SECURITY, James Karoor

 It means freedom from risk or danger; safety. Real security does not know something when you don't know it. Real security cannot be bought or arranged or accomplished with bombs. It is deeper. It is a process. It is the acute awareness that we are all utterly interdependent and that one action by one being in one town has consequences everywhere. Real security is the ability to tolerate mystery, complexity, ambiguity indeed hungering for these things. Real security means contemplating death, not pretending it doesn't exist. It means not running from loss, but feeling it, surrendering to sorrow, entering grief.

But what are we really talking about when we say "security"? It is money taken from you and me to be spent to force the Iraqi population to submit to the puppet government that rules only because of the US. It is money to pay for more police, weapons, bullets, bombs, spying, arresting, torturing, jailing, maiming, and killing.

The theory is that more fear and more fear-inspiring bloodshed will tame the guerrillas and stop them from plotting more bombings, shootings, killings. The money will buy compliance, and pay the bills of those who use force to try to bring it about. Many people would be happy for an end to violence, to be sure, but the primary purpose is the protection of the state from rebels.

Submission and compliance: that is what is meant by the term security in the state's lexicon. It is an interesting choice of words. Its use in public life dates at least to the advent of Social Security, a tax scheme that promises to put you on welfare in your old age in exchange for paying 14 percent of your income to support current retirees who constitute the wealthiest demographic slice of the American population. Even in this case, the term security meant compliance, as shown by the tendency of recipients to back ever more redistribution.

Now we have the Department of Homeland Security, a gargantuan agency that administers foreign and domestic spying, sends hither swarms of agents to harass us at airports, conduct drills in the event that the government decides that martial law is the only option, and generally suppress any and all signs of insurrection wherever they might appear. Here too the term security means submission, control, compliance, obedience, and stability for the state.

Who is this security trying to secure? We are told it is for our own benefit. It is government that makes us secure from terrible threats.