The FLDS, the War on Terror, and Wolverine: Why what is painfully obvious sometimes gets us into trouble.
I was talking to my brother the other day, as I do, and I was trying to get at what bothers me about the shenanigans in Texas. I think that the manner in which the FLDS church has established its beliefs and the manner in which they express them are manifestly evil. Forcing girls into unwanted marriage, driving away boys because they might win the hearts of the girls, and parceling out families and salvation as gifts to the sycophants all strike me as patriarchal behavior at its absolute worst. It is obviously wrong and that is, I believe, why Texas has so mishandled it.
To choose another random example, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are (or were) bad men. There is no question that this is the case. Osama bin Laden ordered the deaths of thousands of innocents. Saddam Hussein obviously did the same. These are both bad guys, “evil-doers” if you will.
It strikes me that in the rush to punish those villains, we became vigilantes or, at least, began extolling the virtues thereof. People of a certain bent are fond of saying that “since 9/11, everything has changed.” I am curious as to what this actually means. It seems to me that they are saying, “We cannot wait to be attacked. We must proactively seek out our enemies and get them first in order to prevent similar atrocities.” I am sympathetic to a proposed need to be more active in world events; however, I am skeptical of the utility of viewing world events solely through the lens of how it affects things at home. Perhaps that is neither here nor there, however.
In any case, 9/11 reared its ugly head and now we are all vigilantes. Osama is to be taken “dead or alive,” which is not our first national endorsement of assassination, but it was still shocking to me. Killing (not capturing, not surrounding) Saddam was so important that we dropped bombs on buildings based on day old intelligence that he had passed through, killing whoever happened to be around, hero or villain, when the rockets hit. Even Saddam’s trial, which appeared to be a kind of political farce, was abbreviated and then we were blessed with cell phone images of his final moments. I remember when the photo of the dead head of the head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, whose name escapes me at the moment, was flashed onscreen, a gruesome momento of the thoroughness of our retaliation. It is probably coincidental that we are fighting in the stomping grounds of Assurbanipal and Esarhaddon, but it does provide appropriate context. Our current message to the world is “Don’t mess wit us or we will cut you!”
In all this I wonder what happened to the rule of law? There is an argument to be made that security comes at the risk of individual liberty, but since when has it necessitated throwing out law altogether? Certainly, the current administrations in Texas and the White House have followed their own guidelines, but they have been remarkably reticent to explain what those guidelines are, how they were developed, or whether they can be considered legal in anything other than an extraordinary sense. They seem to say, “We are in the right. Therefore, what we do is in the right. End of inquiry”
I am not immune to this approach. Growing up, one of my favorite comic book characters was Wolverine. I personally identified more with Spiderman, but Wolverine was someone I admired. Both he and Batman had that hard-core vigilante aspect, but Wolverine frickin’ killed people. You could imagine Batman’s villains escaping to fight again or being deposited into Arkham Asylum. It was hard to imagine someone surviving having razor-sharp metal claws ripping through their torso. Sure, he was a troubled anti-hero with a heart of gold, but Wolverine didn’t put up with crap from anybody. As a child, he was appealing because he was powerful. His greatest flaw, going into berserk mode, was what made him most attractive to me. I wanted to be scary to my neighbors, to be intimidating to my friends. I see this in my son, who didn’t pretend to be good guys until he started going to church. Earlier, he much preferred Vader to Luke.
The problem being that Wolverine is a fictional person and, as a result, he actually does only kill bad guys (correct me if I am wrong, oh fanboys). Perhaps once or twice he has killed an innocent, but I am sure it was an accident of some sort (he isn’t really in control in berserk mode and so forth). Humans who operate in vigilante mode are far more suspectible to mistakes than comic book characters that have to remain marketable. The lynchers in the rural South knew that black men were lascivious, barely suppressed rapists. Germans knew that Jews were stealing from them. Non-Mormons knew that Mormons were going to take over Missouri and drive them all out. Every group felt itself justified and yet today we would argue they were all wrong.
I hope it is obvious that the case against Osama, Saddam, and Warren Jeffs is stronger than the case against the Blacks, Jews, and Mormons. The strength of the case is actually the heart of the problem. Because we are all so sure that we are doing the right thing, we seem to feel all the more justified in the exceptions we are now writing into the laws. The argument seems to be that torturing a terrorist is fundamentally different from torturing a Jew because a terrorist might actually deserve that treatment. But aren’t protections from cruel and unusual punishment there to protect us from our own worst impulses? Shouldn’t the fact that terrorists could theoretically deserve it make us more suspicious of our own motives and memos?
On the FLDS front, those people are monsters as far as the vast majority of the American public is concerned. They are a group of systematic pedophiles and rapists who perpetuate their system because it is the easiest way for them to get laid. That isn’t a comment on actual FLDS belief, but I believe it accurately frames the perception that most of America has regarding the FLDS. Therefore, there is no uproar in Texas or elsewhere regarding the actions of the state. The FLDS are in the wrong; therefore all actions against them must be right. If laws must be bent or broken to get the job done, it is a matter of sending in the people tough enough to do just that. After all, its for the children.
John, this is quite the interesting post.
My favorite part about wolverine growing up, was he was a former berzerker who had reformed and became better. One reason I quit reading comics is because they went back to bezerker mode when authors changed.
Anyway, as an anecdote on the FLDS situation, what I general hear from non-lds people is that the situation in Texas wouldn’t be happening if the government in Arizona had done things correctly the first time, FWIW.
It’s all sort of beyond my understanding.
Comment by Matt W. — May 8, 2008 @ 1:32 pm
Wow. My sentiments exactly. I find myself frequently reminding people in these conversations that any action we permit the government to take to support our views is an action against us later. Do people not see the correlation? It’s only good now because it’s something you agree with. What about when this kind of power affects your life and family directly? Would you be comforted by your persecutors feeling they were morally right?
Comment by sol — May 8, 2008 @ 1:33 pm
JC,
Classic stuff, brother. Here’s the awkward fact: the church has made no comment on Wolverine’s rampage, only to stress that the bad guys he is ripping up “ain’t us.”
Comment by Ronan — May 8, 2008 @ 1:38 pm
Awesomeness.
Comment by Steve Evans — May 8, 2008 @ 1:41 pm
p.s. you’re right re: Wolverine killing people, although he does tend to avoid it when possible. SNIKT!
Quoth the Wiki:
Comment by Steve Evans — May 8, 2008 @ 1:42 pm
Steve,
I had to prove that you were not the only person to find metaphor in comic books around here.
Comment by John C. — May 8, 2008 @ 1:48 pm
Yeah. I’ve been reading a book about the Nurenberg trials and have been struck by the contrast.
Comment by Norbert — May 8, 2008 @ 1:58 pm
John C, you’ve articulated what I have felt for a long time. As I have often thought, “What’s the point of being the good guys, when you act just like the bad guys?”
Our cynical times and easy access to media and information have promoted easy indignation, and sound-bite judgment. No wonder that Hollywood gives us Marvel Comics versions of the world as we wish it was.
We all are justifiably outraged by the actions of the FLDS, but as often is the case, our moral certainty can crowd out reason and our willingness to listen to calmer voices. I don’t condone them, but there is a sinister edge to how this whole thing played out with the Texas authorities. Likewise, our approach to an insecure world gets reduced to an easy maxim, “You’re either with us, or against us”.
Comment by Kevinf — May 8, 2008 @ 2:21 pm
Very well put. In the current politically climate of us vs. them, good vs. evil, right vs. wrong we make snap judgments about entire groups and rationalize our prejudice by the heinous acts of a few individuals. Terrorists and child molesters deserve to be punished, but in both the so called War on Terror and the FLDS situation, the State has used the crimes of a few to justify oppression of the group on the basis that these groups are “different” and therefore may be dangerous. As a “peculiar people” we should be concerned when the fears of the majority dictate the treatment of the minority.
Comment by SGoates — May 8, 2008 @ 2:51 pm
I fear I may be being read as simply disagreeing with the current authoritites in Washington and…um…Austin? I fear this is an issue that cuts across all political lines in the US. My brother argued that American culture lauds vigilanteeism, so why should I be surprised to see that played out in our foreign or social policy? I don’t really have an answer to that; I suspect that he may be right.
Comment by John C. — May 8, 2008 @ 3:45 pm
Consider this: the “we’s gonna gitcha first” US foreign policy under Bush has started civil wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Somalia, and now it looks like Lebanon. If one wishes to take a view that it was screwups and not deliberate in Afghanistan and Iraq, fine, but it has been quite deliberate in the others. Why? Because the moral certainty Bush and co feel has had the intoxicating effect of making them think that not only do they know better than the people in those countries half way around the world (this ain’t Missouri mobsters or southern lynchers in their own towns, this is Americans travelling halfway around the planet to blow their spirit brothers and sisters to smithereens), but that they have suddenly been granted a carte blanche authority over their lives and deaths. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I’m no lawyer, but it seems to me that the purpose of law is (or ought to be) the constraining and diffusion of that power among many so that abuse is minimized and cooperation required. Where massive power imbalances exist (as with minority groups at home or weak nations in the international arena), the law is often non-existent or ignored. And that is a problem that can give rise to anti-heroes: troubled and occasionally wrong, but somehow admired because they stand up to a broken system where power is the only law, and power is abused. Consider the Middle East, where Bush’s Hizbullah and Hamas “terrorists”, are very much considered the “Wolverines” of the people they represent.
Comment by Non-Arab Arab — May 8, 2008 @ 4:03 pm
Non-Arab Arab,
Your assertion that Bush started civil wars in Palestine and Somalia is difficult for me to understand, especially when the Somali civil war started in 1988.
Comment by Mark IV — May 8, 2008 @ 4:12 pm
John,
In order to make my previous comment relevant to the thread, I will observe that one usually cannot simply disagree with the Bush administration. Non-Arab Arab is a noble exception because he allows for simple screw-ups. But in your second paragraph, if you had substituted the names of Bush and Cheney for bin Laden and Saddam, nobody would have raised an eyebrow. The attribution of complete evil to one’s opponents is a damnable practice.
Comment by Mark IV — May 8, 2008 @ 4:17 pm
Agreed Mark.
Nonsequitor - My reason for Wolvie being my favourite was because he was Canadian. Hey who can forget Alpha Flight… way too cool, especially the original Guardian.
Comment by Jon W — May 8, 2008 @ 4:59 pm
“We cannot wait to be attacked. We must proactively seek out our enemies and get them first in order to prevent similar atrocities.”
Amen, John C. Well stated.
Comment by Eric Russell — May 8, 2008 @ 5:36 pm
I personally identified more with Spiderman…
Now picturing John C. in red and blue suit spinning webs and swinging building to building with T. and kids clinging to him in his hero status. Now laughing.
Comment by mmiles — May 8, 2008 @ 5:38 pm
Mark,
You confused. If I had insisted that Bush and Cheney were very bad men, then I think I would have ruffled a few feathers.
Eric,
If I have accurately stated the intention behind the “since 9/11″ trend, can you see why it worries me? If we go looking for enemies, aren’t we as likely to generate new ones as find the old ones?
Comment by John C. — May 8, 2008 @ 6:08 pm
erg. Mark, you confused “me”
Comment by John C. — May 8, 2008 @ 6:09 pm
mmiles,
Mrs. John C. has steadfastly refused to watch Spiderman in the name of maintain some level of high culture in our family life. She watches British comedies instead.
Comment by John C. — May 8, 2008 @ 6:10 pm
John C,
I don’t think I was reading this as being particularly a Bush administration or Texas problem, but an AMERICAN problem. It gets easy for us to think of us vs them, and equate that with right vs wrong. We went through a similar national trauma with the Vietnam war, and the perception both at home and abroad that first, we must be right and bring on the bombs, to the questions fostered by My Lai, and many other tragedies that marked that era.
We swing from one extreme to the other, it seems, and spend very little time in the middle.
Comment by Kevinf — May 8, 2008 @ 6:10 pm
Read a little book by Noemi Wolf called The End of America, where she compares the things that have happened to personal freedom and privacy since 9/11, to what happened during the early years of Hitler’s rise to power in pre-WWII Germany. It’s scary.
Comment by Earl — May 8, 2008 @ 6:38 pm
As an aside, I ran across this comic today and found it quite humorous in light of all this.
Comment by MattG — May 8, 2008 @ 6:44 pm
John, what confuses me about your post is your usage of the term ‘vigilante’. Killing a man who is responsible for the death of thousands isn’t against the law of war.
I’m having trouble differentiating between what you’re saying and plain old pacifism/isolationism.
On the other hand, I think I understand the spirit of what you’re trying to get at with phrases like “berserk mode” and “generating new enemies”, and I just want to point out the widely ignored fact that the US military agrees with you. In 2005, the Marines shifted strategy such that instead of measuring a squad’s success by the number of insurgents they killed, success was measured by the number of lunch appointments they got with the locals. The Army officially got on board with this strategy in 2007. And it’s working.
Comment by Eric Russell — May 8, 2008 @ 7:28 pm
…success was measured by the number of lunch appointments they got with the locals.
Next thing you know, they will be employing the “Commitment Pattern.”
Comment by J. Stapley — May 8, 2008 @ 7:56 pm
I’m not so sure, John. Try this:
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are bad men. There is no question that this is the case. They have caused the deaths of thousands of innocents. They are both bad guys, “evil-doers” if you will.
To my ears, that sound pretty much like the received wisdom today. Is there anything about that statement that would surprise you if you heard it on Meet The Press? I mean, comparing Bush to Hitler isn’t even inflammatory anymore.
Comment by Mark IV — May 8, 2008 @ 8:32 pm
Eric,
As I understand vigilanteeism, the idea is that one acts outside the law because the law prevents justice, fairness, or civil life. When people argue that following things like the Geneva Convention, which is as close to universally accepted international law as we have come, prevents us from adequately dealing with terrorists, that strikes me as vigilanteeism. I fail to see how that equates to isolationism, but I am ready to be enlightened.
Also, I am not entirely certain that turning our armed forces into Goodwill Ambassadors is a sufficient longterm solution because at some point we will ask them to shoot again.
Comment by John C. — May 8, 2008 @ 8:36 pm
Really, Mark? I said that I wouldn’t vote for anyone that he endorsed and I implied that he worshipped the devil, but I haven’t compared him to Hitler. That’s one step too far. I have never thought of him as complete evil. That’s just silly.
Comment by John C. — May 8, 2008 @ 8:37 pm
Stapley, they do! Building on shared interests, like soccer or whatnot, is fundamental.
Comment by Eric Russell — May 8, 2008 @ 8:52 pm
“children” and “terrorism” are the root passwords to the Constitution.
Comment by queuno — May 8, 2008 @ 8:52 pm
John, I’m not sure who’s arguing against the Geneva Conventions, but OK.
“Also, I am not entirely certain that turning our armed forces into Goodwill Ambassadors is a sufficient longterm solution because at some point we will ask them to shoot again.”
Um, we never asked them to stop shooting. I’m just pointing out that the focus has shifted to gaining back the moral high ground.
Comment by Eric Russell — May 8, 2008 @ 9:00 pm
John, I guess I’m not being clear. I don’t mean to say that you have said any of those things, of that you think Dubya is like unto Adolph.
However, plenty of people do think exactly that. My next door neighbor, who gives every appearance of being sane, thinks that Bush has ordered the killing of tens of thousands of innocent people in order to shore up his portfolio of oil stocks. So I agree with you, it is silly, but that doesn’t stop lots of our fellow citizens from thinking and saying it.
Which is also a long way of saying that I also agree with your larger point. Once we convince ourselves that somebody is bad, we pull out all the stops.
Comment by Mark IV — May 8, 2008 @ 9:07 pm
I haven’t plowed through all of the comments yet, but your last sentence is one of my biggest problems with the way this was handled - and I agree 100% with your central theme.
Comment by Ray — May 8, 2008 @ 9:14 pm
“What’s the point of being the good guys, when you act just like the bad guys?”
kevinf, I’ll echo you and add a “by their fruits” commentary.
Comment by Ray — May 8, 2008 @ 9:18 pm
Eric,
I would enter into the debate regarding Rummy and crew’s assault on the Geneva Conventions but we are both tired of that without even starting I am sure. I won’t bring it up further if you won’t.
Mark,
I see now. I have never seen the point of getting so worked up over politicians, who will always always let you down. The hate for Bush is, to me, equally as virulent at the 90’s Clinton hate and it is also equally silly. I knew a woman in pre-9/11 America who consistently acted as if Bush had kicked her mother. It struck me then and now as wierd.
Comment by John C. — May 8, 2008 @ 9:58 pm
Mark IV, regarding Somalia: relative calm was being restored to Somalia by the Islamic Courts Union when the US started arming local warlords again and then goaded Ethiopia into invading. See an old post of mine here:
http://nonarab-arab.blogspot.com/2006/12/sowing-somali-seeds-of-bitterness.html
Now if you follow the headlines out of Somalia, things are pretty much unravelling as I expected in that post. The Bush administration also prompted Dahlan’s attempted coup in Gaza and now Hariri and Jumblat’s instigation of battle with Hizbullah and Amal in Lebanon.
Comment by Non-Arab Arab — May 9, 2008 @ 4:31 am
Non-Arab Arab,
Thank you for the response, and I do appreciate the way you have outlined your position. Based on the post on your site and on other articles I can find, it appears that the arming of the Ethiopians in an attempt to destabilize Somalia is as much a U.N. operation as a U.S. one. See here, for instance.
Is that correct, or am I mistaken?
Comment by Mark IV — May 9, 2008 @ 8:55 am
#23: “Let’s do lunch?”.”The Marines shifted strategy “.
Never!! Don’t fall for that. The “primary directive” (see Star Trek) for the Marines is to kill their people and break their stuff”.
If you let your Nation build a powerful military, soon or later..they will use it.
Comment by Bob — May 9, 2008 @ 10:02 am
NAA,
I am very, very uncertain that allowing the Islamic Courts Council to remain in power is good for the Somalis. But it may not be my business in any case.
Comment by John C. — May 9, 2008 @ 10:58 am
I wouldn’t be too hard on Wolverine. Being in that kind of position is really tough. Consider the life of the Scarlet Witch. The below is taken from as offical a biography that we have of her. How could anyone be expected to keep it together with these kind of things going on in one’s life?:
When the Scarlet Witch and the Vision (her android lover) chose to return to active duty as members of the West Coast Avengers, a multi-government force called Vigilance, concerned the Vision would again attempt a world takeover, captured and dismantled him; although he was soon rebuilt, his personality was severely altered, greatly distressing the Scarlet Witch. It was later revealed it was Immortus who orchestrated the Vision’s dismantling. Her distress was magnified when her sons were reverted into fragments of the demon lord Mephisto’s soul and effectively ceased to exist. The Witch suffered a nervous breakdown, which left her open to manipulation by her father, Magneto, who still sought to take control of the world in the name of mutantkind. She was subsequently abducted by Immortus, but was rescued by the Avengers and regained her sanity. Wanda had also reanimated her deceased mentor, Agatha Harkness, through whom she cast a spell to make her forget her children in order to ease her pain. Though Wanda later recalled her loss, she suppressed this memory over the long term.
I don’t know about you, but this makes me want to count my blessings. My older kids may not want to see me more than twice a year, but at least they haven’t been reverted into fragments of the demon lord’s soul and effectively ceased to exist! Well, I mean, you know, give them time and all - but at least it hasn’t happened yet!
~
Comment by Thomas Parkin — May 9, 2008 @ 2:12 pm
#39:”. My older kids may not want to see me more than twice a year…” I read where a guy left all his money to his two sons in an ATM, no more than $200 per day. The pass word: Welovedudad.
Comment by Bob — May 9, 2008 @ 3:56 pm
Thomas, the Scarlet Witch is nothing but trouble! She is single-handedly responsible for the wiping out of millions of mutants’ abilities. House of M is all her fault! She had it coming.
Comment by Steve Evans — May 9, 2008 @ 4:05 pm
Steve,
She may be trouble. It sounds like you’re blaming the victim, though. Would you be saying the same thing (she had it coming)if, say, Cpt America had gone through the same things? I may have to report you to fmh.
When I was 12, I thought she was smokin hot.
(I’m not a geek - I’m geek-compatable)
~
Comment by Thomas Parkin — May 9, 2008 @ 4:45 pm