Yet the Bushite mantra that 9/11 had changed everything was so ubiquitous and powerful that to deny it was next to impossible for years, until it had become a self-fulfilling prophecy. America did learn it was vulnerable to the kind of attack it had not suffered before, and should have quickly protected itself against this vulnerability. Some of this was done, but not all that was needed. The Bush government took another course when it invaded Iraq, and used the 9/11 attacks for political gain.

More than 3,000 people were killed by terrorist acts on 9/11/2001. This resulted in invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, where civil war killed more than 3,000 people in Iraq I just last month, and some 6,000 in the past two months. The number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq is likely to surpass 3,000 soon. This is often the logic of war—of any war, just or not. When a society must defend itself with whatever means are necessary to fend off destruction and hold back an invader, that logic is tragic but must be accepted. When a war is created for political and economic ends, and sold to a democracy with lies and manipulation, it is more than tragic.

The Bushite rhetoricians positioned this war without a nameable enemy as an archetypal fight to the death between good and evil. In such a battle, the good are always good, and can never do evil, just as the evil are always evil. Creating these archetypes is a normal function of war, which both sides do. It is also common to use racial and religious stereotypes, and to characterize the enemy as less than human, as beasts.

Such oversimplification and distortion not only leads to brutality, it is itself a form of brutalization. It is a brutal view of the world, and denies the humanity as well as the possibly legitimate grievances of the Other, the enemy. In denying that the Other is civilized, it justifies acting outside the norms of civilized society. It makes us uncivilized and brutal.

Through surrogates like Ann Coulter, their flunkies in the press, and in their own voices, neocons and Rabid Right Republicans are pumping up the rhetoric of violence. Brutalization also increases in times of violence, as is the case now in the Middle East. While half a million people are roaming Lebanon because their homes have been destroyed, a commentator on Fox brags of the US military capability to turn Syria “into a parking lot.” This is brutalization speaking loud and clear.

But brutalization is expressed not just in blood-thirsty rhetoric, but in indifference. Indifference to suffering, and to those causing suffering. The constant barrage of violent news is like getting hit on the head with a board. It desensitizes, which is an effect of brutalization.

Brutality is commonly an instrument of authoritarian rule, and brutal definitions lead to a logic of authoritarianism. They don’t call dictators “strong men” for nothing.

Brutalization is now so pervasive in this society that we barely recognize all its manifestations. When it becomes part of cultures—created for example by the Cheney rules—it becomes harder and harder to oppose it, and then even to recognize it. But it links the authoritarian White House to the torturers at Guantanamo and the rapists and murderers in Iraq. It is ever-present in the violent rhetoric of the right, that expands the definition of the Other, and brutalizes not only the Other in foreign lands, but in the political opposition at home. It leads to citizens of small towns harassing, vandalizing and threatening violence on the families of other small town citizens, over a zoning dispute, or a public official over a word in a speech, taken out of context or even misheard.

We need to identify brutalization: its manifestations and causes, and shine a light on it. We do not need to add to it with conscripting more cannon fodder for brutal dictators by any other name. We need to put political muscle and will behind accountability, and to promote a government and a society that values and uses and learns the skills of peace.

Check out The Skills of Peace article at the SF Chronicle, and these useful links.