Newtown, CT: The Culture of Terror and the Failure of the National Security Agenda*

Yet again. Yes, again. Another heinous massacre in Newtown, CT. When I read of the details on Friday, I didn’t plan to write about it. I didn’t want to write about it.  I wanted to lose myself in the heated discussions over the misleading and graphic depictions of torture in Kathryn Bigelow’s film Zero Dark Thirty, in the Twitter project of NYU student & artist Josh Begley, who is tweeting every drone strike between 2002-2-12, in the details of the pre-trial motion hearing of Pfc. Bradley Manning as reported by Nathan Fuller and Kevin Gosztola and others; in the discussions of the conflagration of the meaning of terrorism in NY courts.  I wanted to consider those “national security” issues that form the basis of my work.  But in fact, the horrific event that occurred in Newtown, CT is also a national security issue. It is the result of the failure of the National Security Agenda put in place in the US since 9/11.

There isn’t one dominant definition of national security, but it might be safe to suggest that in the U.S., national security relates to domestic and foreign policies created in the name of fighting the “War on Terror.”  The policies of National Security relate to waging wars on sovereign Middle Eastern nations on the pretense that they have hidden WMD’s, or that their women need saving from Afghan men, or that they have nuclear weapons technology that will be used against us if we don’t level sanctions. National security refers to the hunt for alleged terrorists through pre-emptive policing, warrantless and indefinite detention, torture, solitary confinement. National security refers to the solitary confinement, humiliation, and abuse of whistleblowers such as Bradley Manning for turning over evidence of ethical wrongdoing by the U.S. armed services to transparency organizations such as Wikileaks.

The media coverage of the Newtown murders and the memorial speech given by President Obama would lead us to believe that what happened on Friday in Connecticut is worlds away from national security issues, because effective national security lies in rooting out terrorists. And we know that terrorists operate in dark shadowy cells, in the basements of mosques—in Kandahar, in Sana’a, in Abbottobad, in Queens, Brooklyn, Paterson, NJ, Lodi, CA. Terrorists don’t walk up to schools in grassy, leafy, quiet New England towns, with semi-automatic rifles in their hands, and after killing their mothers, force their way in, and shoot twenty 6 year olds multiple times at close range. Terrorists don’t have Asperger’s. Well, maybe they do. But only if they’re Muslim.

The media reports and the corresponding images of the heinous massacre in Newtown, CT have done their utmost to distinguish the unique tragedy of this shooting, to humanize the beautiful young children whose families grieve for them so heavily. Everything we hear about Adam Lanza reinforces that this was a random tragedy, fueled by the easy accessibility to guns. It had nothing to do with the Culture of Terror. Nothing to do with National Security.

Doesn’t it? In fact, the latest shooting of schoolchildren is the latest evidence that the national security project of the U.S government has failed.  The shooting in Newtown, CT is but part and parcel of a culture of shooting children, shooting civilians, shooting innocent adults, that has been waged by the U.S. government since September 12, 2001.  It has been directed by two United States Presidential Administrations, and has intensified under the second President, a Democrat.

And let there be no mistake: many of “us” have directly felt the impact of that culture: Which “us”? Yemeni parents, Pakistani uncles and aunts, Afghan grandparents and cousins, Somali brothers and sisters, Filipino cousins have experienced the impact of the culture of killing children. Families of children who live in countries that are routinely droned by the U.S. Air Force. Families of children whose villages are raided nightly in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Culture of Terror has been waged insistently through Pres. Obama’s policy of drone strikes. Or by U.S. Cruise missiles, as the one that targeted a Yemeni wedding party in 2009, in which 20 adults and 21 children died.  The Culture of Terror is intensified when the journalist who reported that strike was jailed—at the command of POTUS—and remains in jail to this day.  The Culture of Terror was waged insistently on the day that the same President was re-elected–when another drone strike was launched in Yemen, and 3 more people died. The Culture of Terror was perpetuated when the US insisted on the right of Israel to “self-defense” in Gaza—in the face of the systematic, legal, theft of land and the disproportionate “targeted” killings of Palestinians by the Israeli government.

And in case, you have forgotten: here are the numbers for Israel’s “self-defense” in Palestine:

From January through September 2012, Israeli weaponry caused 55 Palestinian deaths and 257 injuries. Among these 312 casualties, 61, or roughly 20 percent, were children and 28 were female. 209 of these casualties came as a result of Israeli Air Force missiles, 69 from live ammunition fire, and 18 from tank shells.In 2011, the projectiles fired by the Israeli military into Gaza were responsible for the death of 108 Palestinians, of which 15 were women or children, and the injury of 468 Palestinians, of which 143 where women or children. The methods by which these causalities were inflicted by Israeli projectiles breaks down as follows: 57 percent, or 310, were caused by Israeli aircraft missile fire; 28 percent, or 150, where from Israeli live ammunition; 11 percent, or 59, were from Israeli tank shells; while another 3 percent, or 18, were from Israeli mortar fire.

The Culture of Terror has been consistently, repeatedly, enforced through the innumerable practices of rendering and torturing Muslim men and women alleged to be terrorists. Without ever providing evidence of their terrorist activities. The Culture of Terror is waged every minute that Bradley Manning is incarcerated in solitary confinement for having turned over documents that show the immoral, illegal, reprehensible practices of our U.S. Armed Services at the behest of the POTUS.

The Culture of Terror is reflected in the mass shootings in Oak Creek, WI, in Newtown, CT, in the 60 other places where mass shootings have occurred in the last 3 decades in the U.S. It is reflected in the deaths of countless children (2700 children in 2010) in the United States through needless and random gun violence—despite restrictions on guns. It is avoidable violence. The Culture of Terror is reflected in the “See Something, Say Something” posters, directed by the Department of Homeland Security, found all public transportation systems in the U.S. In the Pamela Gellar anti-Muslim posters posted all over NYC and Washington DC.  The Culture of Terror is reflected in the deportation of over 1.4 million migrants over the last four years. In the separation of 46,000 children from their parents (only in a 6 month period in 2011) . In the jailing of Dr. Shakir Hamoodi for sending money to his family in Iraq despite the needless sanctions imposed by the U.S.  In the refusal to allow a Muslim U.S. veteran fly home from Qatar to see his mother until the prolonged intervention of journalists and advocacy groups made it happen. In the fear that contributing to Bradley Manning’s or Julian Assange’s legal defense funds will render ordinary innocent citizens vulnerable to arrest and jailtime and similar privation of Constitutional rights. In the development of ever-longer kill lists and “disposition matrixes.”

In each and every one of those instances, the Culture of Terror is organized and directed by the U.S. government. And in each and every one of those instances, the Culture of Terror reflects a failure of the goal of National Security.  Because the goal of National Security cannot—can never succeed—if some among us must live in fear of being arrested, persecuted, imprisoned without charges, susceptible to being tortured or killed for being Muslim, Arab, hijabi, religious, the son of a suspected terrorist, a political dissenter, a whistleblower…

The project of National Security is the project of forcing us to live in fear of each other, of cutting social services to families whose members have severe neurological, psychological illnesses–in order to fund an increasing Culture of Terror. The National Security project is the project of allocating “2/3 of a trillion dollars” for 2013 alone: for the purpose of continued US military presence in other sovereign nations. The National Security project is to reward banks and financial institutions with even more money for their achievement of plundering the life-savings of thousands of ordinary citizens. For gratuituously rendering Americans homeless through subprime mortgage foreclosures.

What is the difference between the heinous tragedy that occurred last Friday in Newtown, CT and the instances that I mention above?  The key difference–Attorney General Eric Holder, POTUS Obama, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, Sec. of Defense Leon Panetta—will tell you, is that the poor children in Newtown, CT were the innocent defenseless victims of a lone gunman, whereas the U.S. is in the full-fledged battle of combatting terrorism—which makes the murder of innocent civilians, of innocent children an unfortunate collateral damage. They will tell you that the housing crisis was the unfortunate result of greedy bankers, but they tried to punish the bankers. They will tell you to “Look forward, not backward.”

But in fact these are not the primary differences. The primary difference is that the U.S. has legitimated the Culture of Terror—and the failure of National Security—by insisting that needless violence, the random deaths of thousands of children and adult women and men, the gratuitous incarceration and solitary confinement of thousands of young men without charges is a necessary approach to “solving” terror.

The second primary difference is the complete lack of accountability—demanded from or given by– the U.S. government, the U.S. Congress—on the issues of unjust wars and invasions, human rights violations, damaging racial profiling, illegal drone and missile strikes, and countless other damage to ordinary citizens in the US and around the world. The third primary difference is that the same Liberals who are shocked by the shooting at Newtown, CT, in fact have legitimated the Culture of Terror by endorsing, voting for, and re-electing POTUS and his murderous terrorist Administration–instead of demanding accountability.

And that same legitimation—and the absence of outrage at the murders of thousands of innocent civilians around the world—whose parents, families, grieve identically to the families of the youngsters and teachers who tragically, horrifically died in Newtown, CT—shows the massive failure of our National Security agenda and the “War on Terror” in the era since 9/11.

Yet again. Yes, again.

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*Revised.

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