters the nature of American jurisprudence. No longer would the government be obliged to prove that a suspected terrorist has committed a crime or even had any contact with terrorist groups. Taking away a detainee's recourse to the legal system is the first step in tearing down the protective wall between society and the state erected so carefully by the architects of the constitution. Finally, regimes which are divinely assured of their ideological and historical primacy tend to undervalue human life relative to the destructive creation of utopia. This leads to policies and tactics which are insensitive to unnecessarily large numbers of casualties. Recent evidence suggests that the United States has started down this road as well. Though the Pentagon officially denies the charges, a March 2005 issue of Field Artillery Magazine, published by the United States Army, acknowledges the use of white phosphorous during the November 2004 assault on Fallujah. The article reports that white phosphorous was used in "shake and bake" missions to "flush [insurgents] out." White phosphorous is a chemical weapon which burns its victims and melts human flesh. Of course, all hope is not lost. From the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II to the rants of Joseph McCarthy to the use of napalm during the Vietnam War, American leaders have historically flirted with illiberal and tyrannical policies and tactics during times of crisis. These mistakes were always acknowledged and amended later by more levelheaded leaders, and American society recovered more or less completely. But the pervasive and cohesive nature of the American version of the fundamentalist utopian myth, along with the defined endlessness of the war on terror make the threat to American values and institutions posed by the latest craze of illiberal policies and tactics particularly severe. Americans must hope and demand that Democrats and moderate Republicans realize the danger and work to halt the internal destruction of liberal, free society.
