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June 4, 2012

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LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

We should not need an enemy to unite us

John Henry Melancon, Las Vegas

Thursday, Oct. 8, 2009 | 2:01 a.m.

A commentary by Gregory Rodriguez in Monday’s Los Angeles Times argues that the United States needs the threat of a “common enemy” to bring us together.

There is evidence in our recent history that such an obsession can blind us rather than unite us.

In the weeks following the 9/11 attacks, there was a sense of national unity. Along with the emotions that poured out as the president stood in the rubble, for some, a consensus was forming that past policies in the Middle East and South Asia had failed; that, with our allies, we must quickly address issues of global security; that we should work to strengthen America from within.

With the country distracted by shock and grief, some within the executive branch began a specious marketing campaign. A few desperate terrorists, whose murderous acts succeeded only because of known weaknesses in airline security, were heralded as a threat to our very way of life, and falsely connected in public pronouncements with the secular regime in Baghdad in particular, and Islam in general.

Rather than quietly finding and destroying al-Qaida, our leaders turned the terrorists into superstars of evil. Under the wheels of the “war on terror,” the emerging consensus was crushed. The U.S. inevitably turned back to the failed policies of the past, and toward the terrible and largely unilateral decisions that led to the useless bloodshed that still defines our occupation of Iraq, the dead-end quagmire that awaits us in Afghanistan, and the specter of war without end.

Today, we have many serious challenges that should unite us in common purpose. Obviously, this focus on “enemies” has brought not unity, but a debilitating polarization. And with the fear of Osama bin Laden waning, the reactionary media pounds out a different drumbeat — that the new “enemy” is your senator, your president, your fellow American.

Unless we reject that insanity, we will be doomed to continuing dissension and paralysis. I pray that we do not choose that bleak future.

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