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WRITING HOMELAND
BY PETER KURTH (published 03.22.06)
“It would be time to start to get acquainted with some of the
challenges." -- Michael
Chertoff, Homeland Security director, March 9, 2006
Dear Mr. Chertoff:
Amen. Leaving aside the
quality of your English, I want you to know that I entirely agree with your
statement of March 9 and am completely in sync with your goal. The
"challenges" now facing our nation and the world are exactly what
we need to get acquainted with, although -- no offense to you -- I think
it's past time we did. And I'm
not just talking about "bird flu," as you were at your news
conference in Washington.
No, I'm talking about
something larger than an avian-borne illness, however dreadful that might
turn out to be. I'm talking about the ongoing horror of the reign of your
boss, George W. Bush, the man who put you in power and left you alone with
the keys. You're even beginning to sound like him, I'm afraid, using the
same kind of rambling, obfuscating language that says nothing of
importance, but does now and then serve to reassure at least part of a
bewildered population. It's called "fast talk," Mr. Chertoff, and
it works only for a while.
As an example, when you
issued your dire warnings about bird flu, you sounded just like the
president when he talks about "terror," "the
terrorists" and "democracy on the march." You seemed
determined to scare the bejeezus out of us, while simultaneously insisting
that everything's going to be hunky-dory if we just sit back, pay our bills
on time, and let the big boys handle it.
"I can't predict,"
you declared (immediately begging the question of why you can't), "but
I certainly have to say that we should be prepared for the possibility that
at some point in the next few months, a wild fowl will come over the
migratory pathway and will be infected." But "we keep a lot of
our poultry business indoors," you went on, "so we don't have the
kind of situation that a lot of countries have, where there's a lot of
mixing of wild fowl and domestic fowl."
That's a lot of "a
lots," Mr. Chertoff, and while you urged us to react to this bird-flu
business "with alertness and with care, but not with panic," the
damage was done: We're already panicked, and your closing words did nothing
to relieve our fears: "If we get a wild bird or even a domestic
chicken that gets infected with avian flu," you said, "we're
going to be able to deal with it because we have got a lot of experience
with that."
Well, forgive me for saying
it, Mr. Chertoff, but we don't have any experience with that at all -- not
yet -- and the dismal record of your department's preparedness for
disaster, both natural and manufactured, is plain to everyone. I refer, of
course, to last year's hurricanes in the Gulf, but not only to those. After
all, we're dealing with an administration that actually inflicts terror on the world, wrecks
the environment to keep the oil giants happy, allows the pharmaceutical
industry to run riot with pricing, thinks AIDS can be halted through
"abstinence programs," and won't even acknowledge the eye-popping
consequences of global warming, which only a toddler could fail to detect.
So it doesn't help to be
told, "We've dealt with these kinds of issues before, similar issues.
We actually are working on a very specific plan to deal with this."
Your plan is so specific that its details can't be revealed, and I'm not
really confident that you'll know how to "deal with it" when
those infected chickens get loose.
You shouldn't even have the
job you've got, I think, because you aren't qualified for it. I suppose
this doesn't bother you, as you're working for a man -- a crony and a tool
for corporate interests -- who isn't qualified for his job, either. As
Lewis Lapham wrote recently in Harper's,
calling for Bush's impeachment: "We have before us in the White House
a thief who steals the country's good name and reputation for his private
interest and personal use; a liar who seeks to instill in the American
people a state of fear; a televangelist who engages the United States in a
never-ending crusade against all the world's evil, a wastrel who squanders
a vast sum of the nation's wealth on what turns out to be a recruiting
drive certain to multiply the host of our enemies."
We all know, Mr. Chertoff --
and you know it, too -- that Bush doesn't give a damn how many people die
of bird flu, any more than he cares how many die in the Middle
East, as long as the profits keep on pumping. Maybe you've
heard the little joke going around, which says that Bush is so concerned
about bird flu he's decided to bomb the Canary Islands.
If you haven't, well . . . have a laugh on me.
In closing, please remember
that before September 11, 2001,
there was no such thing in the USA
as a "Department of Homeland Security." There wasn't even such a
thing as a "Homeland" in reference to America,
an idea we used to reserve for foreign dictatorships -- several of which,
faced with catastrophe and disaster, have since become better democracies
than our own.
Good luck in all your future
endeavors.
Yours sincerely,
Peter Kurth
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