The "traitor" fires back

[Steve Schear]

{ Another example how dissent is being labeled as "unpatriotic". Its very 
scary as it seems that most people, particularly in government and the 
media have forgotten that freedom of speech, different views and opinions 
are supposed to be the foundation of democracy }

<http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2001/10/16/susans/index.html>

The "traitor" fires back Denounced as a fifth columnist by the right,
Susan Sontag blasts America's cowlike media and scaremongering leaders
-- and says she fears that another terror attack could turn the
U.S. into a police state.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By David Talbot
Oct. 16, 2001 | Writer Susan Sontag has produced many texts during her
four-decade career, including historical novels and reflections on
cancer, photography and the war in Bosnia. But it was a brief essay,
less than 1,000 words long, in the Sept. 24 issue of the New Yorker
that created the biggest uproar of her life. In the piece, which she
wrote shortly after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, Sontag dissected
the political and media blather that poured out of the television in
the hours after the explosions of violence. After subjecting herself
to what she calls "an overdose of CNN," Sontag reacted with a coldly
furious burst of analysis, savaging political leaders and media
mandarins for trying to convince the country that everything was OK,
that our attackers were simply cowards, and that our childlike view of
the world need not be disturbed.

As if to prove her point, a furious chorus of sharp-tongued pundits
immediately descended on Sontag, outraged that she had broken from the
ranks of the soothingly platitudinous. She was called an
"America-hater," a "moral idiot," a "traitor" who deserved to be
driven into "the wilderness," never more to be heard. The bellicose
right predictably tried to lump her in with the usual left-wing peace
crusaders, whose programmed pacifism has sidelined them during the
current political debates. But this tarbrush doesn't stick. As a
thinker, Sontag is rigorously, sometimes abrasively, independent. She
has offended the left as often as the right (political terms, she
points out, that have become increasingly useless), alienating some
ideologues when she attacked communism as "fascism with a human face"
during the uprising of the Polish shipyard workers in the 1980s and
again during the U.S. bombing campaign against the Serbian
dictatorship, which she strongly supported.

Sontag, 68, remains characteristically unrepentant in the face of the
recent attacks. On Monday, she talked with Salon by phone from her
home in Manhattan, reflecting on the controversy, the Bush war effort
and the media's surrender to what she views as a national conformity
campaign.

<snip>

What do you think of the Bush administration's efforts to control the
media, in particular its requests that the TV networks not show bin
Laden and al-Qaida's video statements?

Excuse me, but does anyone over the age of 6 really think that the way
Osama bin Laden has to communicate with his agents abroad is by posing
in that Flintstone set of his and pulling on his left earlobe instead
of his right to send secret signals? Now, I don't believe that
Condoleezza Rice and the rest of the administration really think
that. At least I hope to hell they don't. I assume they have another
reason for trying to stop the TV networks from showing bin Laden's
videotapes, which is they just don't want people to see his message,
whatever it is. They think, Why should we give him free publicity?
Something very primitive like that. Which is ridiculous, because of
course anyone online can see these tapes for themselves. Although I
see the BBC, our British cousins who are of course ever servile, are
discussing whether to broadcast the tapes. We can always count on the
Brits to fall in line.

Why has the media been so willing to go along with the White House's
censorship efforts?

Well, when people like me are being lambasted and excoriated for
saying very mild things, no wonder the media is cowed. Here's
something no one has commented on that I continue to puzzle over: Who
decided that no gruesome pictures of the World Trade Center site were
to be published anywhere? Now I don't think there was single directive
coming from anywhere. But I think there was an extraordinary
consensus, a kind of self-censorship by media executives who concluded
these images would be too demoralizing for the country. I think it's
rather interesting that could happen. There apparently has been only
one exception: one day the New York Daily News showed a severed
hand. But the photo appeared in only one edition and it was
immediately pulled. I think that degree of unanimity within the media
is pretty extraordinary.

<snip>

What is your position on the war against terrorism? How should the
U.S. fight back?

My position is that I don't like throwing biscuits and peanut butter
and jam and napkins, little snack packages produced in a small city in
Texas, to Afghani citizens, so we can say, "Look, we're doing
something humanitarian." These wretched packages of food that are
grotesquely inadequate -- there's apparently enough food for a half
day's rations. And then the people run out to get them, into these
minefields. Afghanistan has more land mines per capita than any
country in the world. I don't like the way that humanitarianism is
once again being used in this unholy way as a pretext for war.

As woman, of course, I've always been appalled by the Taliban regime
and would dearly like to see them toppled. I was a public critic of
the regime long before the war started. But I've been told that the
Northern Alliance is absolutely no better when it comes to the issue
of women. The crimes against women in Afghanistan are just
unthinkable; there's never been anything like it in the history of the
world. So of course I would love to see that government overthrown and
something less appalling put in its place.

Do I think bombing is the way to do it? Of course I don't. It's not
for me to speculate on this, but there are all sorts of realpolitik
outcomes that one can imagine. Afghanistan in the end could become a
sort of dependency of Pakistan, which of course wouldn't please India
and China. They'd probably like a little country to annex
themselves. So how in the world you're going to dethrone the Taliban
without causing further trouble in that part of the world is a very
complicated question. And I'm sure bright and hard-nosed people in
Washington are genuinely puzzled about how to do it.
Do you really think it could be done without bombing?
Absolutely. But it's a complicated and long process -- and the United
States is not very experienced in these matters. The point is, as I
said in my New Yorker piece, there's a great disconnect between
reality and what people in government and the media are saying of the
reality. I have no doubt that there are real debates among military
and political leaders going on both here and elsewhere. But what is
being peddled to the public is a fairy tale. And the atmosphere of
intimidation is quite extraordinary.

And I think our protectors have been incredibly inept. In any other
country the top officials of the FBI would have resigned or been fired
by now. I mean, [key hijacking suspect] Mohammad Atta was on the FBI
surveillance list, but this was never communicated to the airlines.
The authorities are now responding to the anthrax scare -- to what I
think are 99 percent certain to be just domestic copycat crazies on
their own war path -- by spreading more fear. We have Vice President
Cheney saying, "Well, these people could be part of the same terrorist
network that produced Sept. 11." Well, excuse me, but we have no
reason to think that.

<snip>

We also seem to be getting contradictory messages about Muslims in the
U.S. We're told that not all Islamic people are our enemy, but at the
same time there's a fairly wide dragnet, which some civil liberties
defenders have criticized as indiscriminate, aimed at rounding up
Islamic suspects.

Well, people are very scared and Americans are not used to being
scared. There's an American exceptionalism; we're supposed to be
exempt from the calamities and terrors and anxieties that beset other
countries. But now people here are scared and it's interesting how
fast they are moving in another direction. The feeling is, and I've
heard this from people, about Islamic taxi drivers and shopkeepers and
other people -- we really ought to deport all the Muslims. Sure
they're not all terrorists and some of it will be unfair, but after
all we have to protect ourselves. Racial and ethnic profiling is now
seen as common sense itself. I mean how could you not want that if
you're going to take an airplane and you don't want a fellow in a
turban and a beard to sit next to you?

What I live in fear of is there will be another terror attack -- not a
sick joke like the powder in the envelope, but something real that
takes more lives, that has the stamp of something more professional
and thought out. It could be another symbolically targeted building --
maybe not in New York this time, but in Chicago or some other
heartland city that scares the rest of the country. And then you could
get something like martial law here. Many Americans, who as I say are
so used to not being afraid, would willingly accede to great
abridgements of freedom. Because they're afraid.

You called the president "robotic" in your New Yorker essay. But the
New York Times, among other media observers, has editorialized that
Bush has shown a new "gravitas" since Sept. 11. Do you think the
president has grown more commanding since the terror attacks?

I saw that in the Times -- I love that, gravitas. Has Bush grown into
his role of president? No, I think he's acquired legitimacy since
Sept. 11, that's all -- I don't call that "growing" at all. I think
what we obviously have in Washington is some kind of regency, run
presumably by Cheney and Rumsfeld and maybe Powell, although Powell is
much more of an organization man than a real leader. It's all very
veiled. And Cheney has not been much seen lately -- is this because he
is ill? It's all very mysterious. I hate to see everything become so
opaque.