Obviously, this is a long and frustrating discussion at the beginning of what will no doubt be a long and frustrating conflict. It’s good that we’re trying to work out some of these issues; as difficult as this debate might be (and yes, it’s a debate; it’s way too classy for the Pit), it will help us make better decisions in the future.
That said, I’m rather disturbed by the notion that we should dig in our heels and refuse to change a single aspect of our behavior simply because it would be a “victory” for the terrorists. By that logic, we should have whitewashed the actions of the FBI and the ATF at Waco and Ruby Ridge the moment Tim McVeigh’s truck bomb erased the front of the Alfred P. Murrah building, and we should have stopped thinking about bullying and teenage torment the moment Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris began their classroom massacre.
It’s a logical fallacy to equate an examination of the incident’s background with a statement of justification, to say that “we deserved it.” One does not need to condone McVeigh’s horrific act to agree that Waco and Ruby Ridge were federal fuckups on a grand scale. Klebold and Harris were harassed and persecuted, and this continues to be a serious issue, but their schoolhouse slaughter is still a tragedy. Likewise, it is not intellectually invalid to simultaneously condemn the evil acts of whomever carried out the attacks while examining the international scene that encouraged the development of such killers. Admitting the one does not in any way excuse or justify the other, and I’m tired of people asserting that this is so.
Many aspects of U.S. foreign policy have been, and continue to be, short-sighted and destructive. They should have been changed a long time ago, and they still need to be changed. This is separate and apart from the criminal acts of the terrorists. We should pursue and punish them as the international criminals that they are, drawing a hard line between their senseless destruction and the real-world political reality they thought they were commenting on. Again, I refer you to the continuing investigation of Waco and Ruby Ridge despite McVeigh’s bombing.
And incidentally, to those who wonder where the discussion of changing foreign policy was before now, how on Earth did you miss the drumbeat of criticism regarding the post-Desert-Storm sanctions against Iraq? Hussein stays in power, his people suffer, and Muslim extremists everywhere spin this for recruitment purposes. Colin Powell himself was working on this very issue up until a few weeks ago, when he discovered just how fractious the international community really is. A new approach was needed in Iraq before the bombing, and a new approach is still needed.
Another fallacy in this argument is the notion that “understanding” the political realities is somehow tantamount to appeasement, that what is being discussed is a touchy-feely therapy session, designed to get George Bush and Osama Bin Laden to run in slow-motion, hand-in-hand, through a field of daisies. I don’t give a shit what precisely motivates Bin Laden beyond the evidently enormous hatred he and those like him nurture, because it doesn’t matter: Nothing we do will get Bin Laden and his immediate hive of vermin to change their minds about the Great Satan. That’s the nature of extremists – they’re extreme, and they tend to stay that way no matter what anybody says or does.
(As an aside, don’t forget that we have extremists of our own, people who are just as unreasonable and beyond communication. If extreme beliefs were in and of themselves inherently evil, we would have handcuffed David Duke to Al Sharpton and dropped them off the national pier years ago.)
Our current conflict is with these extremists, the people who actively plan and execute violence against innocent people as a means of pursuing their ultimate goal, and rightly so. But these ideologies are not either-or. They fall in a series of concentric circles, with Bin Laden and his ilk in the center, surrounded by hard-liners, who are in turn surrounded by sympathizers, who are surrounded by conflicted-but-leaning-their-direction types, and so on.
That, to me, is what understanding the situation is about. There are millions of people around the world who may not have been willing to fly the planes themselves, or who are horrified by the act of mass murder, but who simultaneously say to themselves that it’s nice the United States was “taken down a notch.” Do you lump these people in the same camp as the terrorists? If so, you’ve increased the number of global enemies a hundredfold. And in so doing, you commit the same crime as did the terrorists: judgement by community. The terrorists look at the U.S. leaders who enact oppressive policies around the world, and they look at our civilian buildings full of stockbrokers and secretaries and mothers and brothers, and they see no difference between them. They judge them all identical, all fair game, all legitimate targets in their war (which, make no mistake, has been seen as such by the terrorists for years; for U.S. officials to term the attack an “act of war” is one of the no-shit-Sherlock moments of the last week).
We stand at the crossroads of history. We can commit the same grave error of moral judgement as did the terrorists, and paint huge numbers of people with one brush merely because it’s easier to think about that way. Or we can recognize that, in point of fact, we are fighting not one but two wars.
Obviously, we fight one war against the terrorists who use mass murder as a negotiation tactic. These people, without argument, are reprehensible and deserve the military wrath they will shortly be receiving. But we must realize that we are simultaneously fighting a second war: a war for the hearts and minds of those around the world who sit on the fence, those who do not support the terrorists’ attacks but who simultaneously cannot bring themselves to ally with the United States because of decades of abuse and oppression.
It’s easy to call the terrorists’ mass murders evil, because they are. But to, say, a fruit vendor in Damascus, it’s equally evil that the United States propped up Saddam Hussein for years during his war with Iran, looking the other way as he was gassing his ethnic minorities, and then flip-flopping against him when he got too big for his britches and putting the Iraqi people into a cauldron of despair. Again, this in no way makes us culpable and deserving of last week’s horrific attacks. But we must – must – realize the spectrum of perceptions around the world, because more than ever perception will become reality as millions of people are forced to choose sides.
We are not presently at war with the Muslim world. Bush’s overtures to Egypt, Jordan, etc., and his recent appearance at an American mosque are all intended to make this clear. But if we fail to recognize the complexities of the situation, we may very well inadvertently push the fence-sitters onto the extremists’ side instead of pulling them to ours. Not to mention the fact that, at the moment, there is no Muslim world: Afghanistan is not Iran is not Malaysia is not Saudi Arabia is not Syria is not Indonesia. Moderate Muslim nations have demonstrated they have no problem co-existing with comparatively liberal secular countries. But if we overstep our bounds, senselessly bombing Kabul into rubble (even though, after decades of war, that’s all it is anyway), we may very well find ourselves facing a united Muslim enemy. And then our only alternative will be to kill every Muslim on the entire planet, erasing their faith from the globe – and I don’t want to live in a world where that’s the only option.
And it’s important to realize that none of this says we’re required to change a damn thing. We have, however, done a piss-poor job explaining ourselves, engaging and communicating with the Muslim moderates who are as yet uncertain which side to choose. This is the second war, a war of thoughts and ideals and philosophies, a war in which we win allies not through threats and ultimatums but by reason and compassion. Osama Bin Laden is beyond this effort, and I will shed no tears when he has been reduced to a grease stain beneath the coalition’s boot. But there are millions upon millions of people teetering in the balance, and it’s not just foolish to disregard this, it’s suicide.
This is why I advocate understanding and thoughtful response, because the alternative is simply unthinkable.