Safe

It's an interesting word. And in this US election year of 2004 it is, for some odd reason, a major issue.

Why "odd"?

Consider this question: Is safety a measure of A) How likely it is that someone will be able to commit an act of mass terrorism on US soil? Or does it factor in B) How many people hate a given nation and would LIKE to commit such acts?

Or is safety something else entirely?

In 2001, what essentially happened to the United States was that history caught up with it. Please don't be angry with me for having said that. I'm not trying to suggest that the attacks of September 11th were somehow "deserved", or that all those three thousand poor victims had somehow "earned" their deaths in the World Trade Centre towers.

What I want to point out here is this: Most countries, including the other two North American nations have suffered some form of terrorism.

Mexico had (and still has) the Zapatistas. Like Hamas they're either a terror group or a political movement depending on who you ask, but the fact remains that people living in areas where they enjoy some level of support have had to deal with domestic violence and uncertainty as measures of political persuasion.

Canada experienced the FLQ crisis--which should not have become the monstrosity it did. On the other hand, the kidnap and murder of Pierre Laporte demanded SOME response from the Trudeau government. Certainly nothing on the scale of the World Trade Center attacks, but worrying nontheless--especially for Anglos living in Quebec; which I became, along with my parents, the following year.

What's interesting about the FLQ Crisis--or the October Crisis--was how far overboard the government seemed to go, curtailing civil liberties, detaining people with neither charges nor access to counsel, and imposing curfew on free cities. It seems only a shadow though, to impose martial law on one province, when compared to the international nature of the American reaction.

But both cases have something in common.

The attacks galvanized a formerly complacent populace into demanding "safety". Even though what they were demanding was impossible in a truly free society.

Consider Britain: For over 30 years the IRA made attacks on British targets. They had rules, of a sort, which they cast aside when they felt like it. They certainly practiced torture and murder as political strategies. But after thirty years it looks as though the IRA has mostly decided that it's better to address the inequity from within.

Over those thirty years, was it some sort of crackdown that brought the IRA to heel? Probably it was a combination of the RIGHT crackdown, combined with a genuine effort to address the root causes. The British could hardly invade Northern Ireland, and it was recognized that despite any help they might have been getting from the south, the IRA operated in the North, so invading Eire would have been worse than useless.

{Note that in the seventies several prominent New York Irish were heavily criticised for giving material support to an outlaw fighting force that among other things planted bombs here and here, and engineered the February 7th mortaring of 10 Downing St. Here's a terse, but statistically heavy summation.}

But in North America, particularly Canada and the US, we've been largely terror-free since the advent of newspapers (which is relevant--terror relies on widely-promulgated stories as example), assuming that we differentiate between terror as an undeclared attack on the general population, vice such conflicts as the Riel Rebellion, the Civil War, and the War of 1812 (which Canada won, dammit!). Oh, and let's not forget the Pig War.

But when you are a large and powerful nation--possibly the economic engine of the world in the past century, you are like a large and powerful man sharing a bed with several other men of varying sizes and potencies (if the image of men sharing a bed scares you, perhaps you could think of it as a prison population).

There's only so much space, and you occupy a lot of it. And each time you turn over in bed, other nations have to accomodate. Now no matter how nice and friendly the neighbours are, some portion of them is likely to resent you. This DOES NOT mean that you shouldn't move for fear of pissing someone off, but it IS a factor, and cannot be denied.

Among other nations, some of this friction bubbles forth as war--often confined to relatively small spaces: Consider Kashmir, or Cyprus. But who's going to take on the Big Man?

The US, by being the biggest on the block, and by being pretty isolated from areas where its decisions caused the most anger, remained mostly immune from attacks on its home turf (Although various subsets of national populations were, and still are trying, and have succeeded abroad).

Until 1995.

At that time, there wasn't a lot of soul-searching. Tim McVeigh was characterised as one of a few nut-jobs, home-grown malcontents who were looking for a symbol to hit at. The problem was actually a bit more pervasive, and partially cultural in nature. But this sort of person, operating from within a democracy in ways not sanctioned by the majority, CAN be written off as having a squeaky gear in his brainbox.

If this wasn't terrorism, what was? In other words, aspiring terrorists had to hit higher and harder, even to make an impression. Again--this doesn't make it "right", or "justified"--I'm trying to get to a point here, and it's a tough one.

It is simply this: "Safety" is a fiction. We're none of us "safe", never have been nor will be. In a free society, the bombers and the bastards are as free to move among us as we are to move about without being questioned.

So I put to you the question at the head of this blog:

A) Is safety a measure of how likely it is that someone will attack a nation's civillian populace?

B) Is it a measure of how many people want to do so?

or C) Is it the comfort of feeling that we can go about our daily business in peace and unmolested by someone who simply sees the world differently?

In the US, the fear accompanying "9/11" has led to a slow curtailing of liberties, offered a pretext for war in Iraq (I still support the invasion of Afghanistan), brought the US unsuitable bedfellows, and pissed off a hell of a lot of the population of the planet.

It seems to me that the Bush White house has answered "C" and to some measure "A" at the expense of "B" and of the freedoms for which America stands. Yeah, not everybody's going to like your country, or the set of ideas on which you operate. But it is possible to address the underlying causes of terrorism whilst firming your own borders. It is possible to guard against threat while carefully maintaining the sovereign freedoms of your citizenry. And it looks like the people of America are coming to their senses on this and asking the tough questions.

I could be wrong. I have the luxury of living in the shadow of the giant, which largely gave Canada a great deal of freedom of action during the Cold War. But our relatively puny size and starved Forces mean that our weapons have latterly been more diplomatic than military. So far, for whatever reason, we've been extremely fortunate.

The United States has been plunged into a debt hole at least $2 trillion dollars deep. What would have happened had the Bush government spent the same sum on addressing the political and economic causes of terrorism (as well as toughening up domestic security)?

I believe that Canada is likely, as a traditionally American ally and a liberal democracy, to endure at least one foreign terrorist attack. But I will go forth daily and live my life. I will ask that my government do what it can to prevent terror attacks but I will recognize that someone will eventually slip through the net. And if and when that attack arises, I hope that I will not be so fearful as to ask it to lock me into a cage.

Nor anyone else without a damn good reason.