I don’t remember when I walked through that mirror. I think it was before they shattered the buildings that reached to the sky. But it was then that I began to see that I had entered the looking glass world.

That was when I saw my country, victim of a horrific crime against humanity, end its support for an international criminal court, accelerate weapons sales abroad, continue to train future international criminals, and increase the budgets of the intelligence agencies that failed to warn us about what they knew.

That was when they told me that the civilians who elect their governments cannot be held responsible when their governments kill, maim and destroy, while at the same time we must hold civilians in autocratic states collectively responsible and can bomb them with impunity for the acts of their governments or neighbors.

That was when they said that it was unpatriotic to ask why, to inquire about the motives of those trying to destroy us, or to suggest remedies for the conditions that produce hostility.

That was when I saw two groups living on opposite sides of a boundary the British had created a few short years ago behave as though nuclear weapons checked passports before claiming their victims.

That was when they called them “brave,” soldiers who bombed innocent civilians thousands of miles below, soldiers who could kill with no chance of facing their victims’ families or their own demise.

That was when I read that one of the most powerful armies in the world could send rockets into refugee camps, bring bulldozers to reduce villages to rubble, shoot children at checkpoints, and call their actions “defense.”

That was when the last remaining superpower on earth actually discussed using a first-strike nuclear attack that would vaporize, burn and disfigure people, destroy croplands, and create radioactive wastelands, as a way to prevent terror.

That was when I heard that “security” would come from more weapons, that “intelligence” would come from more secrecy, that “justice” would come from arrests without charge, that “cooperation” would come from unilateral action.

In the world outside, murder isn’t brave, killing refugees sleeping in their homes isn’t defense, nuclear bombs won’t distinguish between neighbors, and we will never be secure all alone in the world.

In the inside-out world of the looking glass, breaking the mirror may be required for good luck.

Sarah Shields is an associate professor of Middle East history at UNC Chapel Hill. E-mail: sshields@email.unc.edu

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