Discourse

"This nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation." Controlling the terms of discourse controls the conversation. It takes control in advance of what will be said because it determines what can be said. Such control takes place in various ways under various names (ideology, hegemony, etc), and it takes its power from going unnoticed: it appears to be natural, the only way a topic can be discussed. Take, for example, our President's speech yesterday in Wisconsin (quoted above). He implies a rationale for anyone who wants to attack the US: they hate us only because we "love freedom" or, even more simply, because we are who we are ("our nation"). Strictly speaking, this is not a rationale because it denies any rational process/motivation. What it does is rule out any possibility that US economic and foreign policies play any role in motivating terrorism. If they hate us merely because we enjoy freedom, then there is no reason for us to examine our imbalanced policies towards the Palestinians, our support of dictators in oil-producing Arab states or the ways and degrees to which our government supports the global actions of primarily American multinational corporations. If our enemies are irrational or simply evil, then we are targeted arbitrarily (or because we are a beacon of goodness) and there is nothing we can do to prevent the spread of terrorism short of killing everyone who might want to hurt us. Now, I don't claim that terrorists have such universably defensible grievances with the US that we would be compelled to agree with them and their methods. I do think that in order to address a problem we have to understand it first, and labeling our enemies as evil and/or irrational does not begin to comprehend the problem. If US foreign policy contributes to terrorist recruitment-- and US foreign policy DOES contribute to terrorist recruitment-- then we need to carefully examine whether the offending parts of our policy are absolutely necessary or whether we can ammend our policies to minimize the violence we attract to ourselves. There are many possible reasons for denying the possibility of a logical connection between our global policies and our enemies' motivations for hating us-- emotional connections to September 11, economic interests, militaristic neocon ideology, political expediency, etc.-- but closing our eyes and ears to critical self-examination and blindly labelling terrorists as irrationally evil cannot help and often wrecks our efforts to protect ourselves and our national interest. We need to be engaged in a serious conversation about our nation's place and role in the world, but we cannot make progress on this front as long as we claim to be a target only because we "love freedom." We need to listen to both Sun-tzu and the oracle at Delphi: the first teaches "Know your enemy" and the second "Know thyself."