11/09/05: Unlike Fdr, Bush Is Promoting Fear Among Americans - Lea Zeldin

Unlike Fdr, Bush Is Promoting Fear Among Americans

Dear Editor: On the eve of World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared famously, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." He was enunciating the fundamental freedoms of the American democracy: freedom from fear, freedom from want and freedom from political tyranny.

Today, President George Bush has made it the mission of his administration to create and increase the fear factor in American life.

The passage of the Homeland Security Act has made librarians afraid to answer questions about the reading habits of their patrons and has triggered responses like signs on library walls assuring patrons that their withdrawal records will be erased automatically in 30 days. The general public, which means all of us, do not know if any provisions of the Homeland Security Act have been utilized because such a disclosure by a library or the patrons themselves would be illegal.

People also are afraid of their identity being stolen. Social Security numbers are collected by everybody, from motels to hospitals to banks, for obscure reasons. Earlier this week, a repairman refused me customer service until he had my birth date.

Awash with information of your mother's maiden name and how many times you brush your teeth, electronic file folders are a rich trove of seemingly useless information. Why should we be fearful of useless information? Maybe because someone could put together a racial, social or political profile that becomes a criminal one without our knowledge or consent. (It is no accident that the film about Edward R. Murrow and Joseph McCarthy, "Good Night, and Good Luck," was released this week. It was the last time that fear so ruled this land.)

Meanwhile, the president talks about "sacrifice" in the Iraq war on the same day that the number of American military killed in the war reached 2,000. It took 18 months to kill the first 1,000. It only took 14 months to kill the second thousand. One in five of the soldiers killed were in their second, third, fourth or fifth tour of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan. Forty-nine of those dead soldiers were from Wisconsin.

Two of the states with the highest death tolls are Pennsylvania and Ohio, making clear the lack of economic progress in large rust belt states. The only reliable employer is the Pentagon.

As catastrophe piles upon catastrophe, the palpable fear of the military families for their soldiers spreads to the general populace.

This is the context in which the Madison Branch of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom holds its 90 birthday celebration at 5:30 Saturday at the Madison Senior Center, 330 W. Mifflin St. Our speaker is foreign correspondent Jeremy Scahill from "Democracy Now!" and the Nation magazine. There will be music and dancing. We are asking for a contribution $25, but no one is ever turned away.