Tom Watson

Homeland Insecurity

Of the many wrong turns this country has taken since the suicide attacks of 2001,  the use of a single word may seem small change to quibble over. Yet a decade on, and deep into a Democratic administration that has continued a global "war on terror" and the erosion of civil liberties, one word still stings and sticks like a cracked fingernail.

The word is "homeland."

I've never thought of my native country as a homeland. We are far from the homogenous society such a word connotes; indeed, homogeneity is deeply anti-American because the United States has always been a destination. Diversity is the national currency, though many don't either realize it or admit it. At our best, we are mobile and lithe - open to ideas and culture and language and change. "Homeland security" is - to my ear - something of an explicit abandonment of the outward-facing view, of an open-sourced, open-handed America. In 20th century terms, it smacks of Lindbergh and Father Coughlin and darker European movements tied to land and blood. In 21st century terms, it reeks of fear, of a national nesting instinct that stands in opposition to confidence in our system of justice. Using "homeland" for a Federal security agency was the involuntary muscle spasm that signals a deeper sickness within.

For years, I hated the word on the lips of the Bush Administration officials who instituted its use. But it sounds just as strange from the mouths of Democrats; witness Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who was attacking radical libertarian Republican Rand Paul to holding up the vote extending the Patriot Act (via Glenn Greenwald):

"If the senator from Kentucky refuses to relent," Reid said earlier Wednesday, "that would increase the risk of a retaliatory terrorist strike against the homeland and hamper our ability to deal a truly fatal blow to al-Qaida."

As Greenwald has pointed out repeatedly, this was simple fear-mongering under Republicans, and it's fear-mongering under Democrats. And "homeland" is just the right word for jacking up security spending - it's le mot juste for the vast anti-terrorism system that has grown up in the last ten years.

Terrorism succeeds only by inducing an instinctive reflex of fear. "Homeland" falsely suggests that a  brutal but relatively small band of Islamic desperadoes constitute an existential threat to the republic. It goes the bland but accurate "National" several editorializing steps further. And it supports more full body scans, more extraordinary rendition, more wiretaps, more extra-judicial anti-terrorism activities against American citizens.

As President Obama begins to campaign for the second term he clearly deserves, my hope is that he'll hew more to the themes and promises of his first campaign - and begin to move away from the fear-driven policy of the last decade. President of the Homeland is a title he (and we) should explicitly reject. As Kevin Gosztola argued back in 2009:

If Obama really thinks “we cannot keep the country safe unless we enlist the power of our most fundamental values,” we the people will have to lead the way in enlisting these values.

About Last Night

We were watching The Killing, AMC's taut Seattle murder procedural drama, when we noticed the tweets about an unscheduled Sunday night statement from President Obama. National security, it seemed. No immediate leaks to the dozens of reporters and bloggers speculating on what the news might mean. So we flipped on the Mets game, which was knotted at one in Philadelphia. But my mind was already turning back to the smoke and those people covered with ash walking just below on the Manhattan streets. Sometimes the nervous system knows before the intellect.

Then Twitter spoke up. The lid was lifted. Bin Laden was indeed dead and gone, killed in a raid by American special forces. For some reason, I thought of the fighter jets and their contrails over New York in that impossibly blue sky. Those pilots may all be retired from the military for all I know. I'm a lot older, that's for certain. There has been loss. And I'm aware, day by the day, that much of this society has lost its way because of Osama bin Laden's spectacular plot to attack the United States.

My kids were in grade school single digits; one was still a toddler on that day when they waited for me to come home. Last night, they remembered the announcements at school and how they learned about the attacks. Last week, I was telling an audience of corporate grantmakers that much of the skepticism of America's youngest generation was forged in the heat of 9/11 and in the wars that followed. So it was not surprising to see the young crowds outside the White House or down at what used to be Ground Zero - this is a major event for that generation.

Like many, I've tired of the 9/11 spectacle and those who used it, and leverage its ghostly specters still. I dislike how our country has changed and what it means to some of our essential freedoms. But Goddamn it I was glad they killed that murdering bastard. Last night, I went to bed thankful for the President's word. Mainly for New York. Mainly for my home.

UPDATE: Other blogger pals o' mine weigh in, and I'm being selective toward the long-timers because of my (possibly missplaced) belief that so much of the early blogging came from the very public nature of 9/11 and our need to talk about it.

Jim Wolcott: "It's taken so long for his death to come (although it's been rumored for years, that he was being used as a useful ghost to keep the specter of terrorism alive) that I didn't think I'd be tearful when word finally came, that his death would be a long overdue postscript to a terrible decade, but I was wrong. I was telling someone this weekend that those who moved to NY in 2004 or 2005 have no idea of what it was like in the first few years after 9/11, the shadow it cast in the back of everyone's mind; like the shadow thrown by John Lennon's murder, but more cataclysmic in its scale of shock and sorrow."

Lance Mannion: "In the grand scheme of things, Bin Laden is more responsible than George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Barack Obama for the wars and the deaths.  He was proud of this.  He wanted it.  It’s what he planned for.  He wanted the bodies piled up in the streets.  Not just American bodies.  It’s even a question as to how much he really cared about killing Americans.  We were a means to an end.  He wanted Muslim bodies in the streets all over the Mideast.  He wanted to see his world burn. If ours went up in flames along with it, all the better."

M.A. Peel: "I am a fan of Daily News headlines. They out-Posted the Post, which had the more milktoast “Got Him!” This is not a serious theological dictate. No, this is old school, salt-of-the-earth New Yorker attitude. (Like when Bogart’s Rick tells the Nazi Strasser “Well there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade.”)