MEANINGS OF 9/11
Francis A. Beer, Department
of Political Science
The meanings of 9/11 are embedded in the events,
talk, and thoughts of the past year. They are in the deeds, words,
and ideas of those who boarded the projectile airplanes that fateful
morning, of those who watched them approach their destinations,
of those who resisted, and of the victims who died when they struck
their targets. They are in the reactions of the families and friends
of those who died, of fire and police officers, media and political
people, New Yorkers and Americans, and observers in all parts of
the world.
During this year, we have tried to make new
sense of our world. We have counted the casualties and mourned the
dead. All of us have felt new stresses and vulnerabilities. We have
celebrated our heroes, and set off to punish the guilty. One step
on this path has been the military attack on al-Qaeda and the Taliban
in Afghanistan. The fate of Osama bin Laden is unknown, the Taliban
have been dispersed but still exist. Less has been said about the
casualties we have inflicted on Afghan civilians, although some
have claimed them to be greater than the victims of the original
event (www.cursor.org/stories/civilian_deaths.htm
).
The domestic costs have also been great. In order
to achieve greater security, our open, democratic society has been
diminished. Civil liberties have been ignored as the government
has taken and held prisoners without due process. Racial profiling
has been accepted. Air transportation has been made more difficult,
and major airlines have headed into bankruptcy. There has been extensive
public discussion of the events of that day and their aftermath
(www.newyorker.com/archive/previous/)
In the search for greater security, the United
States now prepares for war on Iraq. Weapons of mass destruction
in hostile hands pose a greater potential threat than poorly guarded
commercial airliners. Suppression of their proliferation has become
a major priority. The war of weapons is prepared beforehand by a
strategic war of words carried in American and global media (www.nybooks.com/articles/15698).
We have clearly embarked on a course of war,
war against terrorism, war against evil, war against the axis of
evil. War in Afghanistan, war in Iraq. War in Iran, war Libya? War
in Sudan, war in Syria? War in North Korea ? This is a war that
has no natural boundaries in space or time. While it may have an
identifiable beginning in time and a place of origin, it has no
foreseeable historical end nor any obvious geographical limit.
The scope of this war is defined by its aim:
to rid the world of terrorism. At the same time, the globalization
of war implies costs and risks. There will be casualties, military
and civilian, foreign and American. In an age of weapons proliferation,
the global destruction of weapons of mass destruction implies mass
destruction. The great military theorist Carl von Clausewitz referred
to the friction and fog of war. As most political leaders in the
region have been at pains to point out, once a land war begins in
the Middle East and Central Asia, its progress is unpredictable.
Beginning such a conflict will be easier than ending it.
There may be a cascade of unintended, destabilizing,
follow-on effects in the complex international network. These include
other states possibly using American preemptive intervention as
a model for their own purposes: Russia in Georgia, Pakistan and
India, China in Taiwan? Beyond setting a precedent for others to
strike first, current American doctrine encourages hair-trigger
responses. States that feel like "sitting ducks" have
a perverse incentive to "use it or lose it" in reply to
perceived first strike signs by others. Finally there are incentives
for countries in the nuclear queue to accelerate the development
of their own capabilities, anticipating that other states might
decide to take them out "before it is too late."
There are also domestic risks for our society.
Historical experience shows that, in the fever of war, we compress
our republican institutions. Power flows naturally to the President,
who is the Commander in Chief. Congress has a diminished role. Opposition
dies in the fire of hyper-patriotism.
The ship of state stands on a course for war.
Current American leaders support unilateral action, using military
force in preemptive first strikes, as the late Secretary of State
John Foster Dulles put it, at times and places of our own choosing.
At the same time, many voices within the United
States and abroad call for a more multilateral policy, using other
available processes. They argue that international organizations
such as the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
have important roles as arenas for discussion and mobilization of
political support. When military force must be used, it should be
consistent with the norms of the international community. It should
imply a measured, proportionate response to clear and present danger.
Deterrence and containment instead of offense and intervention,
under-reaction to provocation, will tend to dampen conflict. Other
sticks and carrots (diplomatic, economic, social, cultural, and
scientific) offer a full range of soft power alternatives (www.oup.co.uk/isbn/0-19-515088-0).
The course of prudence takes account of the multiple
meanings of any situation of war and peace. It recognizes the claims
of realism and the harsh requirements of the international struggle
for power if the state is to survive and protect its citizens muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_security/v027/27.1snyder.pdf).
At the same time, it also respects the importance of the domestic
and global struggle for meaning socsci.colorado.edu/~beer/PAPERS/MeaningsBook.html.
There is no complete security, no final solution in an open society.
Prudence aims to preserve and develop our complex
democracy. It supports its performance in a global context. And
it recognizes the importance of peace to that democratic, global
enterprise. All the meanings of 9/11 will ultimately be shaped by
how well the ship of state steers to this star.
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September
11 and Historical Amnesia
Patricia Limerick, Department
of History
A Speech in Aspen
I approach this topic with humility and discomfort.
Western American history is not a particularly well-positioned area
of specialization for saying anything useful on the subject of the
September 11 attacks. A week and a half after the calamity, driving
from Glenwood Springs to Aspen, my husband and I listened to President
Bush’s "war on terror" speech. When we got out of the
car in Aspen, we thought the United States was at war. The next
morning, when I started giving my speech to the Colorado chapter
of the American Planning Association, I made the audience deeply
uncomfortable, as I struggled with the question of whether or not
I was giving a speech in wartime.
The audience began to look intensely ill-at-ease.
I gave up and returned to the talk I was supposed to give on Western
land use. But it was quite the out-of-body experience, as I tried
to think why my perception of a drastically changed world seems
so odd and alien to the audience.
A year later, I am more inclined to think they were
right, and I had it wrong. Normality flooded back in very fast.
Most of us returned to airports. People, some warriors, some civilians,
died in distant places. Politicians and federal officials squabbled
over how to put turf aside and unify agencies in the cause of security.
In day to day life, it is hard to see a clue or a hint that we are
living in a nation at war.
Interpretations of the Dead
Reading the New York Times’s profiles of individuals
whose lives were abruptly cut off presents my only way of not losing
focus on what September 11 meant. Reading those portraits leaves
me unsatisfied with the meanings attached to the deaths by people
who think, variously, that the appropriate service to the dead is
to kill many more, or that the dead worked as servants of global
capitalism and thus paid with their lives for an ongoing crime against
humanity, or that the deaths were worthwhile in giving the American
people a reminder of what people in other countries suffer regularly
All of those interpretations of the 9/11 deaths give
me the chills, and so I try to keep it individualized, one lost
person at a time. If I were John Ashcroft for a day, I would put
this restriction on free speech: No one expresses an opinion on
appropriate responses to 9/11 until they have read all these portraits
of the dead. Yes, free speech should endure, but I myself can only
pay serious attention to analyses that have passed through the test
of attending to these individual lives and their sudden ending.
Something Old and Terrible
There is one piece of territory where my professional
perspective may have some bearing. For a Western historian, the
proposition that there is something new and terrible about
innocent civilians suffering violent death on American soil is peculiar
indeed. For a Western historian, a more convincing proposition would
be this: there is something old and terrible about innocent
civilians suffering violent deaths in North America.
Of all episodes of historical amnesia, the disappearance
of the Indian wars is one of the most striking. In a sense, the
wars weren’t forgotten at all; the names Custer and Sheridan, Tecumseh
and Sitting Bull, are famous indeed. But the dominant form of this
popular memory has been directed toward quaintness and romance,
rendering the Indian wars colorful, dramatic, and somehow or other
not entirely real. Indians and whites fight constantly on film;
there is a line of coffee table books about the Indian wars; the
wars are at once very familiar, and very, very abstracted and very,
very, very trivialized.
Innocent civilians (sometimes Indian, sometimes white)
suffering violent death on American (or what would become American)
soil?
New Mexico in 1598
Virginia in 1622 and 1676
Massachusetts in 1637 and 1675-1676
Ohio Valley in the 1780s and the 1790s
Southeast in the 1810s
Illinois in the early 1830s
Oregon in 1847
Minnesota in 1862
Colorado in 1864
And so on and so on.
These raids and wars took place nearly everywhere
in North America. And yet a common assumption nonetheless took shape:
after the American Revolution and the War of 1812, the United States
was different from other nations because its wars were fought overseas,
on the land of other nations. The assumed fact that the American
civilian population lived at a safe distance from the battles was
the basis of a resilient American innocence and naiveté about
the human capacity for violence and brutality.
Historically, this denial of the wars fought on American
soil makes no sense at all, but it is nonetheless a statement made
by pundits aplenty, including some historians who have themselves
managed to forget the Indian wars, while concentrating their attention
on more conventionally "international" relations. The
forgetting of the Indian wars is an extraordinary cultural achievement
that shapes many of the commentaries and responses we have heard
over the last year.
Passage from a CNN Transcript
What is the relationship between our ability to reckon
with our Western past and our ability to deal wisely with our international
future? I end with a passage sent to me this morning by my senior
auditor, Marc Sobel. This is a passage from a CNN Crossfire transcript
from September 9, 2002; the last person quoted, Scott Ritter, is
an experienced UN weapons inspector who has been making the case
against an attack on Iraq:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:
We know he has this capability.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER:
And making it urgent.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:
We have no choice.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER:
But there's still opposition.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SCOTT RITTER, FORMER U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR:
Basically, it will turn the world into the Wild West.
I hold on to the hope that Scott Ritter’s remark
will prove to be only a figure of speech.
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The Media After 9/11
Patricia Raybon, School
of Journalism and Mass Communication
What Has Changed?
One year later, what has changed in the news media?
In truth, not much, and not enough. Call it superficiality, but
a kind of sublime myopia still pervades news messages, leaving too
many Americans still at a loss to explain and understand the world
in which we live.
Consider this recent example: On the Today Show,
Gov. George Pataki of New York, reflecting one year later on the
9/11 tragedy, intoned to an empathetic Katie Couric: “They attacked
us for our freedoms.” A great quote? Couric seemed to agree. Indeed,
the statement may be comforting, assuring or even inspiring. But
it isn’t true. While it may seem crass these days to criticize Gov.
Pataki, or anybody else in New York, his remarks and Katie Couric’s
sympathetic response prompt the question: Why do even high-ranking
American officials persist in trivializing a real and complex situation;
and why do the media participate in this simplification? The question
seems relevant, indeed, considering that one year ago most Americans,
in our shock, were asking: “Who are these people yelling ‘Death
to America’ and why do they hate us?”
On our campus, even students of journalism, whose
bread and butter is the news, struggled to understand the horrible
event without having a wider context. In the J-School, it was disturbing,
indeed, to watch journalists-in-training wring their hands over
their ignorance of Islamic militarism and its implications for America.
After all, we live in an “All News, All the Time” society, as many
have called it. How have the news media been using all that air
time? What, indeed, are the myths -- that is, the stories, or the
cultural narratives -- by which the media inform us every day?
Do these myths, by being retold daily, reinforce
our beliefs, but don’t necessarily deepen our understanding about
who we are and what’s happening in the world? When a governor of
one of the largest and most important states in the nation is asked
to explain Sept. 11, why does he say, “they attacked us for our
freedoms”? And why does even a seasoned journalist accept that as
true, even when such logic hardly begins to explain the Al-Qaeda
network and its objectives? To address such questions, I decided
to step back from Sept. 11 and examine media messages that saturate
American thinking everyday.
Some Meta Messages
Sadly, and not surprising, some obvious meta messages
persist: Black people are athletes and criminals. White people are
industrious and good-hearted. Media scholar Robert Entman, author
of The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America,
says of the racial prototypes: “At least on television, the market
discourages serious, complicated reporting and promotes mayhem and
fluff. This means more attention to crime without context, poverty
without explanation, and less attention to the complicated histories
and institutional practices that privilege Whites and burden Blacks.”
The same prototypical approach has burdened others
on the margins of American news: children, gays, immigrants. Even
American teens and young adults, it could be argued, are presented
in presumptive ways through messages that, as Entman puts it, “confirm
belief rather than deepen understanding of community.”
On the global scene, similar mythic messages
persist in the news in ways that discourage better understanding
of the world in which we live. Here are three such messages: America
is best. Americans are heroes. Americans are the best heroes everywhere.
While these messages may inspire Americans, they
suggest attitudes of arrogance and superiority that, indeed, may
"read" as arrogance in other parts of the world. As Simon Li, foreign
editor of The Los Angeles Times argues, “There are more ways of
living and thinking than the American way. And there are different
values. They exist and need to be taken into account.”
A Problem with Perspective
Still, other related messages also have become
standards in news media, including this one: American deaths matter
more than other deaths. David T. Z. Mindich, a journalism historian,
who has written about this phenomenon, calls it “the bias of unequal
deaths.” I call it the “arithmetic of news,” whereby one local death
in a car crash or one scandalous homicide merits more air time or
newspaper ink than hundreds of deaths in a tragedy far from “home.”
So while it’s understandable that Americans convulsed over the deaths
of Sept. 11 almost 3,000 in a single, horrible morning we might
also consider, as Mindich reminds his students, that 5,000 people
a day die of HIV/AIDS in Africa, some 3,000 innocent people choked
to death on poisonous gas in Bohpal in Central India, on Dec. 2,
1984, and another 14,000 people, according to some estimates, have
since died because of that Union Carbide tragedy.
Or consider the United Nations report, “Children
on the Brink,” which details how 20 million children in Africa,
and potentially even more in China, will be orphaned by AIDS by
the end of this decade just eight short years from now. Is it
any wonder that observers around the world look at Americans and
think we have a problem with perspective? Indeed, so pervasive are
American media myths that, as Mindich and other critics have noted,
Americans no longer have to listen to or read the news to feel as
if they know what’s going on (and a shrinking news audience may
confirm this trend).
Combating the Trend?
Instead, the stories just run together. So one suicide
bombing looks no different from the next. One crime story looks
no different from the next. One devastating flood or drought or
famine or epidemic looks no different from all the others that have
come before, and still are to come. It’s too easy to succumb, as
Entman says, to “the daily diet of junk journalism and its superficial
picture of the world.” In the present-day world, however, superficialities
and misunderstandings can result in tragedy of horrific proportions.
The simplistic paltriness of news information could injure our nation,
and our world, beyond imagination.
How can American journalism combat this trend? First,
with courage courage to change our practices. Next, with faith
faith in our readers’ and viewers’ capacity to digest both the
complex and the unsettling. Some journalists thought that the sheer
magnitude of 9/11 would force the kind of media change that Americans
so desperately need to live in and respond to a troubled, complex
world. Sadly, however, we are still hoping and we are still waiting.
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9/11 ONE YEAR LATER:
HOW HAVE WE CHANGED?
Alison M. Jaggar, Women’s
Studies Program and Department
of Philosophy
One year after the attacks on the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon, I am concerned about recent changes in the way
the word "terrorism" is used.
What is terrorism?
In its central meaning, "terrorism" refers
to politically motivated attacks on civilian targets. Terrorism
is designed both to damage those targets and to create terror among
the civilians who identify with them.
Terrorism is distinguished from war by the fact that
its targets are civilian or private, not symbols or representatives
of state power, such as political leaders or military forces. Of
course, war as well as terrorism is harmful to civilians but the
so-called rules of war forbid direct military attacks on civilian
targets. When harm to civilians does occur, as an unintended by-product
of military activity, it is nowadays called "collateral damage."
Terrorism is distinguished from ordinary crimes by its motive, which
is ideological rather than personal.
Who are the agents of terrorism?
In today’s Western media, terrorists are usually
portrayed as crazed individuals, such as the so-called Unabomber,
or as fanatical members of ideological groups. Indeed crazed individuals
and fanatical ideologues regularly carry out terrorist attacks in
most countries of the world, as do people who are regularly sane.
Sometimes these fanatics target members of unpopular or stigmatized
groups, such as religious, ethnic, racialized, or immigrant minorities
or gypsies. Attacks like this are often portrayed as expressions
of personal prejudice or hatred but, when they are intended to intimidate
other members of the group to which the person(s) attacked belongs,
they should really be understood as politically motivated acts of
terror. Lynchings, cross-burnings or attacks on abortion clinics
or clinic employees are often terrorist acts, not simply individual
hate crimes.
In addition to being perpetrated by private individuals
and non-governmental organizations, terrorism may also be perpetrated
by states. Indeed, the use of the word "terrorism" to
describe political violence derives from the French Revolution’s
"reign of terror," when the Jacobin government executed
large numbers of civilians in an effort to stifle dissent.
States may be terrorist in several ways. For example:
- In wartime, states may order their military forces to attack
enemy populations. State sanctioned terror by military forces
is distinct in principle from the unauthorized attacks on civilians
that soldiers often commit. For example, mass rapes ordered
by political authorities are very different from even widespread
raping committed against orders.
- Governments may also harass and terrorize segments of their
own populations by means of discriminatory legislation and law
enforcement. The terrorization of Jews by the government of
Nazi Germany was distinct from anti-Semitic acts perpetrated
by individual citizens.
- States may engage in terrorism covertly as well as overtly,
using unofficial militias to assassinate political opponents
or labor leaders. In the 1970s and 1980s, extra-judicial death
squads linked with the government were common in several Latin
American countries.
- Finally, covert state terrorism, like overt terrorism, may
extend beyond a country’s own borders. In the 1980s, the United
States government supported the so-called "contras"
(counter-revolutionaries) in Nicaragua, who sought to undermine
the Sandinista government by attacking farms and clinics.
State terrorism has always caused far more harm than
non-state terrorism for the obvious reason that the resources available
to states are typically far more powerful and destructive than those
available to private individuals or groups. Since 9/11 last year,
however, state terrorism goes increasingly unacknowledged.
Recent distortions in the public understanding
of terrorism
Last year’s dramatic attacks on the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon have become so widely accepted as paradigms of
terrorism that attacks that do not resemble those are often not
considered terrorist today. Two related distortions in the public
understanding of terrorism are especially disturbing. One regards
all attacks by irregular or guerrilla forces as terrorist, even
if their targets not civilian but instead are soldiers or warships.
The second regards no attacks by official military forces as terrorist,
even if their targets are civilian.
These two tendencies are clearly illustrated in much
reporting of events in Israel and Palestine. In the U.S. media,
Palestinian fighters are almost always described as terrorist, even
when their targets are military rather than civilian. Yet Palestinian
forces are necessarily irregular because Palestine is not recognized
as a state. Conversely, the Israeli Defense Forces are never described
as terrorist, even when they are attacking targets that seem indisputably
civilian, such as ambulances and homes.
Such slippages in the concept of terrorism prejudice
moral and political judgements. When all violence by irregular forces
is labeled terrorist, even if it is directed against political or
military targets, then it is automatically condemned. It becomes
impossible to justify any attacks by rebels without uniforms, because
their actions can never be recognized as acts of war. Conversely,
when the possibility of state terrorism is forgotten, government
sanctioned violence against civilians escapes the condemnation it
deserves.
My purpose here is primarily conceptual. I do not
wish to take a stand on any aspect of the Israel/ Palestine conflict.
I invoke contemporary reporting of this conflict only to illustrate
a recent distortion in the meaning of the word terrorism. If we
are to evaluate situations fairly, we need to use the word terrorism
accurately.
Could the United States war on terror be terrorist
itself?
A war on terror sounds as morally unobjectionable
as a war on disease or a war on poverty. However, even wars with
just aims may be pursued by unjust means. Some people are concerned
that the United States government may be using the rhetoric of fighting
terrorism as a justification for supporting and even engaging in
terrorist activities. For example,
- In a NYT Op Ed article (August 20) entitled "Losing
Our Best Allies in the War on Terror," Jeffrey Goldfarb,
a professor of sociology at New York’s New School, worries that
current United States policies are alienating the world’s democrats.
He reports that many foreign students enrolled in his courses
on democracy and diversity believe that, in the name of fighting
terrorism, the U.S. government is supporting crack downs on
democracy advocates by authoritarian regimes around the world.
Among such regimes, Goldfarb cites the Philippines, Indonesia,
Singapore, Malaysia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
- Other critics are concerned that the USA Patriot Act, hastily
passed in the aftermath of 9/11 and signed into law on October
26, 2001, violates several parts of the United States constitution.
Representative Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) has charged that
the USA Patriot Act violates the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth
and Eighth Amendments. The laws comprising USA Patriot Act are
so repressive and permit such discriminatory application that
many critics argue that they authorize agents of the U.S. government
to terrorize some United States citizens and residents.
- In a recent article entitled "The Troubling New Face
of America," (Washington Post, September 5, 2002)
former president Jimmy Carter criticized the treatment of several
hundred captured Taliban soldiers imprisoned on the United States
military base at Guantanamo Bay. He quoted the United States
Secretary of Defense as declaring that these soldiers would
not be released even if they were someday tried and found to
be innocent. Carter observed that such actions resemble those
of abusive regimes that historically have been condemned by
American presidents. He stated that the United States, "formerly
admired almost universally as the pre-eminent champion of human
rights¼has become the foremost target
of respected international organization concerned about the
basic principles of democratic life."
Conclusion
Because terrorism is widely condemned, debates about
which actions are terrorist are frequently passionate. Such debates
cannot always be settled easily. For instance:
- Attackers whose motives are unknown may be terrorists or simply
thugs.
- In wartime, it is often difficult to distinguish deliberate
terror from accidental "collateral damage," because
it may be debated how far particular harms to civilians were
foreseeable, avoidable or officially condoned.
- It may be difficult to draw the line between state terror
and the systemic injustice of harshly discriminatory laws or
practices of law enforcement.
- Some may deny that attacks on property, as opposed to persons,
are acts of terror. Contemporary mainstream media usually conflate
the two but anarchists have long distinguished assassination
from sabotage.
- What counts as a civilian target may also be debated. For
instance, workers in weapons industries may be seen as integral
parts of a war machine and members of colonizing populations
may be regarded as representatives of an invasive state.
The possibility of disputing a concept’s applicability
in a particular situation does not render that concept useless.
All concepts have "fuzzy borders," even the most commonly
used. However, concepts do become worthless if their use degenerates
to the purely rhetorical. President Reagan described the United
States supported contras as freedom fighters, famously asserting,
"I am a contra." (He also described terrorist Jonas Savimbi
as Angola’s Abraham Lincoln and the Taliban as the moral equivalent
of the founding fathers.) If those on my side are always freedom
fighters and those on yours are always terrorists, then "terrorist"
and "freedom fighter" lose both their descriptive meaning
and their moral force.
In order for the term "terrorism" to retain
any significance, it is important to remember that its central meaning
is politically motivated violence against civilian targets. And
in order for us to retain any moral credibility, it is important
that we condemn all such violence, whether it is perpetrated by
Timothy McVeigh, by the Klu Klux Klan, by al Qaeda, or by governments
far or near. If the government of the United States turns to terror,
it will be the most powerful and dangerous terrorist in the world.
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Cold War Redux
Ira Chernus, Religious
Studies
The most important intellectual change in the past
year is our return to the language and worldview of the cold war
era. In U.S. public discourse, one important theme has always been
the idea of having a divinely ordained mission, of being God’s chosen
people. But chosen to do what? For most of our history, the answers
to that question spoke of endless progress, changing things for
the better for all Americans and, many believed, for all humanity.
Cold War Discourse
The prevailing idea of mission changed dramatically
during the cold war. The justifications for the U.S. cold war effort
were mostly about preventing things from getting worse. Americans
got used to the idea that the enemy might well be there forever.
The best to hope for was containing this enemy forever. An impermeable
wall of containment supposedly insured national security.
Political, social, and economic changes around the
world constantly threatened to pierce that wall. So U.S. political
discourse was dominated by fears of these changes. Our nation’s
special role in the world was no longer to create positive change.
It was now, above all, to prevent disastrous change, to make sure
that the world did not get terribly worse.
In the late 1960s, U.S. leaders tried to prevent
change in Vietnam. The reaction to the Vietnam War set off all sorts
of change in this country. Nixon and Reagan came to power as the
great defenders of the status quo. It is no accident that the cold
war years saw our domestic political life shift so noticeably to
the right. If our mission was to conserve things, to prevent change
around the world, it was only natural to become more conservative
at home too.
When the Berlin Wall came crashing down in 1989,
the whole cold war structure of language and meaning threatened
to come crashing down with it. National leaders and pundits rushed
to shore it up. They warned us that the world was not less, but
more, dangerous, precisely because we could not know who the enemy
was. When George W. Bush was running for president in 2000, he said,
"Today, we still have enemies. We don’t know who they are,
but we know they are out there."
Ending the Era of Confusion
On September 11, 2001, we learned who they are. The
era of confusion ended. Our new mission became, in Bush’s words,
"the destruction and the defeat of the global terror network."
We were back on familiar ground, squared off against "the evil
ones" who hate our freedoms, marshalling all our resources
to prevent catastrophic change.
One important question was left open, however. Were
we back in the days of World War II, uniting for a war that would
end only with the enemy’s unconditional surrender? It sounded that
way when Bush said that terrorists "follow in the path of fascism,
Nazism and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the
way to where it ends in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies."
Yet Bush said something else that night, which went
largely unnoticed. He described the new war on terrorism as "a
task that does not end." Vice-President Cheney agreed: "There's
not going to be an end date when we're going to say, ’There, it's
all over with.’'' Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged
that U.S. actions "surely will not" eliminate terrorism
"completely from the face of the Earth." In other words,
the goal is not unconditional surrender but merely containment,
just as it was in the cold war. Rumsfeld was quite candid about
this. The "new kind of war" is not so new, he admitted.
"It undoubtedly will prove to be a lot more like a cold war
than a hot war.''
Bush and his administration realize that they can’t
rally public support for a war aiming only at containment. Most
of the time, they say that the war on terrorism will end with something
like unconditional surrender. But the truth is already out. Who
really believes that we can ever put an end even to Al-Qaeda, much
less to all terrorist networks everywhere? Just as in the cold war
years, we must assume that the enemy, in one form or another, will
always be at our gates.
The Uses of Evil
The parallel with the cold war was strengthened when
the president told us that we must fight an "axis of evil."
The administration has consistently linked terrorism and "axis
of evil" nations as two sides of same threat. This creates
an image of all the evildoers as a highly organized structure. The
war on terrorism thus becomes a much more organized and familiar
kind of struggle between the nations of good and the nations of
evil. And, as in the cold war years, we are told that we must be
willing to use weapons of mass destruction precisely because the
enemy has and may use those weapons.
Once the "axis of evil" is linked to terrorism,
which can never be wholly eliminated, it implies that "the
axis of evil" is a threat that may be contained, but never
eliminated. The war against evil will be endless, giving the government
an endless justification for giving itself more and more wartime
powers.
During the 2000 presidential campaign the candidates
debated about how to create a better future, especially by educating
our children more effectively. Today, such talk has virtually disappeared.
The real debates are about competing plans to prevent dangerous
changes and maintain relative stability. The more we are convinced
that insecurity is perpetual, the more we fear and resist fundamental
change. Our slogan is not, "United we move" or "United
we progress," but "United we stand."
The National Insecurity State
As long as insecurity dominates the public landscape,
there will be fear of change of every kind. The polls tell us that
the public generally favors all sorts of liberal proposals for domestic
improvement. Yet conservatives manage to block most of those plans.
They play skillfully on the fear of change that is deeper than the
hope for change. Even though, in the latest polls, a majority once
again says that the country is headed in the wrong direction, there
is no overwhelming demand for basic change.
This is not surprising. When constant change provokes
widespread fear and despair, the conviction of unchanging insecurity
engenders a paradoxical kind of confidence. In the face of a massive
shock to our cultural assumptions, there is a strange satisfaction
in returning to the familiar terrain of the cold war. The prospect
of another long era of cold war erases the uncertainties of the
‘90s. It returns our culture to the certitude of simplistic absolutes.
It tells us that nothing has really changed and nothing need ever
change.
That promise of continuity is immensely reassuring.
It offers the best reason to go on resisting change. Perhaps many
Americans now look ahead with more hope precisely because they can
now believe that there is nothing really new to hope for, that the
future will not be fundamentally different from the present. They
cling to the insecurity that justifies their resistance to change.
They take comfort in knowing that the explosions of September 11,
which we are told changed everything, could not shake the foundations
of the national insecurity state.
The problem¾ the fear
of terrorist attack¾ has become the solution
to our cultural confusion. This is the paradox that keeps us trapped
in the conservative politics of the national insecurity state. As
we mourn the tragic deaths of September 11, we should also mourn
the most tragic death of all: the death of hope for a genuinely
better, more secure, more peaceful future.
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Some
Consequences of September 11
Tom Mayer, Department
of Sociology
The destruction of the World Trade Center and the
concomitant murder of three thousand human beings was a terrible
crime. The magnitude and the suddenness of this horrendous deed
have deeply impacted American consciousness and induced major changes
within American politics. I will argue that the political changes
induced by September 11 are by no means novel, but activate long
standing tendencies within American society.
I will also argue that our government’s response
to the crime of September 11 has made matters far worse. A unique
opportunity to exercise constructive leadership and move the world
in a positive direction has been lost. One year later the political
consequences of September 11, for the United States and for the
world, seem almost entirely malign. I discuss four of these consequences:
accelerated imperialism, eroding democracy, legitimized racism,
and hollow values.
Accelerated Imperialism
By virtually any definition the United States has
long been an imperialist country. Imperialism, however, comes in
many varieties. Since September 11 the arrogance and aggressiveness
of the American polity have grown enormously. United States political
leaders now claim the right to attack any state they accuse of direct
or indirect involvement with terrorism. Over the past year our leaders
have publicly discussed the possibility of militarily assaulting
as many as 60 different states. They adamantly interpret terrorism
to exclude any past, present, or future activities of the American
state no matter how violent.
In its current unilateral mode of operation, the
United States government routinely disregards the United Nations,
ignores international law, and tears up inconvenient treaties. Our
leaders claim the right to make preemptive attacks, with preemption
being hardly more than a sanitized word for military aggression.
As I write these words President Bush and his associates are preparing
an unprovoked attack upon Iraq, a country with no demonstrable link
to the crime of September 11. Over the past year rhetorical arrogance
about the supreme virtues of American society has exceeded all bounds,
and our leaders frequently indulge disrespectful diatribes towards
the rest of the world. Such bullying passes for world leadership.
Russia is currently the second largest military spender,
but the military budget of the USA is about six times the size of
Russia’s. Indeed, our military budget exceeds that of the next 24
countries combined.
Eroding Democracy
In the absence of jeopardy virtually any society
can afford to be tolerant. The reality of democratic freedom is
only tested during times of crisis. In the crisis emanating from
September 11 American democracy has performed rather badly. In the
name of combating terrorism important freedoms are being dismantled.
Political groups can now be placed under surveillance, infiltrated,
and even disrupted merely for opposing government policy. The rights
of non-citizens have been severely abridged. They can now be arrested
and detained just for engaging in constitutionally protected speech.
If suspected of harboring a terrorist, a non-citizen can be tried
in secret by a military tribunal.
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution,
the right of privacy, is under siege. Since September 11, secret
searches and wiretaps have become increasingly possible. The FBI
and other government investigating agencies can easily subpoena
student records, medical files, private financial documents, mental
health records, library lending files, and many more previously
protected documents. Evidence suggests that a phalanx of private
informers – styled as ultra-patriots – is being recruited and trained.
Even the possibility of torture has received serious consideration
in cases involving suspected terrorists.
Legitimized Racism
American culture, forged in the context of African
slavery and its Jim Crow aftermath, is profoundly susceptible to
racism. In recent decades overt discrimination was fortunately rendered
politically incorrect. Since September 11, however, we have witnessed
a resurgence of official and unofficial racism. Throughout our country
Muslims and people from the Middle East or South Asia are treated
with suspicion, contempt, and sometimes open hostility. Racial profiling
by the FBI and INS has become routine and unconcealed.
In the first three months after September 11 about
1,200 Arabs, Muslims, and South Asians were arrested. Through racial
targeting over 8,000 immigrants from the Middle East and South Asia
have been subjected to interrogation. Deportation orders for about
6,000 Middle Eastern and South Asian people are being expedited.
Arab culture and Islamic religion are regularly bashed in both mass
media and scholarly publications.
Hollow Values
Although American leaders like to harangue the rest
of the world about values and morality, it is painfully obvious
that we currently lack a moral or political vision that can inspire
other people. Endless consumption? To most thoughtful human beings
it seems morally vacuous and environmentally destructive. Electoral
democracy? Our electoral process is choreographed by wealth, steered
by media images, and subject to gross manipulation. The higher levels
of American government are strongly influenced if not controlled
by the rich. Equality? This seems a distant memory or perhaps a
bad joke. By most measures economic inequality in the United States
now exceeds that of any other advanced capitalist society; not to
mention our endemic racial inequality. Family values? American families
are internationally renowned for their violence, sexual abuse, and
instability.
Notwithstanding this overarching reality of moral
uncertainty and political oligarchy, we have, since September 11,
experienced a deluge of flags and flag waving. The slogan "united
we stand" appears on television ads, billboards, stamps, and
bumper stickers. But exactly what do we stand united for? Being
number one? Maintaining American power? Obedience to the imperial
state? Pretense of moral virtue? Reliance upon the flag inadvertently
advertises both the substantive hollowness of American values and
the political inarticulateness of the American people. Opinion polls
– those alienated plebiscites conducted by the mass media – substitute
for political dialog and public deliberation.
Nor can the flag be a benign symbol of affection
for American society. For the subaltern subjects of the American
imperium, the stars and stripes has become emblematic of cultural,
economic, and military domination plus our endemic national narcissism.
Internally, flag waiving silences dissent and mandates blind patriotism
as the principal civic virtue. The current tidal wave of flags cuts
off serious discussion about the pressing problems of American society
and about non-violent paths towards preventing a recurrence of September
11.
The Futile War
Terrorism is certainly a crime, but war is not the
way to defeat it. Despite our immense military prowess, the United
States will not win the so-called war against terrorism. Exclusive
emphasis on other people’s terrorism blinds us to our own violence,
which has usually been far more destructive. Blindness to our own
violence will, in turn, provoke more terrorism.
Private or non-state terrorism is a classic weapon
of the weak against the strong. Terrorism does not enable the weak
to defeat the strong, but it does establish a certain parity between
the two. It allows the weak to injure the strong and thus to establish
a certain equality with the latter. Retribution by the strong may
be a thousand times more deadly, yet the capacity to injure goes
both ways. This affirmation of equivalence, of a mutual human vulnerability,
is the enduring attraction of terrorism. The willingness of the
terrorist to die is token of his good faith. He seeks not personal
advantage and, by sharing the fate of the victim, the terrorist
lays claim to a common moral universe.
If the United States insists on being the imperialist
overlord of the world, it is setting itself up for more terrorist
attacks. Immunity to external influence and military invulnerability
invites the terrorist response as the only possible self-assertion
by the dominated. Al Qaida could be destroyed, but the terrorist
impulse will continue.
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