To the editor:
Have you seen the fancy new videos on the ferry? They inform us of scenes to come — slow motion sniffer dogs leading grimacing policemen with flashlights shining under our seat for suspicious-looking packages, increased surveillance with onboard video cameras, menacing spiked fences to protect personnel, Coast Guard escorts and onboard searches, weekly drills to prepare for the worst, police running down and pouncing on suspects.
Other shipboard signs and announcements to scare us into reporting our neighbor as a suspicious character, increased armed police and Coast Guard presence aboard the Whidbey Island ferries.
Why would a terrorist want to blow up our ferry when there would be so many more appropriate targets? Why do we need more and more police and unmarked patrol cars with more and more unnerving sirens and spine-chilling lights? Does that sound make you feel all warm and fuzzy like you’re really being protected? Do you feel like hugging the officer with the sniffer dog because he makes you feel safe? Do we really need the huge influx of money being pumped into police coffers by the Department of Homeland Security for surprise roadblock searches and increased surveillance equipment and personnel? Where is all this leading? Who’s in charge and what’s happening here? Why are we being fed fear instead of love?
South Whidbey Island is renowned for compassionate concern and support of each special person in our community. Compassion, understanding, support, love — this is the way to peace, not fighting the terror instilled in us through Orwellian doublespeak and defending us against manufactured terror. Think of how our community could prosper with a little of the money being dispensed by our governments to protect us from ourselves and against our fellow humans. We spend more than the entire rest of the world on weapons to protect us from manufactured enemies, preparing us for endless wars abroad, backed up by massive “shock and awe” firepower spreading carnage and misery throughout the homelands of our ancestors, creating more enemies in our wake to defend against.
And here in the land of the free and home of the brave, the largest and most expensive prison system in the world, imprisoning ever-greater numbers of our own citizens, more than any other country in the world. Is our credo,
“E Pluribus Unum,” “Unity in Diversity” as worthless as the coins of the realm it’s printed on? Is liberty and justice for all now reserved for the exclusive few at the top, who are ever-tightening their grip on our actions and thoughts? Is the real terrorist disguised as the Nazi Department of Homeland Insecurity and that entire extended network of surveillance, control and thought-programming? What can we do as a community to leave this vicious spiral of fear behind us?
Peace comes not through war
nor love through terror
Love knows no enmity nor enemy.
Who is left to conquer
when Love conquers all?
Larry Dobson
Clinton
