Ignorance
leads our country down the wrong path
Fletcher
Christensen
The
proceedings of Washington's Sept. 11 investigative
committee show that ignorance on the part
of administration officials, under presidents
Clinton and Bush, led to the terrorist attacks
in September of 2001. Despite the fact that
fundamentalist al-Qaida and secular Iraq
were ideologically opposed, despite the
fact that not one Iraqi was involved in
the events of Sept. 11, ignorance on the
part of the American people led many to
believe that Iraq had a hand in the attack.
Ignorance
of Iraq's military capabilities led us into
a war to disarm an unarmed nation. Ignorance
of Iraqi society and culture turned a war
of liberation into a campaign of occupation.
Ignorance of regional politics now leads
many to cry out that we should bring our
troops home, even though their removal would
likely cause pandemic destabilization at
this time.
More
than 600 people are imprisoned at Guantanamo
Bay's Camp Delta, held without any recourse
under the law, without even the rights promised
under the Geneva Convention. Shafiq Rasul
and four other British detainees were released
from Gitmo in March; persistent public attention
finally earned them the rights they should
have been given all along. Through ignorance
on the part of our government, these five
men were unjustly arrested and repeatedly
slandered, with no ability to face their
accuser. Through ignorance on the part of
the public, these men endured two years
of imprisonment and torture before their
story was heard.
And
in a strange, Kafkaesque parody of wisdom,
some Americans cry out that what we need
is more ignorance, not less. Knowledge clouds
our more perfect relationship with God,
they say. All truth and knowledge comes
from Him, and for that reason, education
is a sin, drawing us away from our immaculate
contemplation of His will.
I'll
stick with Galileo Galilei on this point.
"I do not feel obliged to believe that
the same God who has endowed us with senses,
reason and intellect has intended us to
forgo their use."
Ignorance
is a cancer. Ignorant men are always slaves
to those with knowledge, those with the
power and intelligence to manipulate them.
Whether used by Pope Urban VIII or Joseph
McCarthy, ignorance is a tool of control,
a chain to bind the people against their
better interests, and the only way to break
that chain is to recognize it for what it
is.
War
is not peace. Freedom is not slavery. And
ignorance, most certainly, is not strength.
This
column originally appeared in the Oklahoma
Daily at the University of Oklahoma.
|
