From a letter to the editor in Salon:
What you have to confront, in yourselves and in your nation, is the Culture of Fear.It has actually been one of the most common anti-war arguments that the only reason the public supports Bush's liberation of Iraq is because we're so afraid after 9/11 that we'll agree with anyone who promises to make us safer, no matter what he or she proposes. That's plausible-sounding, certainly; fear often does make people more willing to accept extreme measures. But it works both ways; everyone is operating on the fear principle. The left is coming up with all sorts of world-is-going-to-end-if-we-do-anything scenarios, and if that's not fear, I don't know what is. What's worse is that it's paralysis-inducing fear. The administration is promising us solutions to our fear; the anti-war left is simply telling us we can't act because of fears of potential consequences. Is it really surprising that the public would choose the first of those two worldviews?Since 9/11, fear has enslaved your country. Your leaders are doing nothing to stop it. Neo-conservatives are using it to advance their own agendas and the rest justify their own cowardice by making sure that everyone else stays afraid.
Now you are embroiled in a war which, as Gary Kamiya pointed out in his excellent article three weeks ago, will have unknowable and possibly horrendous consequences.