We're all monsters

In the nine years since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks we have waged two wars, seen the economy nearly collapse and watched as an overly vocal set of citizens claimed that American freedom is ending.

In any city in the United States, you can find cars adorned with bumper stickers proclaiming the vague platitude “Freedom isn’t free.”

Yet in the name of safety during the last nine years, we have seen freedom after freedom limited or restricted in the name of national security.

Yet current protesters are not protesting the over-reaching powers of the national security structure to put a GPS tracker on a citizen’s car that sits in their driveway without a warrant.

There are no marches in Washington to protest that the government may now be in possession of vans capable of mobile surveillance and scanning.

A Washington Post column that articulated how vast the United States classified security bureaucracy didn’t elicit a response from nearly anyone, yet an elected moderate Democratic president and health care reform are treated as the kindling of the communist fire that will destroy America.

The attackers of Sept. 11 sought to weaken the U.S. and to expose to American Muslims that they are not welcome here.

The response to the Park 51 community center, the proposed Ground Zero mosque, is outright bigotry — Muslims were in the World Trade Center when it was attacked.
And the attention-seeking would-be Quran burners have only given a spark to those who claim the U.S. will not welcome Muslims.

The United States has long proclaimed itself as a beacon of freedom and democracy, yet the bigotry and increasingly powerful police surveillance state it has created since the attacks have done more damage to the country and its ideals than any attack could ever hope to achieve.

Freedom is inherently dangerous.

You can have absolute security, and you can have freedom. But you cannot have both equally. The very basis of the U.S. was a diverse collection of people who sought freedom to live life as they chose in a dangerous new place and to take risks that come with freedom before the security of being a British colony.

On Sept. 11, 19 men tore a hole in the fabric of the heart of the U.S. that was not seen since the JFK assassination and the Vietnam War.

And in response, we have become a nation of cowardly chickenhawks running around with our heads cut off screaming about the end of the world.

We’ve become a collection of people so afraid of our own shadow that we would rather shoot anything that moves rather than make rational judgments.

And like the Bram Stoker monster, we have become so unable to look in the mirror and see our own reflection that we would rather destroy anyone who gets in our way rather than realize that without reflection we will become the monster in the eyes of the world.


E-mail: mrstraw@indiana.edu