George Orwell warned of Big Government surveillance and the erosion of personal freedoms. While full of stark imagery and vivid descriptors, somehow I think he missed the complexity of 'wars without borders.' Somehow I think Orwell missed the bottomless nature, of the swamp we now find ourselves mired in.
First there's the cautious rhetoric ...
"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."
"From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH."
Top 10 Most Depressing Quotes from Orwell's 1984
Then there's
the application the fear-rhetoric, with all abandonment of caution ...
Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.
-- George W Bush, Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People (September 20, 2001)
You are either with us or you are against us in the fight against terror.
-- George W Bush, Press conference, with President Jacques Chirac of France. (November 6, 2001)
In a time of testing, we cannot find security by abandoning our commitments and retreating within our borders. If we were to leave these vicious attackers alone, they would not leave us alone. They would simply move the battlefield to our own shores. There is no peace in retreat. And there is no honor in retreat.
-- George W Bush, State of the Union (January 31, 2006)
This terrorist surveillance program has helped prevent terrorist attacks. It remains essential to the security of America. If there are people inside our country who are talking with al Qaeda, we want to know about it -- because we will not sit back and wait to be hit again.
-- George W Bush, State of the Union (January 31, 2006)
Let no one say however, that we as a society, were not warned by the
sages of Literature ...
Big Brother is watching you.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
-- George Orwell, 1984
And currently however, there's the new realization that the fear-rhetoric has run its course, with new warnings that we as a nation, need to cautiously re-access our priorities and principles ... with regards to the age-old battle of "fear vs respect" ...
Tragically however, not enough people are listening ... as that "long arc of history" continues its sweep onwards ...
Text of President Obama’s May 23 speech on national security (full transcript)
washingtonpost.com, May 23, 2013
[... page 1]
Meanwhile, we strengthened our defenses, hardening targets, tightening transportation security, giving law enforcement new tools to prevent terror. Most of these changes were sound. Some caused inconvenience. But some, like expanded surveillance, raised difficult questions about the balance that we strike between our interests in security and our values of privacy. And in some cases, I believe we compromised our basic values [...]
Now make no mistake: Our nation is still threatened by terrorists. From Benghazi to Boston, we have been tragically reminded of that truth. But we recognize that the threat has shifted and evolved from the one that came to our shores on 9/11. With a decade of experience to draw from, this is the moment to ask ourselves hard questions about the nature of today’s threats and how we should confront them.
[...]
So America is at a crossroads. We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us. We have to be mindful of James Madison’s warning that no nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. Neither I nor any president can promise the total defeat of terror. We will never erase the evil that lies in the hearts of some human beings nor stamp out every danger to our open society. But what we can do, what we must do, is dismantle networks that pose a direct danger to us and make it less likely for new groups to gain a foothold, all the while maintaining the freedoms and ideals that we defend. And to define that strategy, we must make decisions based not on fear but on hard- earned wisdom. And that begins with understanding the current threat that we face.
[...
page 4]
Now, thwarting homegrown plots presents particular challenges in part because of our proud commitment to civil liberties for all who call America home. That’s why in the years to come, we will have to keep working hard to strike the appropriate balance between our need for security and preserving those freedoms that make us who we are. That means reviewing the authorities of law enforcement so we can intercept new types of communication, but also build in privacy protections to prevent abuse.
That means that even after Boston, we do not deport someone or throw somebody in prison in the absence of evidence. That means putting careful constraints on the tools the government uses to protect sensitive information, such as the state secrets doctrine. And that means finally having a strong privacy and civil liberties board to review those issues where our counterterrorism efforts and our values may come into tension.
Of course there are those who will
never let go of their perpetual blanket of fear. War-worry-rhetoric is their
raison d'être afterall ...
Obama under fire for declaring the war on terror 'over' in week of extremist attacks
AP, dailymail.co.uk 26 May 2013
Some call it wishful thinking, but President Barack Obama has all but declared an end to the global war on terror.
[...] Obama recasts the image of the terrorists themselves, from enemy warriors to cowardly thugs and resets the relationship between the U.S. and Islam.
[...]
'Wishing the defeat of terrorists does not make it so,' said Rep. Mac Thornberry, a Texas Republican who is vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and a member of the House Intelligence Committee.
[...]
'Too often, this president has sought to end combat operations through rhetoric rather than reality,' GOP Rep. Howard P. 'Buck' McKeon of California, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said Friday.
Krauthammer:
Declaring war on terror over is wishful thinking
by Charles Krauthammer, chron.com -- May 30, 2013
[...]
Obama says enough is enough. He doesn't want us on "a perpetual wartime footing." Well, the Cold War lasted 45 years. The war on terror, 12 so far. By Obama's calculus, we should have declared the Cold War over in 1958 and left Western Europe, our Pacific allies, the entire free world to fend for itself -- and consigned Eastern Europe to endless darkness.
If some of the slingers of 'our exceptional' history had their way, this 'war without borders' would never end:
until every criminal were jailed;
every dissenter were silenced;
every bad thought extinguished;
every J-walker, straightened.
Somehow I think Orwell missed the complexity of this problem called "human trust," and the forces it faces causing its constant erosion. It's a solution in a perpetual search for its natural advocacy.
But perhaps even more worrisome is, that those natural advocates too often prefer silence, over 'telling the plain human truth.'
Making such waves, just is not on the agenda.