the 9/11 attacks...
by John B. Cobb, Jr.
The first response to the Sept. 11 tragedy must be one of shock, anger, horror, and, especially, of the deepest sympathy for those who have lost friends and relatives. We grieve with them. We respect and admire the courage and sacrifice of the many who work to find the bodies of the dead and to restore order and such normalcy as is possible where the greatest damage was done. We rejoice in the spirit of solidarity with the sufferers that has been shown across the nation.
The attack has been a wake-up call to our whole nation. It has shattered our sense of security and made us aware of our vulnerability. It gives concreteness to our understanding that all parts of the world are interconnected. We may hope that it will make Americans, who have been among the most parochial of peoples, more concerned about events all over the earth. For the present, however, our responses to the disaster are taking two sharply different forms.
For some, the response is one of aggrieved innocence and the need for vengeance. We have been led to believe that our global actions have been basically for the sake of all humanity, so that anyone who hates us for them is ignorant or evil. Our president has encouraged this interpretation by telling us that “America was targeted for attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world. This self righteous interpretation justifies us in trying to exterminate our enemies. The excessive retaliation, which is only too likely, will not only escalate violence but also intensify the anger against us and provoke more attacks in the future. Down that path there is no security.
Others agree that those who are specifically responsible for this horrendous destruction should be brought to justice and hope this can be done through legal channels. But we know that the recent history of the Near East has not left us innocent. In pursuing the Cold War we stirred up Muslim hatred of Communism and exploited Muslim extremists in destroying the Communist government of Afghanistan. The CIA trained Osama bin Laden in that context, and our policies led indirectly to the victory of the Taliban. All of this was for the sake of hurting the Soviet Union, not for the well being of the people of Afghanistan. Our subsequent economic policies against the Taliban have led to widespread misery among their subjects. This may all be understandable in the context of global geopolitics, but it should not surprise us that many, including persons of whose services we once made use, hate us for what we have done to their countries and their people.
Saddam Hussein is another CIA trainee whom we used to weaken Iran. When he ceased to obey our commands and attacked Kuwait, we overwhelmed him on the battlefield. Subsequently we have instituted economic sanctions intended to compel his cooperation, but whose actual effects are the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. We should not be surprised that the parents of dying children hate us.
In Israel, our policy has been one of support of Israel. This support has expressed our collective sense of owing the Jewish people a chance at nationhood after all they have suffered at our hands. But we have not been equally sensitive to what this has meant to the non-Jewish people who had to be displaced in order to build a Jewish homeland. We have regarded the resistance by Palestinian people to removal from their homes and reduction to second class status as “terrorism" and we have financed the harsh reprisals they have suffered from the state of Israel. We have supported Israel also in building settlements throughout Palestinian land in defiance of the United Nations. We should not be surprised that many Palestinians hate us.
For us now to respond to the deaths of innocent Americans by inflicting death on equally innocent Arabs may temporarily reduce the ability of our enemies to injure us. It will not reduce their hatred. Sooner or later that hatred will find expression in other destructive acts against us that will only lead to greater ferocity on our part. There must be a better way.
The Near East is not the only part of the world in which we have evoked hatred. What is remarkable is that, in spite of actions on our part that have hurt so many in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, there remains in the Near East and throughout the world a vast reservoir of goodwill toward us that has found expression again in response to this attack upon us. It is this goodwill, rather than our status as the world’s only “superpower? that is our true and enduring strength. Let us build on that goodwill and adopt policies of friendship and cooperation with other peoples rather than manipulating them to our short-term advantage.
The realization that we are part of a world community such that we cannot escape the consequences of suffering that we cause elsewhere could be the occasion of the maturing of the American mind. It could be the occasion for an abandonment of the effort to force others to bow to our superior might and the shift to leading by presenting a vision of a better world, which is in the long-term interest of all. Present indications are that the immediate response will not be of this sort. But there are millions who want change, and we are among them.
-John B. Cobb, Jr.