|
 f one talks at campuses
or on the radio in support of the current American military response,
the staccato of both hostile questions and the questioners themselves
often blurs into a depressing pattern. What follows is a mélange
from the dozens of actual inquiries I have encountered since
September 11, along with the more or less standard replies.
The
Pacifist
(The question is rarely presented as a question, but rather as
a quite heated and very un-pacifistic rant — with ample references
to little-known foundations, books, and the questioner's own high-minded
efforts and programs.)
Q. Violence
begets violence. What did war ever solve? Do we have to reply in
kind — to get down to their level? Haven't we learned more than
"an eye for an eye" in the last thousand years? You cannot
bomb in my name.
A. Violence
can, in fact, often breed an endless circle of violence (note Northern
Ireland) — but only if there is no clear moral consensus,
and it is practiced solely in equal measure. But overwhelming violence
in response to great evil, while tragic, is not therein evil. Such
a military response constitutes real humanity and bravery because
it is not rhetorical or cheap, and stops the killing on the part
of the killers. Those who work in peril 20 hours a day on carriers
and behind enemy lines on the ground did not ask for this war, but
they are nonetheless fighting to ensure that their own children
and those of others to come do not have to make the sacrifices they
are now so bravely enduring.
War — whether
to end slavery, to ruin the Nazi death camps, or to dismantle the
Japanese military — has in fact ended great evil inflicted on millions.
And if we don't reply now — as we didn't to Hitler after Czechoslovakia,
the Italians in Ethiopia, or the Japanese in Nanking — murder unchecked
goes on to kill millions. Ask the Cambodians, Bosnians, or Tutus.
We have learned from the last 2,500 years that human nature is unchanging
and that the well-intentioned efforts to disarm and outlaw war are
dangerous — and that such utopian pacifism is always at someone
else's expense: usually those poorer, less educated, and not so
"sophisticated" as yourself.
Can you please
tell me what you would have advocated on December 8, 1941? And if
we cannot in your name bomb the source of our terror, can our domestic
forces at least use deadly force here at home to protect civilians
from more crashing airliners and suicide bombers?
The
Voice of Moral Equivalence
(Like the
Pacifist, the moralist offers no realistic plan of action to deal
with September 11, but wishes to force you to concede that you are
in fact a murderer like the Taliban).
Q. They bomb
us, we bomb them. They kill children, now we kill children. So what
is the difference between them and us?
A. Quite a
lot. First, we do know that almost 6,000 innocent were murdered,
but we do not know how many Afghani citizens have been killed
— either due to misplaced American bombs or to Taliban shells falling
back among their citizens or to Taliban executions and terrorism
against their own people. We do know that it is the deliberate
policy of the Taliban to put their combatants among mosques, hospitals,
and schools to ensure their survival, out of the expectation that
Americans, unlike themselves, would not deliberately inflict collateral
damage. If our enemies know that difference, why do not some of
our own citizens, such as yourself?
For the sake
of argument, let us assume that more than 100 noncombatant Afghanis
have so far been killed. The dead, of course, are the dead, and
their loss is tragic. But there is a difference, a moral difference,
between deliberately targeting civilians in peace and deliberating
attempting to avoid them in war — especially at the risk of endangering
the lives of our own pilots. And just wars have never been waged
with 100 percent moral perfection, but rather — as against Germany
or Japan, for example — with the full knowledge that innocents die
in order that the mass murder of their governments be stopped, and
on the expectation that their own lives, and those of their children,
will not in the future be sacrificed as victims of or abettors to
their own government's evil.
The
Europeanist
(The questioner is soft spoken and sometimes condescending, typically
highly educated, well-traveled abroad, and a denizen of either coast.
In a live setting, clapping usually follows his question)
Q. This is
more of the senseless retaliation that is typical of American unilateralism.
After Kyoto and Durban, why should Americans expect European support?
A. Well, the
6,000 dead are ours, not Europe's. And we, not they, must take care
of our own — as we, not they, see fit. Still, although it took 21
days to invoke NATO's Article Five, in theory Europeans and Americans
are not mere friends but military allies, sworn as such under treaty.
The terrorists struck the U.S. first, but not necessarily last —
and might equally have hit the Louvre (cf. the destruction of the
great Buddha in Afghanistan), the Vatican (cf. their deadly rhetoric
about non-Muslims, the murders in Pakistan of Christians, and murmurs
of plots against the Pope), or the Eiffel Tower (as we now know
was once planned). Without a long climate of permissiveness in Europe
for terrorists, much of the present carnage would have been impossible.
We in America were naïve and foolish, but those in Europe were
far more knowingly and deliberately lax. The shores of the southern
Mediterranean and what lies far across the Aegean are much closer
to Europe than America — and most in Europe now recognize that far
better than we. If anything, as our military continues to blast
apart the enemy, small flotillas of European ships will join the
fray before it ends.
The Anti-Americanist
(Full of all sorts of false knowledge, strange, but unsupported
and fascinating, "'facts" and conspiracy theories; usually
his voice breaks into pained stammering by the fourth minute of
the question, which can be summarized by the following.)
Q. Why don't
you admit that this is just more of the same imperialism, and that
we have killed millions all over the globe in places like Iraq,
Serbia, Panama, Grenada, and Haiti?
A. U.N. sanctions
hurt Iraq, but not nearly as much as did its own government, which
built palaces and bought weapons while its people — according to
Iraqi "journalists" — went without. Those who preferred
to act militarily and unilaterally against Saddam Hussein, rather
than by sanctions with the U.N. against the Iraqi people, would
have incurred even greater animus from you. How odd that we were
told to work with the U.N. to obtain embargos, and then, after they
were implemented, they were dubbed "U.S." sanctions. Hussein's
attacks with nuclear and biological warfare, if they reach fruition,
are indiscriminate and will not distinguish you from me; the fact
that we are American, free, and relatively affluent makes us the
same target in his eyes.
The bombing
in Serbia — against Christian butchers of Muslims — saved hundreds
of thousands, as even our European critics now admit. Hundreds,
not millions, were lost through American intervention in
and around the Caribbean. Despite our past unpredictable policy
and sometimes poor planning, most in Panama, Grenada, and Haiti
confess that they enjoy life now more than they did under the tyrannies
we replaced.
The
Military Alarmist
(Usually half-educated, he has culled the Internet for bits and
pieces about Alexander the Great and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.)
Q. Afghanistan
has swallowed up dozens of armies — do we really want another Vietnam?
A. In fact,
Alexander the Great and the British alike were eventually successful
there, and at last defeated far greater armies with their own very
small forces far from home. The Russians gave up because they sought,
insanely, to replace Islam with atheism — and yet after a decade
quit only due to sophisticated American support to their enemies,
and their own collapsing society at home. How strange that, before
the bombing started, we were told that Afghanistan was too formidable
to attack — and then after we obliterated much of the command and
control structure of the Taliban we are now "bullying"
an "asset-poor" country. That Afghanistan might
be more difficult than the Gulf War hardly makes it Vietnam. In
fact, so successful and brilliant have been our war-makers in the
last decade that we now define a three-week war — with hundreds,
if not more likely thousands, of enemy dead, and fewer than five
of ours — as "protracted."
The Islamist
(Usually a visitor from the Middle East, who mentions "Israel"
in the first ten seconds of a very, very, very, long non-question,
ending with…)
Q. America
just won't leave Islam alone. You Americans quit intervening throughout
the world to hurt Muslim nations!
A. The great
killers of Muslims these last decades have been other Muslims —
whether in Iraq, Iran, Jordan and Palestine, or Lebanon. Indigenous
theocracy, homegrown statism, and traditional autocracy — not Israel
or the United States — have impoverished the masses of the Middle
East. The United States has intervened out of its own self-interest,
but also with the result that Muslims have been helped, rather than
hurt — in Kuwait, among the backwaters of Iraq, in Afghanistan,
Somalia, Kosovo, and Bosnia. Our great fault is that we have supported
illegitimate regimes, out of an understandable fear that their overthrow
might produce something like the past reign of terror in Iran and
Algeria, rather than Jeffersonian democracy. Still, promotion of
democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan may be our only chance of salvaging
a viable Middle East policy — and therein thwarting the fundamentalists,
as well as the corrupt and illegitimate Arab moderates who are alike
now enemies of democracy. Israel has about as much to do with the
poverty in Cairo or the undernourished babies in Baghdad as does
life on Mars. What exactly is your question?
The
Advocate of the Palestinians
(Usually on a student visa, he raises the word "Israel"
after second two, and thereafter every third second, until minute
five of the question. Questioner usually announces that he is a
moderate, but then proceeds to prove by voice and tone that he in
fact is hardly moderate at all. He also ends with…)
Q. The events
of September 11 are very sad, BUT only to be expected given
the American bombs Israel uses to kill Palestinian children. Why
are you surprised?
A. I'm not
surprised, but for reasons far different from your own. American
restraint and timidity, not recklessness, got us into this mess.
Bin Laden, like Saddam Hussein, only mentions the Palestinians when
he is desperate and near defeat. Israel — unlike its opponents —
is quite able to craft its own guns and planes without our help.
We deplore the killing, and in the past have supported the concept
of a Palestinian state that has reasonable borders and that pledges
nonviolence toward Israel; in fact, we provide over 100 million
a year to Mr. Arafat and 20 times that to Mr. Mubarak, despite the
animus shown America in their state-controlled papers.
But we are
not stupid either. Despite American prompting, Palestine is not
a democracy; it has no free judiciary, nor any history of
protecting human rights. It waged its first three wars not to free
the West Bank, but to destroy Israel. And we remember Mr. Arafat's
past alliance with Saddam Hussein and the present cheering in the
streets of the West Bank at the news of our dead — not unlike the
similar jubilation there a decade ago at the rumors that the Iraqi
SCUDs landing in Tel Aviv were laden with gas. We are humans, not
gods, and — like you, in fact — have a long memory. If you dislike
us so, perhaps, by mutual agreement, for a year or two Americans
will promise not to visit Palestine and you should not visit us.
And finally, could we carry on this conversation in safety inside
Palestine?
The
Frightened
(Often refers to kids, suburbs, work — as if he or she alone
has such concerns.)
Q. If we have
the Twin Towers and anthrax now, what can we expect when we kill
bin Laden or invade Iraq — nuclear bombs and smallpox in our streets
and schools? How can we stop this nightmare?
A. In fact,
we can, if we wish, envision all sorts of nightmares. But the anthrax
was postmarked contemporaneously with the World Trade Center ruination,
not after our response in Afghanistan. The enemy is going
to do what it desires until it is stopped by us. Past policies of
accommodation and moderation, not strong responses, have endangered
our children. In every war there is always the unpredictable, but
close analysis of our actions since September 11 suggests that few
Americans have died and many of our enemies have and will.
Kabul is a far more dangerous place than Washington, D.C., and will
become even bleaker still.
Not a soul
believed, in December 1941, that not a soul four years thence would
claim to be a Nazi or Japanese militarist. Yet by 1945, not a soul
bragged to be either — and so it will be with the Taliban and the
bin Ladens, whose fate is already sealed. Such past revolutionary
change in the hearts of millions was not accomplished by therapy,
or by expressions of fear and guilt, but by military force, joined
with humanitarian aid to the humiliated, misled, and soundly defeated.
After December 1941, there was never again an attack on the homeland
of the United States — but quite a lot on Germany, Italy, and Japan.
By any standard of military history, our armed forces are doing
a superb job under the most trying of conditions. Our edgy critics
are clamoring for more movement, yet our observant enemies in the
Middle East are as we speak quietly hoping that such a terrible
arsenal, and the brave professionals who run it, are not turned
loose against them.
The
Academic
(Usually a professor of English, sometimes of political science
or government, in his/her mid 50s — their long questions require
a very short answer.)
Q. Like some
bull in a china shop, you charge into, as it were, some in fact
quite complex issues of culture, race, class, and gender in the
Middle East that simply cannot be resolved by brute military force
used in a very unsophisticated, unfocused, and I must say frightening
way that we saw only too well in Vietnam. We have foolishly spent
much of the world's sympathy accrued after September 11 in just
the sort of unnecessary saber-rattling you so recklessly advocate.
I have argued at length elsewhere that the United States must take
very seriously complaints coming in from almost every corner of
the Islamic world regarding its treatment of Muslims, from Palestine
to Iraq to Saudi Arabia, and its predictable inability to hear the
voices of those who by any reasonable definition are genuinely oppressed.
All too often
we offer only the worst of our culture to those in dire need of
basic necessities; if we must intervene in the internal affairs
of others — something in itself extremely problematic, and which
I remain very troubled by — it would be far better to craft a second
Marshall Plan with no strings attached than to rain down bombs on
children. September 11 was an unfortunate event, for which proper
criminal and judicial measures — albeit with special care to prevent
the ominous onset of a police state — must be addressed; but simply
lashing out at suspected sympathetic governments will only compound
the problem, and leave a legacy of hatred and impoverishment that
will last for generations. By your logic we should bomb the havens
of Boston or Frankfurt, where in fact terrorists were known to have
lived quite safely.
A. Bin Laden
would agree with almost everything you have said.
The
Oil Conspirator
(Prefaces questions with odd bits of information about redwoods,
the ozone layer, and far-distant pipelines with strange names.)
Q. I see that
you deliberately chose not to tell the audience that Cheney and
Bush are oil executives. Do you know anything about the oil in Afghanistan?
Or why we are really in Saudi Arabia?
A. I know about
as much about the oil in Afghanistan as I do about all the purported
oil that was "really" in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive.
If our government has cozied up to corrupt oil producers like the
sheiks in the Gulf, it was not to give Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney impressive
stock portfolios, but more to provide cheap electricity and gas
for the likes of you and me. A principled position of disengagement
from the Middle East would require you, in a significant way, to
extricate from our current electronic-guzzling world — laptops,
SUVs, plane tickets, and vacations abroad — or to support coastal
drilling off Santa Barbara and in the Arctic Circle, or to explain
how hydrogen, solar rays, strong breezes, or batteries can power
our cars, power plants, and aircraft this year. If our policy was
solely designed to protect cheap oil, then we would not be responding
in the Middle East at all — as, in fact, a number of isolationists
and oilmen have cautioned.
The
Ignoramus
(Most often a student activist, and the most interesting of all
the questioners, since he reveals instantaneously the erosion of
the American educational system during the last three decades —
arrogance coupled with ignorance proving a fatal combination.)
Q. Why don't
you mention that the U.S. killed 2 million babies in Iran last year?
A. Wrong country,
wrong number, wrong year — wrong planet?
|
