By Luis Rubio
Nothing is more telling about the recent terrorist attacks in the
United States than the nature of their targets. The Twin Towers in New
York City represented the future, modernity, America’s optimistic
outlook of the world and, more recently, of globalization. The terrorist
attacks constitute a direct hit against those values, which is the main
reason why the whole Western world immediately rallied in support. But
that’s not the whole story. Many people around the world outside the
traditionally defined Western nations showed profound consternation, but
others clearly did not. Many citizens of Third World nations did not
jump out in solidarity with America and most of those governments, even
when outwardly supportive, were less than wholeheartedly committed to
their words.
The purpose of this essay is to look into the rationale that lies in
the minds of many of those peoples and governments. The idea is to
create a framework that may help the reader understand another
perspective on the events of September eleven. This approach does not
attempt to diminish the gravity of the attacks or in any way to justify
them, but rather to analyze the nature of those responses and explore
their meaning.
Not having been directly affected by the attacks, all other nations
around had to take a position on these. Some, like the Canadians, did
not even blink; if anything, their complaints had to do with being taken
for granted for something they were already doing anyway. Others
reacted ably or less so, but largely paying lip service to the cause
against a common international enemy, without giving too much weight to
their response inside their societies. In some cases, social responses,
for or against supporting the United States, forced their respective
governments into action. Either way, the intellectual, political and
academic debate in many of those societies concentrated on three issues:
the culprits, the more profound causes of the events, and the theories
and hypothesis that attempt to explain the complexity of present world
reality, as well as to propose alternative future scenarios.
The first thing that was noticeable in the attacks was the symbolism
of the chosen targets. Although the terrorists did not directly claim
responsibility for their acts, their actions speak for themselves: they
are against heresy, against what they see as godless in the way that
modern society (the archetype of which is undoubtedly the United States)
has come about. The favorite targets of terrorists in the Middle East
have not been religious schools, synagogues or, what would be far more
symbolic, settlements in the occupied territories, but shopping malls,
discos and fast food outlets like McDonald’s and Sbarros. There could
hardly be any doubt that it is disbelievers, in a very twisted religious
definition, or modernity, in a narrower sense, that were attacked.
The latter notwithstanding, the debate in many intellectual and
political circles around the world took a different slant. Seen from
afar, many observers thought that the attacks, as bloody and heinous as
they might be, were justified. Their views ranged from the specific to
the abstract, but all coincided in at least one factor: they evidenced a
profound resentment, if not hatred, against the United States. Some
thought that the Americans had earned the attacks because of their
support of Israel (or their indifference towards the plight of the
Palestinians); others explained it in terms of the abuse that they
believe globalization represents in the world, in the form of
destruction of traditional ways of living or exploitation of the poor by
the wealthy; another approach was that America sustains illegitimate
regimes in power. What these observations have in common is that they
show a deep misunderstanding of the United States, as well as resentment
against it. It is needless to argue that those positions immediately
led to a very peculiar form of moral relativism. Terrorism is to be
condemned, many of them said, but sometimes it may be justified.
The peculiarity of the charges against the United States is that they
don’t match with either the way America normally behaves or much less
so with the way Americans see themselves. As any sample of books written
by American academics will immediately reveal, there can hardly be any
question that the United States has often been an arrogant power,
sometimes hypocritical and frequently unwise. Also, there’s no question
that those and other features of American behavior and example sometimes
cause envy and resentment. As The Economist argued, “America defends
its interests, sometimes skillfully, sometimes clumsily, just as others
countries do. Since power, like nature, abhors a vacuum, it stems into
places where disorder reigns. On the whole, it should do so more, not
less often” (September 22nd, 2001). What separates the United States
from all previous major powers in history is that it is the least
territorial and the most idealistic of them all. Americans see
themselves as a benign power and are often embarrassed by the use of
power, and much more so of force; hardly the behavior that was the
trademark of the Greek, Roman, British or Soviet empires in their times.
In stark contrast with those hegemons, Americans like to be loved as
they project their power. There’s no question Americans have an uphill
selling job to do.
Lukewarm, when not negative, reactions in many places around the
world are not difficult to fathom. For good or ill, American foreign
policy has not always been all that successful, particularly in winning
the hearts and minds of people at large. Also, expediency, particularly
during the years of the Cold War, often meant supporting, and often
sustaining, unpopular, illegitimate governments in power. It is easy to
see this as a cause for resentment, as millions of Asians, Africans and
Latin Americans endlessly exhibit. But what these terrorist strikes show
is that some people go well beyond resentment. While many Latin
Americans or Asians responded to the attacks by paying lip service to
the United States and then going back to their business of criticizing
it, the hatred shown in the attacks themselves is another story.
The main difference among those that resent the United States and
those that attacked it seems to involve the religious component. The
growing politicization of Islam, particularly against the United States,
is nothing new. Many Muslim and Arab governments, usually of a
semi-authoritarian nature have often become promoters of a negative view
of America in order to survive. Hence, they have allowed for all of
America’s ills to become the only image those societies receive.
Inevitably, not only the image, but also perceptions of the United
States end up being distorted. Furthermore, there has long been a
noticeable split between moderate political leaders and radical citizens
in several nations of that region. Fundamentalist Islamic groups have
plagued key countries for years and their governments have catered to
them. Needless to argue, in this context, the United States cannot be
perceived as an honest broker in the Middle East peace negotiations or
as a liberal society when it is seen as sustaining an illegitimate
government. In accommodating its opposition, the regime that has been
sustained by Washington ends up biting the hand of its benefactor.
Many have tried to explain these dynamics in a broad context. Over
the past decade two American academics put forth their grand views of
the future. In an article titled The End of History, published in 1989,
Francis Fukuyama argued that the American victory over the Soviet Union
would end all disputes and, thus, open up the world for a different kind
of development. The end of history was meant to be a metaphor for the
beginning of an era free of major conflict, where the values of
democracy and capitalism would reign. Around the same time, taking a
different approach, but equally ambitious, Samuel Huntington wrote The
Clash of Civilizations. Implicitly rejecting Fukuyama’s benign take,
Huntington’s main argument was that the future would no longer be
characterized by conflict among nations but among civilizations, ideas
and cultures. Over the years, many observers thought that Huntington had
won the intellectual argument and the recent terrorist attacks seemed
to confirm that view.
Huntington’s thesis is extremely powerful and attractive and, at
first sight, would in fact seem to be confirmed. Despite appearances,
however, the events of September eleven tend to weaken his argument. The
nature of those attacks and the multiplicity of reactions that they
have produced around the world suggest that the clash and confrontation
is less among civilizations than within them. Just as there are profound
differences in the West, the Islamic world is besieged by conflict
about the past and about the future. Although the specifics might be
different, including the language, the disputes in the Muslim world, as
in Europe or Latin America, are about the same things: about capitalism
and globalization, the environment and industry, democracy and freedom,
regulation and free markets. The contrasts and contradictions between a
modern and progressive vision and a medieval one are not a privilege of
the West.
Does this restatement of Huntington’s thesis change the debate? In a
way it does. Fukuyama’s thesis was both very simplistic at first sight,
while more sophisticated if one delved into it carefully. If one accepts
the hypothesis that most societies are split into different cultures
(using Huntington’s terminology), then Fukuyama may ultimately be right:
after all, the core of his argument was that liberal society would win
out. In this sense, he could easily argue that in many Muslim nations
there’s a modern, liberal society in the making that will ultimately win
out. Whichever it may be, the fact remains that the causes and culprits
of these events are more complex than it would appear at first sight
and expose deep historical roots.
In light of the attacks, there are two ways to see the future. One,
the one that accepts the thesis of the clash of civilizations, would
look for an all-out assault against the alleged culprits and the nations
that harbor them. The other, one that recognizes the complexity of the
phenomenon and its inherent shades of gray, would take a far more
parsimonious view of the future. While military action may be necessary,
the concerns of those that espouse a more complex reading of the events
point to the damage that might occur to the values that inspire
American democracy – freedom and due process of law – and to the rights
of the innocent civilians that could suffer from a reprisal. In fact,
history has shown that one of the strongest root-causes of terrorism
lies in the abuse, torture and violation of rights that innocent people
suffer, which then turn them into blind fanatics or radicals seeking
revenge. One way to guarantee future terrorist attacks lies in creating
and multiplying its seeds by abusing innocent populations.
The demand for retribution and revenge is easy to explain and
justify. Americans have every right to feel attacked, violated and
abused. And they have been. Punishment of the culprits should be
exemplary. But that punishment should not be, ought not to be, at the
expense of the values that are the mainstay of the West and of the
United States in particular, such as liberty, the rule of law and
democracy. The reason for this is not only moral, but also essentially
practical. The best way to nurture the hatred and the nihilism that were
shown in these events is by responding with more hatred in the form of
unjustifiable destruction, violation of the dignity and rights of
innocent people and the abandonment of the basic features of the rule of
law, which is what differentiates an autocracy from a democracy, of
which the United States is the world’s prime example.
Terrorism has as its prime objective not only to destroy and
demoralize, but also to foster a sense of chaos. It seeks to destroy the
spine of a society by undermining its values and generating forces
willing to sacrifice its very democratic nature in order to confront the
common enemy. In this sense, as bin Laden’s statements exemplify, the
terrorists’ main aim is political: they use terror to advance a cause.
In this, counter to conventional wisdom, terrorists are absolutely
rational: they know what the want and have found a way to advance their
interests. What these terrorists may not have counted on is that their
own front is not unanimous about their cause. The deep social divisions
that are obvious in places such as Algeria, but also in Egypt, are at
least as profound as those in Western nations. Given this, it is
critical to fight terrorism with weapons that could ultimately defeat
it, rather than running the risk of further nurturing it with the wrong
measures.
Not all societies have developed and consolidated a democratic and
liberal culture, such as that of the United States or many European
nations. Few have placed citizenship and rights as the raison d’être of
democracy and development. Although this may be seen as a Eurocentric
perspective, anyone who has observed the dynamics of conflict in
societies as varied and different as China, Egypt, Mexico, Argentina or
Indonesia, would end up recognizing that no society has unanimity of
views about the future. Not all Saudis share the same values or outlook,
just as not all Americans do. There are significant philosophical and
cultural cleavages in every society. The question, from a liberal
perspective (in a classical sense) is how to help strengthen those parts
of each society that are liberal and Western in outlook and skew the
odds of their success – but with the weapons of a liberal society.
The problems of open and democratic societies are not new. Decades
ago, an eminent philosopher, Karl Popper, wrote an exceptional essay
about the unique difficulties that liberal societies confront. In The
Open Society and its Enemies, Popper argued that in liberal societies
there are always remnants of the tribalism from which they come and that
the shock of transition to modern society frequently creates
reactionary movements that attempt to return to their origins. Modernity
and tribalism thus enter into conflict, each trying to have its way.
The fanaticism that motivates the terrorist may be explained by these
tensions. But what September eleven proves is that these fights can be
extremely bloody and violent.
The issue of response and retribution is as complex as the root
causes of the conflict. The easy response is to attack in an
indiscriminate fashion everything and everybody that looks like a
terrorist or that fits some profile or country of origin. History is
plagued with examples of perfectly innocent people ending giving up all
hope after being ruthlessly tortured or attacked. The problem with
liberal societies is that, in order to remain liberal, they have to act
within the framework of the rule of law above and beyond the expedient
use of authority of firepower. Power has its uses, and it must be
employed when it is warranted and in a way that sustains the broader
issue of sustaining the liberal democratic values. The battle against
terrorism has to be won with the appropriate weapons, those that will
produce a better place to live in. To paraphrase John Womack of Harvard:
democracy does not produce, by itself, a decent way of living; rather,
it is decent ways of living that make democracy possible.
http://essays.ssrc.org/10yearsafter911/terrorism-and-freedom-an-outside-view/
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