Goodbye to a Year of Ironies
By William Fisher
From: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010607A.shtml
Saturday 06 January 2007
One needs a well-honed sense of irony to truly appreciate 2006. Some of these ironies were funny. Some were
embarrassing. A lot were downright tragic. Before we finally consign the old year to the historians, let us recount some
of them.
Arguably the most depressing irony of 2006 was that the country to which we claim to be bringing the rule of law turned
the execution of a true miscreant into a lynching. We didn't do it - that was the handiwork of Iraq's so-called unity
government. But we're getting blamed anyway. This piece of Kafkaesque theater is going to do wonders for our Public
Diplomacy programs! Karen Hughes, where are you when we need you?
But there was a lot more.
While we fretted about North Korea's A-bombs and Iran's nuclear ambitions, the Pentagon and the Energy Department chose
the first new nuclear-weapon design for development since the end of the Cold War. But not to worry - the new warhead
will be safer, cheaper, more secure, easier to manufacture, and never need explosive testing. This latest toy would be
the first step toward an entirely new US nuclear arsenal. But it's far from the first step in the perception that
America might just have a tad of a double-standard problem in the proliferation business.
Then, there was the irony of Iraqi refugees. Members of Muslim and Christian minorities, as well as doctors, university
professors, scientists, people who worked for the US authorities, and just average citizens, fled this "liberated"
country in the tens of thousands. But the Bush administration had planned to resettle just 500 of these refugees in the
US. As the year drew to a close, the New York Times reported that State Department officials were "open to admitting
larger numbers, but are limited by a cumbersome and poorly financed United Nations referral system." The Times cited
some critics of the Bush administration as claiming the US "has been reluctant to create a significant refugee program
because to do so would be tantamount to conceding failure in Iraq." Someone needs to remind President Bush of Colin
Powell's Pottery Barn analogy: "You break it, you own it." Equating refugees with "collateral damage" just doesn't cut
it.
Then there were the grotesquely mixed messages being sent to American citizens who happen to be Muslims. The Pentagon
and the armed forces, for example, started a big push to recruit more Muslims into the military because of the dearth of
Arabic-speakers who understand the culture of places like Iraq and Afghanistan. To win the "hearts and minds" of
American Muslims, West Point, the other service academies, and military installations opened Muslim prayer rooms,
appointed Imams to serve as chaplains, and got non-Muslim officers and Pentagon officials to celebrate religious events
with Muslims. The FBI, CIA, and DHS also continued their campaigns to recruit Arab-Americans as analysts and linguists -
and turned down most of the many applicants because they had families and friends in the Middle East. Surprise,
surprise!
At the same time, however, Muslims were being harassed, intimidated and attacked not only by wing-nut talk show hosts
and many of their fellow citizens, but by people who should know better - like Virginia congressman Virgil Goode. This
distinguished gent said Muslims were not welcome in the United States. He told us he believes Muslims "should not be
allowed to enter this country and should seek their political or economic aspirations in other countries." This redneck
no-nothing attacked a newly-elected member of Congress - Keith Ellis, the House's first Muslim - for using the Koran
instead of the Bible for his informal swearing-in. That Koran, by the way, belonged to Thomas Jefferson. Goode then
administered the coup de grace by tying American Muslims to the urgency of building a very tall fence to seal off our
borders and prevent a tsunami of illegal Muslim immigration.
The xenophobia didn't apply only to people like Goode. Our government, too, was more than complicit. "Terrorist" Maher
Arar, who was "rendered" from Kennedy Airport to ten months in a torture chamber in a Syrian jail, then acquitted after
a two-year Canadian investigation, remained on America's famous no-fly list, along with Senator Ted Kennedy, aging
grandmothers and numerous infants. He is barred from traveling in the US or even flying over US airspace - but the State
Department won't tell him why. Then, the Department of Homeland Security had to apologize to a Muslim traveler who was
unnecessarily strip-searched at the Pinellas County Jail and held in a maximum-security cell for two days, after being
detained at Tampa International Airport. And six Muslim-American Imams were removed from a US Airways flight in
handcuffs after a passenger complained to a flight attendant that they were acting "suspiciously." They had prayed in
the airline's waiting room before boarding their flight.
Another mixed message came from Christian military officers who continued their proselytizing at the Air Force Academy,
despite the findings of a special investigative panel that promised to clean up the Academy's act. Mikey Weinstein, an
Academy graduate, called for an investigation into several officers who appeared in a promotional video for a Christian
organization while in uniform. Weinstein said evangelistic efforts by Christian officers directed toward their
colleagues or subordinates amounted to "coercion" and "fanatical unconstitutional religious persecution."
But my favorite irony has to be the fence caper. It's about the Golden State Fence company, which helped build San
Diego's border wall in the 1990s. That fence served as a model for the recently legislated 700-mile border fence because
it successfully stopped immigrants from crossing at points along its 14-mile stretch. (However, the fence simply pushed
would-be immigrants to more dangerous terrain in Arizona.)
In 2006, company executives pleaded guilty to hiring illegal immigrants. The executives may serve jail time in addition
to paying nearly $5 million in fees. Their attorney told NPR that the case proves construction companies need guest
workers.
There were many more ironies in 2006, too numerous to recount here. But don't despair; we're likely to have an even
bigger crop at the end of 2007.
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William Fisher has managed economic development programs in the Middle East and in many other parts of the world for
the US State Department and USAID for the past thirty years. He began his work life as a journalist for newspapers and
for the Associated Press in Florida. Go to The World According to Bill Fisher for more.