The First Shock

A sense of horror reverberated around the world in the immediate shadow of the tragic events of September 11^th.  At first, one cannot grasp the full implications of the attacks; so unexpected, so unjustified, and so horrifying.  As the grounds shift, and where uncertainty and a dearth of familiar facts combine with anger and fear, collective reactions seem to dominate.  It is good that people are drawn together in times of national emergency towards a singular purpose.  However, the psychology of collective behaviour does not promote subtle thinking.  With growing alarm I observe the mood of bellicose jingoism in the United States; the reflex call to arms and the declaration of yet another war.

• The recent events have been a major shock for most Americans for the following reasons:

• The home country has been seriously hit for the first time since World War II.

• The Pentagon and the Twin Towers are heavily imbued with national symbolism.

• The sudden deaths of thousands is shocking.

• The suicidal manner in which the attacks were carried out challenges our imagination.

However, I urge the readers to distance themselves from their shock and outrage.  It shall only be through a disinterested acquisition of facts and calm application of our rational faculties that we shall be able to fit the pieces of this puzzle into the right places.  The great danger now is that we shall be carried away by our emotions, with anger and fear being the worst counselors of human affairs.  Instead we should be orientating our view towards real world circumstances, starting with these questions, in this order:

1. Why has this happened?

2. What must we do now?

In this essay I shall examine the first question and critically appraise some of the answers that have been put forward.

Wealth and Freedom

President George W. Bush's comments regarding the recent events cannot be deemed as helpful.  He has claimed several times that terrorists hate America because of her "wealth and freedom."  This disingenuous explanation serves to delude Americans into believing that their nation is a wholly innocent victim; that nothing they have done wrong could have contributed to this travesty.

However, the bombings had little to do with America's wealth and freedom.  Most of the world is trying to emulate these gifts and virtues.  Many of the poor feel, rightly or wrongly, that they are excluded from these benefits by design. The problem is not America's wealth, but their poverty; nor is it America's freedom, but the oppression that they suffer.  Furthermore, as I shall argue below, America may not be so wholly innocent as many of her citizens would like to believe.

Cowardly Hit and Run Attacks

Other comments by Bush, that these "hit and run terrorists" have committed "cowardly attacks," are equally foolish.  Regardless of our horror, we must acknowledge the bravery of those who carried out these acts of terror.  Very few Japanese Kamikaze pilots hit their targets during the second world war.  The instincts of self-preservation rise up with such force that the conscious decision to commit suicide attacks are confounded in ways that overwhelm the rational (or perhaps irrational) decisions of the individuals.  Yet these pilots did not waver.  The second aircraft that went into the Twin Towers made course corrections up to and during the last seconds before impact.  The individuals who did this did not run away from their missions.  We may hate them for what they did, but to ignore their bravery and idealism would be to our peril.  You must know your enemies, not reduce them to simplistic caricatures of evil.

Immoral

Bush has also characterised the hijackers as "immoral."  The issue of morality among those we dub as “terrorists” is fraught with profound philosophical problems.  The terrorists on one side of any struggle are considered heroic martyrs on the other.  Suicide bombings are the weapons of the powerless in the struggle against crushing oppression. Perhaps the willingness to give their lives for their causes elevates them to moral heights unfamiliar to us in the comfort of our middle class homes.  We cannot call the individuals “immoral” because the conceptual framework of their values is different from ours- mistaken and fanatical, perhaps, but that is another argument.  The fundamentalist interpretation of Islam may be termed ‘evil,’ but that tells us next to nothing about the individuals.

President Bush has failed the first test of his presidency by leading his nation into delusory self-congratulation, while failing to address the larger question of “Why?” Introspection, and a desire to understand what moves people to commit terrorist acts are necessary.  We must hope that before the debris has been cleared away this shall indeed have taken place.  If not, America may make tragic errors in deciding what to do next.

Never the Same Again

Europe has been struggling with terrorism for decades.  Consider the Irish Republican Army (IRA), who are active in Britain; the Baader Meinhof and the Red Army Fraction in Germany; the Causican Separatists and the Algerian Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) and its various splinter groups in France; the Basque terrorist group (ETA) in Spain; and the Free Moluccan Youth in the Netherlands.  The trendy, leftist, anti-globalization movement, which came to attention for various actions of protest and violence at G7, WTO and IMF meetings, is a budding home-grown terrorist movement. Where are they headed?  Bank bombings?  The Unabomber Ted Kaczinski’s activities may have been merely a foretaste of things to come.  The widely heard cry, "The world shall never be the same again" is true, but only in a trivial sense. The World Trade Center (WTC) Towers shall not return to an un-bombed state. That, however, asserts little more than that time does not go backwards.  Americans who make this claim intend to imply that the bombings have brought about a qualitative change in world affairs.  That is simply not the case.  One can argue that these bombings have brought about a quantitative change; they are the most spectacular terrorist attacks of recent times.  Only in the absence of a broader historical and geopolitical perspective can one imagine that something essentially new has taken place.  The largest change seems to be the average Americans' awakening to unpleasant global realities.  Join the club.

Does America Share the Guilt?

Within the contemporary western paradigm, the killing of non-combatant civilians is considered a war crime.  In a dictatorship, civilians cannot be held responsible for the acts of their government.  Is this so clear in a democracy?  Perhaps every American citizen should recognise a share of the responsibility for the acts of state terror committed by their government.  An estimated two million South East Asian non-combatants were killed during Operation Rolling Thunder and the subsequent bombing of Laos and Cambodia.  Remember, too, this was part of a war against democracy.  America's leaders understood that free elections would have swept Ho Chi Min to power; so much for the champions of democracy which Americans aspire to be.  This has been a pattern during, not an exception to, some periods of American foreign policy.  The Nixon-Kissinger thugs have the blood of many innocent people on their hands, including democratically elected and popular heads of foreign states with whom the United States was not at war at the time of the assassinations.  At the same time, pragmatic alliances with repressive anti-democratic regimes, some of whom should be viewed as occupying powers in their countries are still widely supported.  Can Americans - with a clear conscience - claim no responsibility for the activities of their leaders?

All over the U.S. candles were lit for the victims of the crash bombings.  Who mourns now for the estimated 200,000 Iraqi conscripts who had no effective choice about being made nominal combatants, but who were blasted out of existence under weeks of carpet bombing during Operation Desert Storm?  In a grotesque display of self centred hubris, former President George Bush declared that the Gulf War had ended "without any casualties," revealing how deeply ingrained his disregard for humanity, when not American, was.  In addition, prolonged ineffective action against Iraq, including the sanctions which at the least play a role in the ongoing death of tens of thousands of Iraqi children, earns the U.S. widespread disrespect; not only because of the disregard it shows for the plight of the civilian people trapped in that nation, but also for the lack of military resolve that brought that campaign to a premature end. That was a job not well done.

Every time I hear an American president declare that actions are to be taken to protect American interests (the underlying message seeming to be that actions are to be taken solely to protect American interests) I cringe with vicarious embarrassment at the naked disregard for the interests of non-Americans.  Americans should be cringing too.  Bush's rejection for the Kyoto accord is another example of American offence against the world community, including America's traditional allies.  Bush's withdrawal from the ABM Treaty; halt of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) Review Conference; renouncing of international efforts to negotiate a verification protocol to the BWC; refusal to reconsider the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; rejection of the International Criminal Court; discarding of the Convention on the Prohibition of Land Mines; gutting of the U.N. conference on Small Arms; dismissing of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child; boycotting of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Review Conference in New York; support of the unilateral embargo on Cuba; and plans to place weapons in space are all true to character.  Bush's pursuit of the missile shield may destabilise relations between the super-powers. Contrary to Bush's foolish claims, Americans are admired for their wealth and freedom. They are despised in some quarters for their perceived indifference of the aspirations and rights of others, and an arrogance that translates to unilateralism when it suits the United States.

Source: www.benjaminrossen.com
Posted with permission from the author.

The articles posted on this page reflect solely the opinions of the authors. Views Archive Advanced Search Views & Analyses