I hardly know where to begin. So many of you have been touched by this in one way or another. I found myself yesterday hardly able to put a coherent sentence together. Even for those of us who pay close attention to atrocities on a daily basis, the terrorist acts of this past Tuesday seem to have left us all in a bit of shock.
One thing that these events bring home to us is the unpredictability, the uncertainty of life. We can’t control events, we control only how we react to them, and I would like to say a few words about that.
I guess I’ll start with a question that at first glance may seem absurd, namely, why were the attacks wrong? I know, it seems obvious, but there is a point to asking. I think these acts were wrong because they killed and harmed innocent people.
That answer is obvious only if we fail to contrast it to slightly different answers given by national leaders and the media.
Here’s one alternative answer: Tuesday’s attacks were wrong because they killed and harmed Americans. The difference, of course, lies in where the answer leads us. If the wrongness of these acts was in the killing of Americans, it is easy to say that the response must be to kill others, maybe those responsible, or those we think responsible, or those living close to those we think responsible. Forgive me if that analysis seems a bitter caricature of what anyone would think, but it isn’t. After the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, we bombed sites in Afghanistan, killing lots of people, many of whom were civilians, but none of the principals responsible. After attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa, we bombed a pharmaceutical factory in the Sudan, the only such factory in the whole region of Africa, because we thought it was producing chemical weapons associated with Osama bin Laden. It wasn’t, and thousands died as a result. Thousands more innocent people killed or harmed, by just the “prompt, decisive action” we heard called for so many times yesterday.
There are other answers that are more frightening. “It was wrong because it was Islamic terrorism.” Where does this answer lead us? Pearl Harbor led to lynchings and internment camps.
One of my closest friends, a strong and wise man, an activist who many times in the past fearlessly has put his body on the line for others, who also happens to be a Lebanese-American, was riding the metro home yesterday. On the packed train-car, an Israeli man stood up and yelled out, “See? Now you know what we go through. If you would get off our backs and let us kill them all, this wouldn’t happen.” I don’t say this to condemn this man, much less all Israelis. Who knows what fears or pressure drove him to say these words. No, the scary part was not his statement, but that everyone on the metro car was nodding in agreement. And when my friend called to say this, he could barely speak. He was in shock; he could not imagine this as his country.
Last night on C-SPAN, one caller said we need to reintroduce the draft and declare war on “all those countries.” The next caller advocated “nuking” Afghanistan. A third explained how, despite appearances to the contrary, all Muslims were responsible for the attacks.
Later that night, I woke up from a sound sleep with a terrifying question in mind: What if the proper analogy here is not Pearl Harbor, but the burning of the Reichstag?
I don’t expect the Nazi SS and the suppression of Congress, but I’ll be amazed if we don’t see efforts to further curtail civil liberties and to expand the military. I’ll be surprised if we don’t see attacks on Arab businesses and mosques (remember Oklahoma City, where these all took place); if we don’t see efforts to further divide us on specious religious or ethnic lines?all of which, of course, is exactly what a terrorist would hope to achieve.
This event was wrong because it killed and harmed innocent people. This is not such an easy thing to believe, or to follow through on. To do so would mean thinking about all the things in the world today which contribute to death and harm. It would mean thinking about why people are driven to such cynical, evil, foolish actions. This is not to excuse. One can condemn an action and also want to know why it happens. One doesn’t need to be a radical to see that there is a cycle of violence in the world, and to ask why our country is targetted rather than, say Denmark.
For us to really believe that the evil was in killing and harming the innocent would require that we think about all the structures in the world that contribute to those acts, not just regarding terrorism, but war, poverty, torture, occupation, displacement, domestic abuse … the list goes on. We must think, analyze and care enough to work for change. Can we do this?
I’m not going to tell you what I think needs to be changed. We all have our views, but this is not the time for a debate. All I offer now is a plea: I implore you to consider what it would mean to seek an end to killing and harm, what it would mean to turn this horror into a moment to step back from a deadly cycle which may be shockingly new to us, but is not to the rest of the world.
Can we, out of the depths of our despair and concern, see our way clear to demand not vengeance, not retribution, but justice, peace, freedom for all? What kind of an example would that be?
