All In One Boat

The brouhaha that erupted in mid-August over the deadly chemicals found in a UN office, purportedly left behind by a careless weapons inspector just back from Iraq several years earlier, was more fantasy than real. Cleaning solvent, it turns out.

This brings up the reports of terror arrests in Germany and Denmark in recent days and the nightmarish fears that are being stoked.

The NY Times report actually has a cautionary note embedded:

Although officials spoke with confidence of the attack’s imminence and seriousness, they did not make fully clear the basis of their assertions. Europe has been the site of a number of devastating terrorist plots, but some have turned out later to be less than met the eye when announced.

The cable newsies are up to their old tricks, showing the jump-suit clad, hand-cuffed man again and again until we imagine thousands have been involved…

It is vitally important that actual danger be distinguished from speculative danger. This is increasingly hard in a world in which so many livelihoods depend on fixating attention through fear — from CNN to duct tape vendors. Nevertheless, appropriate responses to the news of arrests should be a) glad they were caught — and isn’t this better than bombing Oberschledorn?; b) what are the details — the real details, not the farthest reaches of the imagination?

I always want to know — how is it, that 6 months of police work, which includes tracking and eavesdropping, and informants, has only pounced when the danger is imminent? I know you don’t go in at the first whisper of “bomb!” and that finding the network and the core of it is important … but “imminent?” Couldn’t you go in a little earlier? Or, describe the arrests in less fear-stoking terms?

It’s also important that our own skepticism about these reports not blind us to the fact that there are bad people out there who want to hurt others. The Madrid and London bombings, not to mention Pakistan, India, Bali, Indonesia are all the proof we need of that. Mere pooh-poohing of the reports, and treating them only as propaganda for the fear mongers, does nothing to establish credible, reality-based, analysis of what the situation is, and is likely to be.

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The killing of 33 at Virginia Tech shuts down the mind for a moment or two. No, they must have the numbers wrong. But it seems it is not wrong. 33 dead. Absorb this. A howl of anguish, long and uncontrolled spews up and out.

Two “hand guns” is what the preliminary reports say. More weapons will be found. It will be an act of a “deranged” man or an act of terror –but not both– depending on how the stereotypes fall.

Of course all we are allowed to say for a while is “tragedy,” “sorrowful,” “pray” and other such analgesics. Anything else would be to “politicize” it, according to those who are usually so anti political correctness. I wonder what the appropriate period is before we can start asking questions like how did the young man get the guns? Is there a problem with his having got them? Are there laws, nay basic understandings, that need to be changed?

How long is it polite to wait before pointing out that 33 deaths is an everyday occurrence in Iraq — the horror of which is different, somehow, to most. Perhaps it’s the distance. Perhaps it’s because those deaths (30 in Baghdad on Sunday) take place in a war, though that seems odd. The families of the dead will feel the grief, identically. Grief does not come in different packages for peaceful campuses and invaded countries.

The Senate put off it’s interview with AG Gonzales today. It seems as if, were horror at 33 deaths felt without bias, were our mirror neurons reflective enough, there might never be an interview. We would be in perpetual mourning. Though of course, if more of us us felt as intensely about those foreign kids as we do about the kids at home, the American involvement in the war would be over before the funerals could begin.

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