If we are truly interested in security, let’s begin with securing all people the basic human right to food, shelter, drinkable water, healthcare, a place to live, safety, and a livable earth.

The Law of Security goes something like this. It is almost a guarantee that in the pursuit of security you will become more insecure. Inherent in the quest for security is its undoing. Some recent examples: bomb Iraq to get rid of theoretical terrorists and manufacture thousands of potential terrorists in the process. Send American soldiers into battle in Iraq to make the country secure, but refuse to spend any money on armor to make the soldiers secure, so that eighty per cent of those who receive upper body wounds die of wounds that could have been prevented. Declare war on Iraq to get rid of chemical weapons and end up using illegal chemical (incendiary devices) weapons that destroy the children you are saving. Secure democracy by using techniques of torture that not only thoroughly undermine democracy, but spread distrust, contempt, rage, and violence which will forever make democracy impossible. In securing freedom, rob citizens everywhere of their basic civil rights, imprison them without trial or recourse, hold them for as long as you like without charging them. Put them in invisible prisons in countries that you once claimed were responsible for Gulags. Wire-tap private citizens and by doing so expand presidential powers so they become Imperial Powers and strip the so-called democracy you were defending. Promise to liberate women through your occupation and invasion and in the process reverse their constitutional rights, rob them of protection, raise the levels of violence permitted towards them. Spend all of your money on security and end up with the hugest deficit ever, no healthcare for the majority of citizens, no protection against disasters, no vaccines for a potential flu plague. Make the world “secure” by spending all of your money on destroying things rather than creating — bomb rather than build, annihilate rather than feed. Focus your attention on imagined enemies who must be controlled or destroyed and in the process make them your real enemy. Rescue people from insane dictators by terrorizing them.