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a Capable Commander-in-Chief? |
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By Bob Minor Minor Details: Courtesy of Liberty Press, the LGBT magazine of Kansas The Manly Response is War September 11, 2001. An unspeakably horrific, devastating, sorrow-filled, emotionally draining day. We saw thousands of Americans die, buildings crumble, and our own planes under the control of men who wanted to inflict unforgettable damage, take many lives, and make their statement at all costs. There can be no excuse for such hellish terrorism. The President of the United States issued a brief statement and remained in silence and seclusion for most of the day. Others criticized him for this, but I was thankful. A man I did not trust was better silent. The prospect that he would eventually open his mouth with a response only added more fear to my day.
Bush speaks with New York Governor George Pataki and New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani on Wednesday
When he spoke, it was what I feared. And national leaders from both political parties climbed all over themselves to line up behind him. Congress would unanimously give him a blank check to take all necessary force in response. "This is not terrorism; this is war." We were now going to "rid the world of evil," he told us. The rhetoric that our country uses to describe its approach to everything soon began to define our approach to the actions of 19 terrorists and their supporters. Our politicians continued "war" talk even before we knew who the "enemy" was. We just had to do something to someone for this.
I listened to talk shows where many callers urged caution, spoke of fear of the escalation that results from "retaliation," of the need for understanding, and even their disappointment in the rhetoric of our leaders. Yet the media ground on with "War" language. NBC, owned by General Electric, which has a large stake in producing military equipment, and CBS, owned by Westinghouse, another military supplier, joined the politicians. What was needed, they all knew, was what we had done before: to sell the American people on the idea that this is a "War." Repeat it long enough and it will be our vocabulary. We were all supposed to change our black mourning clothes to red, white, and blue, as if such "patriotism" would help us process the loss of human beings. We were to see this as an "Attack on America" itself and were told that the reason for this attack was that "these people hate freedom and liberty." Nothing was said about how we've trained most terrorist leaders or of the decades of self-serving, often anti-democratic, U.S. foreign policy that people around the world were supposed to stomach, and which had recently become more blatant with our pulling out of world conferences and established treaties and protocols. Of course we never pulled out of conferences we dominated that involved American investments and trade. We are a country that was born in war. We were the people the British called "terrorists," killing the British while hiding behind rocks and trees. And we've been calling our efforts "war" ever since, as if we can't fathom any other approach to life. Think beyond the Viet Nam War to the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war on crime, the war on AIDS. It's not that we've "won" a lot of these either. And the "wars" we have won have only produced temporary "victories." It sounds quite naive today to think that World War I was called "the war to end all wars." We humiliated Germany in the "victory" of that first world war and, of course, they've never bothered us since. But "war" is our model. It's one of the conditioned responses of "real men" in the U.S. Real men don't sit and talk. They don't take their time to consider history, to listen carefully to the opinions of others, and to see what part they may have played in all this. Real men strike back, unquestionably, decisively, quickly. Real men get angry. Real men see this as attacks on our honor and virility, our manhood. And they see that the retaliation must be even greater to "teach them a lesson" and restore our "pride," that is, our manhood. As one man said, "We need to throw everything we've got at them." I am reminded of Malcolm X saying "Anger clouds intelligence." Or of Mahatma Gandhi's: "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and the whole world is blind and toothless." Or of John Stoltenberg's "You can't love manhood and justice." We've tried war for generations and now have begun what may become the second-bloodiest century in history, the last being the bloodiest so far. And we can't seem to give it up because, I believe, it is a part of conditioned, straight, manhood. It's installed in our men through fear and terror - fear of not being manly enough and being accused of being too soft, to effeminate, to queer. If this kind of manhood is in charge, then it defines our leadership and approach.
To go against it all is to be thought of as "un-American," as "not being a patriot." But that's what anyone is called who refuses to follow the dominant crowd. Feminists, anti-war protesters, suffragettes, civil rights activists, unionists, and gay liberation leaders, have all been put down as "un-American." To say there is a way of greater, real, permanent healing, a way that does not interpret the actions of others as threats to our manly being, a way that will not feed the war machine and "the military-industrial complex" that President Eisenhower warned us against, may be called "un-American." But someone has to break the cycle of escalation and violence. Imagine what could be achieved if the world's most powerful nation had the vision to lead us out of the cycles of violence instead of participating in them. But I think the most powerful nation is just too scared. Robert N. Minor is author of Scared Straight: Why It's So Hard to Accept Gay People and Why It's So Hard to Be Human and Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas. He may be reached at www.fairnessproject.org. |
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