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openspace4lifeOn a Facebook page containing numerous discussion threads tangentially related to Barack Obama’s campaign for president, I came across this meme, which I’m sure I’ve seen elsewhere:
Iraq exemplifies both issues: President Bush ordered the military to go depose Saddam Hussein based on the false claim that Hussein posed some kind of imminent threat to America. While Hussein certainly qualified as a big bad wolf, he was one of many wolves that America, with its limited supply of sheepdogs, didn’t need to tangle with. And once we were established in Iraq and the enemy became the insurgency, soldiers were faced with the thorny problem of telling insurgents from ordinary Iraqis. Meanwhile, Bush Administration officials set guidelines permitting the torture of suspected wolves. This accomplished basically nothing other than to allow the interrogators (many of them civilian contractors) to let out repressed anger at the futility of the war, often at the expense of innocent people. And finally, to justify opposition to the withdrawal of our troops, some right-wing pundits are claiming that the wolves in Iraq will somehow "follow us home" rather than staying where they are, embroiled in their civil war, as seems far more likely.
Meanwhile, on the home front, the sheepdogs have been ordered to spy on the sheep, looking for wolves in our midst. Has this made us safer? Darned if I know, and of course the government couldn’t make a convincing case for it without revealing what they know about the terrorists’ plans. But my guess would be that any terrorists worth worrying about are smart enough not to openly discuss their plans over the phone. Then of course there's the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which allows sheepdogs to throw suspected wolves in jail without showing cause and try them using secret evidence or evidence obtained through torture. Astoundingly, two upstart appeals court judges recently ruled that this is actually constitutional, though a lawyer quoted in the linked article is confident that “this will be the third time the DC Circuit’s Guantanamo rulings are reversed by the Supreme Court.”
Is there discrimination against soldiers, police, and gun-toting civilians? Certainly, and sometimes it’s just as mindless as the meme describes. Sometimes, too, it’s merely a reaction to some soldiers’ attitude of superiority toward those who didn’t volunteer to put their lives on the line for their country. But what the meme gets wrong is that many so-called “sheep,” myself included, are perfectly willing to tolerate gun nuts who don’t shoot innocent people, and to support the police and the military when they are doing their job, defending us from the wolves, as long as they do their level best not to kill a suspected wolf who turns out to be innocent. More generally, we demand that the sheepdogs don’t violate our rights in any but the most extreme circumstances. If that isn’t a reasonable expectation, then we may as well give up our belief in the viability of freedom and democracy, and allow our leaders to turn our sheepdogs into another kind of wolf, the enforcers of a fascist regime.
"There are three kinds of people in the world: sheep, sheepdogs, and wolves. Wolves are bad people who want to kill sheep. All civilians who don’t carry weapons are sheep. Sheepdogs (soldiers, police, and civilians with guns) are needed to protect the sheep. There’s nothing wrong with being a sheep, except that being unable to defend themselves, sheep are in denial about the existence of wolves. Consequently, they tend to hate the sheepdogs because the sheepdogs remind them that wolves are out there and could strike at any time."Before going into what this simplified picture of the world gets wrong, let’s cover the two big problems it leaves out. One is the question of who’s in charge of the sheepdogs and what he/she tells them to do. The other is the issue of how to tell which of the people are wolves, and which of those wolves actually pose a threat that we, as a country, need to deal with.
Iraq exemplifies both issues: President Bush ordered the military to go depose Saddam Hussein based on the false claim that Hussein posed some kind of imminent threat to America. While Hussein certainly qualified as a big bad wolf, he was one of many wolves that America, with its limited supply of sheepdogs, didn’t need to tangle with. And once we were established in Iraq and the enemy became the insurgency, soldiers were faced with the thorny problem of telling insurgents from ordinary Iraqis. Meanwhile, Bush Administration officials set guidelines permitting the torture of suspected wolves. This accomplished basically nothing other than to allow the interrogators (many of them civilian contractors) to let out repressed anger at the futility of the war, often at the expense of innocent people. And finally, to justify opposition to the withdrawal of our troops, some right-wing pundits are claiming that the wolves in Iraq will somehow "follow us home" rather than staying where they are, embroiled in their civil war, as seems far more likely.
Meanwhile, on the home front, the sheepdogs have been ordered to spy on the sheep, looking for wolves in our midst. Has this made us safer? Darned if I know, and of course the government couldn’t make a convincing case for it without revealing what they know about the terrorists’ plans. But my guess would be that any terrorists worth worrying about are smart enough not to openly discuss their plans over the phone. Then of course there's the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which allows sheepdogs to throw suspected wolves in jail without showing cause and try them using secret evidence or evidence obtained through torture. Astoundingly, two upstart appeals court judges recently ruled that this is actually constitutional, though a lawyer quoted in the linked article is confident that “this will be the third time the DC Circuit’s Guantanamo rulings are reversed by the Supreme Court.”
Is there discrimination against soldiers, police, and gun-toting civilians? Certainly, and sometimes it’s just as mindless as the meme describes. Sometimes, too, it’s merely a reaction to some soldiers’ attitude of superiority toward those who didn’t volunteer to put their lives on the line for their country. But what the meme gets wrong is that many so-called “sheep,” myself included, are perfectly willing to tolerate gun nuts who don’t shoot innocent people, and to support the police and the military when they are doing their job, defending us from the wolves, as long as they do their level best not to kill a suspected wolf who turns out to be innocent. More generally, we demand that the sheepdogs don’t violate our rights in any but the most extreme circumstances. If that isn’t a reasonable expectation, then we may as well give up our belief in the viability of freedom and democracy, and allow our leaders to turn our sheepdogs into another kind of wolf, the enforcers of a fascist regime.
