Where do we go from here?

Andrew Raff
November 01, 2001

On September 11, someone attacked me. While I was more than 70 blocks away from the World Trade Center and not physically harmed, this violence was aimed at me personally. This is not because I am special, because it was not me alone, but rather because I am one of 22 million people who live in the New York metro area. Osama Bin Laden, his followers and those who ascribe to his philosophy want to kill me because I am an American and not because anything that I have done, but rather because of ideas-- representative democracy and religious tolerance are enemies of the fundamentalists the military or political forces that dominate the world, but because those forces represent me.

The terrorist attack on the World Trade Center was not an attack on the institutions of the US, but on the interconnectedness of the world. Those who perpetrated this do not want to compete on the level of everyone else, but want to drag the rest of the globe down with them into either a pre-modern state based on a fundamentalist, warped interpretation of religion or at least into a state of entropy, like the one in which they live. These people can not deal with others who choose to live differently. Instead of tolerance, their world is black and white. They are right and everyone else is wrong. This is a war that is against our very culture. It is not the clash of civilizations of the east against the west or Islam against Christianity and Judaism, but it is a war between politcal liberalism and fundamentalism. We are aided because the vast majority of humans support liberalism, but are hindered because the fundamentalists are fanatics. This is not a war between sovereign states. Rather, it is a war between order and entropy. It is a war between freedom and oppression. Which side is which depends on your perspective. From our worldview, we fight on the side of order and freedom. From our enemies' worldview, we fight on the side of oppression. In their conception of the world, our enemies fight for freedom. This is not a war we want to fight, but this war has been already been declared on us and it will be waged against us, whether we fight back or not.

Our enemy has no conventional assets of territory of military equipment. They are scattered in countries all over the world, including our own. This is an enemy who does not value life-- they are eager to sacrifice their own lives. They are not threatened by death. This is an enemy who we can not fight using our greatest strenggths-- our ability to draw on a massive industrial base to project large amounts of force globally. This is an enemy who fights us using our own resources-- our freedom, our global economic interdependence. They attacked world trade, but also use it to finance their operations. We are at a severe disadvantage. We are not preapred to fight this war. But we must prepare. We face an enemy who has no regard for human life, including those of civilians and even their own. We can not lose our regard for life. We must fight them using the rule of law. We can only do this with the cooperation of the rest of the civilized world. The entire international finance system must be an ally for us to win this war. Police forces around the world must be allies. Global corporations and NGOs are under attack as much as states.

This was an attack not just on the US, but on the interconnected world, which is not just the West anymore. "We" includes the US, Canada, Europe, Russia and China. As the leader of that world, the US will have to lead this fight, even though we would prefer not to. Unlike all other foriegn wars in US history since the War of 1812, this war will have a theater on our own soil. Even though we entered WWII after being attacked, that was in Hawaii, which was not a state in 1941. On September 11, we were attacked in our political and financial centers, which are today as vulnerable as any remote outpost.

Fortunately, the numbers are on our side. We are not just the US, The vast majority of the world shares our perception of order and recognizes that this is a war we must win. The rest of the world can not forget this (France, I'm looking in your direction.)

Many suggest that we can not solve this problem with military force, that bombing Afghanistan is wrong, because it is our policies that started this in the first place. While it will not solve every aspect of the problem, it is necessary. If we merely reexamine our actions that might have led to this situation, they have won this battle. While US policy probably did play a role, it was not the cause. The cause is the teachings of those fundamentalists, who ascribe anything bad to America. The cause is the teaching of pure hatred. The cause is the teaching that we are not all as human as each other. The cause is the teaching that dying for the cause of killing others is noble. The people that teach these things, the people that plan such operations, the people that come up with the ideas, the people that finance them, the people that shelter them must be stopped. Their resources must be drained and their hatred brought to a stop. Without ending the rhetoric of hatred can we even start to build a relationship of trust. If all it takes to change US foreign policy is killing 6000 innocent people, what message does it send to the fundamentalists that do not value our lives in the first place?

Then, we must act according to our own rhetoric. Rather than continuing to support friendly, but corrupt and undemocratic regimes, we should be supportive of attempts around the world to bring representative governments to power. Instead of supporting corrupt regimes to keep oil flowing, we should be developing conservation and alternative energy sources with renewed vigor. The head-in-the-sand unilateralism of the first 6 months of the Bush Administration must be abandoned in favor of a policy that is more responsive to the feelings of the rest of the world. The Bushites-- beyond Colin Powell-- must recognize that the US is part of the world and our self-interest can not outweigh the greater good. Unfortunately, American can not close the front gate and tell everyone to go away. The world is too interconnected for that to be possible. This is not about revenge. Revenge can serve no purpose other than to cause more violence. We must, however, deal with people whose have dedicated their lives to ending our way of life. We have to take our heads out of the sand and stop being so self-absorbed. I don't want to, but I have no choice. I have been attacked.