Al Qaeda Terrorists and Governmental Terrorism. (03/20/2002)
A search for weapons of mass destruction has been on-going in Afghanistan since the beginning of the war there by US military and intelligence agents. According to David Johnston and James Risen of the NY Times ("US Concludes Al Qaeda Lacked a Chemical or Biological Stockpile," 03/19/2002), no evidence of any kind has surfaced to suggest that the Al Qaeda terrorists had managed to progress beyond the level of information gathering (mostly from Internet sources) in their quest for chemical and biological weapons. With at least 60 sites thoroughly examined in the country, virtually nothing has been found to support the idea that any success was achieved in acquiring or producing such weapons. Johnson and Risen observe that
"The lack of evidence is somewhat at odds with the impression left by other senior administration officials in their public remarks. They have emphasized the continuing threat posed by Al Qaeda's intentions to obtain weapons of mass destruction."
The reporters quote "one analyst," who is not identified by name or governmental affiliation, though one assumes he/she has some connection to the teams of scientists and agents who are looking for traces of chemical and biological substances, who has said that "absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence." One cannot help but wonder precisely what sort of analyst made that statement-perhaps someone who mostly analyses rhetorical hodgepodge of a kind which never acknowledges the demands of logic or good sense. Absence does not leave behind or produce evidence of any kind whatsoever. The point of absence concerns the fact that nothing whatsoever signifies its presence. To say that no evidence of absence exists is simply the same as defining what absence is. This statement reminds me of a number I saw yesterday-39793-which reads the same value forward and backward. There is a term for that in rhetoric-one I have forgotten-since it is a figure-of-speech; that is, "absence of evidence necessarily not is evidence of absence"-where turning it around makes it awkward but in no way changes the fact that the statement communicates absolutely nothing of consequence whatsoever no matter in which direction you happen to be inclined to read it. This statement is a cute little word-game falling out of the mouth of someone who ought to be taking his/her job a bit more seriously.
Characterizing that statement as a meaningless word-game, however, fails to take into account the serious purpose that underlies its utterance. It was meant to obscure the fact that our government has produced no evidence to support its contention that restrictions in our civil liberties are now necessary in order to protect us from the weapons of mass destruction that the Al Qaeda terrorists have failed to acquire. The purpose behind the statement that evidence does not matter in proving the existence of objects that threaten us is to preserve the terror that enthralls us in support of government policies which are no more meaningful, no more enlightened, no more productive, than the statements that sustain and conceal their essential folly.
What folly? 2,500 bombs were used in Shah-i-Kot in 16 days to kill 500 Al Qaeda and Taliban soldiers, if that number of enemy casualties is not exaggerated. Do the math. Every enemy killed required five 2,000-pound bombs to get the job done. I am not certain how much one of those "smart" bombs costs, but I read somewhere that each one runs about $100,000. So, for half a million dollars you can kill one individual terrorist in Afghanistan. While it is certainly important to kill individual terrorists, spending $500,000 to eliminate a single human agent who might someday find his/her way to the US with a suicide mission in mind, seems an absurd amount of money to waste in achieving that all too modest goal. At the same time, George W. Bush has acknowledged the fact that considerably less money will be available for his education program at home and that people here should expect an increase in the level of accountability teachers and schools must achieve in order to qualify for any of that federal assistance. Spending money on bombs for Afghanistan, in other words, has reduced the amount that will be available for school improvement in the US. The problem here is a rather obvious one: raising the level of accountability for teachers as a requirement for securing federal money to improve overall school performance but, at the same time, completely ignoring the same issue where the military is concerned by accepting a kill-ratio of one terrorist for every $500,000 spent, is so incredibly bent out of shape, in terms of whom should be held responsible for what, that it literally defies comprehension. In 16 days, George W. Bush authorized and accepted an expense of 250 million dollars (which only covered the cost of the bombs) that killed 500 terrorists and lamented the fact that hardly any money would be available to assist desperately struggling schools at home.
This issue has no ground in the minds of most Americans. One inner-city middle school, the one where I teach as a substitute, houses 650 children. Many of those children are dying out of our culture because the school they are forced to attend does not have the capacity to teach them anything at all. One of the classrooms where I have taught has a broken door. When you grip the door-knob and pull, in order to open it, the knob comes off in your hand. That problem cannot be corrected because there is not enough money in the school budget to purchase a new one. The only computers in the school have been donated by private industry (Oracle and Microsoft). Only a few of them are actually hooked up-there is not any money to wire the building for electrical outlets. The ones that are powered are hardly ever used because most of the teachers have no computer skills and there is no money available to train them. For what it cost to kill 10 Al Qaeda terrorists in Shah-i-Kot, the middle school where I teach occasionally could have been physically replaced with one that works. In my experience, that would have saved 650 American children who are well on their way to being marginalized out of our culture.
Making this situation even worse is the fact that George W. Bush's education plan, even if he were willing to fund it properly, will never benefit the schools that are the most in need of intervention. If successful test performance, accountability, is the sole criterion for a school qualifying for federal assistance, the only ones that will ever receive any are those that need assistance the least, the ones that are already successful. The ones that are the most desperate for help, because their students do not score well on the tests, are the ones that will not get any assistance at all. Instead, the schools that fail will be closed. My question: where will those children be sent? How will they be educated if their only school choice is eliminated? That question, of course, is irrelevant for the simple reason that Bush's plan was never meant to be funded or implemented in the first place, since it was only a "talking-point" for future campaigns anyway. If there was intent initially, September 11th removed it. We need that money now to wage war against terrorists in Afghanistan. Put differently: the warlords have already won and I don't mean the ones in Islamic countries-I mean the ones in Washington.