Terrorism and the problem of binary vision

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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/HH29Ae01.html

<snip>This would be fine if the only collateral damage was a biased public view of the conflict. But this rather slanted view has embedded itself in the security forces because it helps intelligence and military thinkers avoid thinking about more costly political solutions to the conflict. Intelligent punditry hasn't helped where it might have because the heightened state of security alert has bred suspicion and fear and stifled exhaustive objective enquiry.

"We're at war," goes the excuse. "These are bad, bad people and they would kill you and your family if they had a chance," an over-inquiring journalist was recently told by a US embassy official in this region.

Experienced journalists and public intellectuals, forgetting the experience of their elders during the Cold War, have tended blithely to believe what the security agencies tell them. The security agencies then reinforce their agendas with the expert opinion they have seeded. Policymakers do not mind because there is no room for skeptical opinions when the next attack could be around the corner. A fearful public are happy to dispense with awkward truth when their own security is concerned.

And so we have reached a dangerous juncture.

There is an urgent need for the public to have access to a more balanced and informed policy debate on security issues relating to terrorism and Islamic militancy. Further, there is a pressing need for dialogue, not just confrontation and elimination.

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell's classic study of totalitarianism, the world is kept in a state of perpetual warfare helped by the clever manipulation of the media, which project a constant stream of concocted atrocities to a gullible public to sustain enthusiasm for the war effort. We have not yet reached that stage, but by stifling uncomfortable realities and awkward truth in the interests of preserving narrow security interests, we are moving dangerously in that direction.