The hijacking of four American passenger planes and the suicidal flying of three of them into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, killing thousands of innocent persons, is a horror difficult to take in. We expect numerous thoughtful pieces on this disaster and will post the majority of them on this page.
Gene Marshall: Reflections on Terorism
Hugh McGuire: As a nation, how are we not responsible?
Jack Simanonok: We must look to the causes of these terrorist acts
Hindu Students Council Condemns Terrorist Attacks in the U.S.
by Gene Marshall
9/19/2001
Events like those of September 11th which so powerfully grab our attention need to be assimilated. What does it mean for us that a dozen of so well-organized persons with hijacking skills, piloting skills, and a willingness to die for their cause can turn airliners into guided missiles and huge urban constructions into rubble?
The U.S. and other nations will surely need to overcome several layers of complacency and move to make airplanes less vulnerable to hijacking as well as upgrade their effectiveness in tracking terrorist organizations. But such moves only deal with the surface level of the issues which are indicated by the September 11th events.
I certainly join those who are grieving the vast lost of life rather than those who rejoice to see such a blow struck against the powerful forces they feel are destroying their lives. I also identify with those who are unsettled by the realization that no building, no sports stadium, no airport, is as safe as we previously thought.
Even deeper than sorting out my feelings is an underlying question: what does an event like this mean for the vanguard of the Earth, for those who see themselves as responsible for the destiny of human life and the entire life of this planet? Here are a few realizations that are coming to the surface for me:
1. The defense of our lives and of workable social order cannot be achieved by star-wars missile defense systems, high-tech military organizations, or the retaliatory threat of nuclear arsenals. Our old ideas of defense are basically obsolete. The dynamic of common defense will always remain as a part of our social lives, but the forms that defense needs to take in the future are quite different from the forms in which we have recently trusted.
Military might still has a role in human life, but it can no longer be seen as the key to our safety. We will hear our politicians and news commentators talk endlessly about retaliation against the terrorists who did these dastardly deeds, but we will hear far too little about the deeper long-range issues. Perhaps the U.S. government and her allies will indeed find someone to punish, some billionaire who finances such deeds, some national or movement leader who encourages such actions. We will then ritualize the elimination of these "threatening odd balls" and perhaps return to our familiar complacency in the hope that all is well. We will forget that the persons we punished were only the visible peaks of a mountain-range of hostility.
Let us hope that in the aftermath of these events a larger number of people begin to seriously want to know why millions of people are so hostile that they train their sons and daughters to sacrifice their lives in order to express this anger toward the current world order.
2. Some of this rage results from false views by rigid people who want to cling onto religious and cultural folk ways that are simply out-of-date. Because of this clinging they see the entire modern world as a threat to their ways of life. Not only do they see themselves oppressed by unwarranted uses of political and economic power; they also see all or most of contemporary culture to be devilishly evil. Modern culture is seen as a force that is dismantling modes of living which they believe to be divinely authenticated (for example, keeping women veiled and powerless).
There is certainly such a thing as bad religion even as there is bad economics. Such bad religion does not infect all Islamic people, but it does characterize a considerable swath of conservative Islamic perspective. Similar forms of bad religions infects a considerable swath of conservative Jewish and Christian perspective. Bad religion of whatever heritage cannot be stamped out with military means; it must be corrected in the inner lives of those people who are enthralled with these bad teachings. Those who are reacting in alarm to all Islamic peoples need to understand that Islamic moderates are the most important forces on Earth for combating Islamic extremism.
3. It is not enough, however, for we privileged people of Western societies to dismiss all this hostility toward Western nations as nothing more than the craziness of a religious fringe. Vast hostility is an inevitable ingredient within the mode of society which most privileged people currently favor. The privileged classes in every civilization for the last 6000 years have used military violence to suppress the peasants and slaves of their own society and to defend themselves from the civilization next door. This social arrangement has always fostered rage. This arrangement is fostering more rage today than in some earlier times because more people now see that such a social arrangement is no longer necessary. Yet day after day, year after year, decade after decade, the rich get richer and more socially powerful and the poor get poorer and more socially helpless.
Furthermore, the currently rich present to the currently poor an appalling hypocrisy. Most privileged people believe they are for (or pretend that they are for) democracy -- for the right of all persons to participate in deciding the quality of their lives. They believe they are for (or pretend that they are for) the economic advancement of all persons. Such hypocrisy may be more infuriating than the ongoing oppressive actions.
Let us imagine what it would be like for all persons of privilege, which includes me and probably all of you reading these words, to think of our privileges as an opportunity for service rather than a good life we have to defend from the underprivileged. Let us suppose that we made plain by our actual deeds that we were for genuine and full democracy, that we were for genuine and full participation in economic well-being, that we were for the dignity and respectability of people different from ourselves in race, religion, and cultural patterns. Then, we would be actually doing something about reducing the hostility that has been expressing itself in increasingly awful ways.
4. Another part of the rage going on in our world is resulting from what we might call the "revenge illusion." Privileged and underprivileged people alike have been taught that getting even for wrongs done to them solves something. But this is never true. Revenge breeds revenge breeds revenge until we have the Middle East crisis or the Northern Ireland fiasco. In spite of such clear demonstrations of the futility of revenge, we still hear the family members of murder victims going on television to tell us how much more complete and better they will feel when the murderer of their loved one has been put to death. This is not actually true.
Punishing the murderer never brings back the loved one nor does it make grieving any easier. Revenge does not accomplish anything. Revenge thinking and acting is an indulgence that is not actually justified by any real value.
Criminal behavior needs to be restrained and punished in order to safeguard the general population and to educate us all concerning the seriousness of violating our agreed upon social norms. But revenge should not be a factor in law and order nor in seeking international justice. A moratorium on revenge is badly needed in the lives of both the privileged and the underprivileged. Perhaps the deepest of all hypocrisy is the sight of the privileged criticizing the underprivileged for their revengeful deeds while justifying their own revengeful responses. The only way to break the hellish cycle of revenge is by doing good to our enemies. This is not a pious platitude but a hard-headed reality of history.
For the Earth,
Gene Marshall
Bonham, TX
From: Hugh McGuire
To: editor@jacksonprogressive.com
Subject: As a nation, how are we not responsible?
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 02:38:59 -0400
It is time for the USA to realize just how and why its power and influence is not welcomed by everyone in the world. The poor and repressed in this world are crying out for justice and equality. This act will only make the USA less sympathetic towards the Southern Hemisphere, and at the same time, harm the peaceful people who criticize the USA in the Third World.
Why were we bombed?
Ask people in:
The US military, corporations and their instruments of financial control, the IMF and the World Bank adversely affect millions of people worldwide.
The easy thing to do now is to embrace nationalism, revenge and violence. Thousands of innocent people are dead and that's something to be angry about. It's easy enough; Arab cab drivers have already been attacked in New York. It's painful to critically examine the motivations of the terrorists. However, it is no coincidence that the centers of both US financial and military control were bombed today. These attacks are a direct result of, and probably a response to, US imperialism. The only way to protect ourselves from violence is to stop perpetrating it against others. We've long lived by the sword and are now curious why we die. Now's the time to act constructively; give blood to the Red Cross, comfort your friends and family and spread words of peace. Now's the time for us as a nation to stop thinking about retaliation and start acting on ways to prevent a tragedy like this from ever happening again.
We need to rethink our one-sided support of Israeli subjugation of the Palestinian people. We are antagonizing all Muslims, and our indifference to their humiliation and pain, as well as our bigotry, causes us to underestimate their ability to respond. I think there is a simple solution: clean-out all the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including Jerusalem, and create an independent State of Palestine. The Arabs may accept that as a deal and it would produce peace for Israel and a healthier relationship between the U.S. and the Arab peoples.
Hugh McGuire
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2001 23:41:40 -0500
To: editor@jacksonprogressive.com
From: Jack Simanonok
The recent despicable acts of terrorism aimed at us should make us intensify, not abandon, our ideals.
Terrorism is war, of a sort. Our government has been a willing combatant on one side of that war. We are shocked, but we should not be surprised that the war comes home to us now. Instead of being an inspiration for Liberty, we have become the world's bully.
America's greatest libertarian, Thomas Jefferson, said: "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none." Further targeting of Americans should be avoided by ceasing all meddlesome interference with foreign States.
Liberty made us strong. This strength led to a naive belief that we could police the world. And this created enemies. According to an analysis by the libertarian CATO Institute: "terrorism is primarily a backlash against Washington's meddlesome global interventionist foreign policy..." And ironically, to harass the Soviets, our government apparently trained Afghan terrorists, many of whom are now involved with anti-US terrorist groups.
We must fight if attacked or outrageously provoked, but not merely to protect corporate profits or vainly try to create a "new world order." Our military, stronger than the next seven nation's militaries combined, did not protect us from this attack. National power is not national security.
Of course we should not minimize the guilt of the detestable perpetrators or their conspirators. We must find them; and their punishment must be severe. Nor should we wallow in self-loathing or guilt. But we should take steps to prevent more of such tragedies; and to do this we must identify the causes of these terrorist actions that are within our control. If we fail to consider what part our abandonment of past ideals led to these tragedies, we cannot deny complicity in future acts.
We will hear cries for bolstering the measures that failed to prevent these outrages: curtailment of civil liberties, disarming of civilians. But metal detectors at airports did not protect us. Disarming our responsible citizens did not protect us. In Germany, responses such as these to a terrorist act, the Reichstag fire, led to the downfall of the Weimar Republic, propelled the Nazis to power, and resulted in some of history's greatest atrocities. Lest we repeat these errors, we must ensure that we do not respond in the same way.
We should also demand full disclosure from our own government. In the Oklahoma City bombing, there was evidence that some federal agencies knew of the plot in advance. Why did they not act? There may also have been more bombs detonated than were admitted. There were suggestions of links to foreign terrorists that were not investigated. Perhaps they were the same terrorists who committed these most recent outrages. Why did the portions of the World Trade Center towers below the impact level of the airplane collapse? Were there additional explosives inside the World Trade Center towers? Before we can have solutions, we must have the truth.
If we allow terrorists to destroy Liberty, if we become like them, then they have won. We once were the beacon of Liberty for the world. We can be again, and we must be.
Dr. Simanonok is the founder of the Mardi Gras Libertarians in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2001 22:05:28 -0700
Subject: Hindu Students Council Condemns Terrorist Attacks in the U.S.
To: editor@jacksonprogressive.com
BOSTON / Hindu Students Council (HSC) condemns the various terrorist attacks carried out today, including the hijacking and destruction of commercial aircraft with innocent passengers on board, the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, and the attack on the Pentagon. Today, our sympathies and prayers are with the victims of these dastardly acts.
HSC believes that terrorism is the ultimate refuge of cowards. Today's events demonstrate that cowardliness is an attack not just against US targets, but an attack against all free, democratic and open societies around the world. It is clear that the perpetrators of these attacks are against the most fundamental of all human rights - the right to live peacefully.
As Hindus, we have been deeply touched by the ravages of terrorism. Terrorist attacks against Hindus and India - an open, free and democratic society - parallel today's attacks in the U.S. Hindu society has been a victim of terrorism for over a decade, with thousands of innocent Hindus having been massacred in Kashmir and other parts of India. In Kashmir alone, over 350,000 Hindus have been forced to flee their ancestral homes. Mumbai, the commercial capital of India, experienced 13 bomb blasts in a single day in 1993, with the primary culprit having escaped and openly seeking refuge in a neighboring country.
HSC hopes that the democratic societies like India and USA will now join together to fight the evils of terrorism and ensure that the fundamental rights of all human beings - freedom, life and liberty – can be pursued in peace.
-------------------------
HSC is a North American organization with college chapters in over 50 chapters. HSC provides opportunities to learn about Hindu heritage and culture, foster awareness of issues affecting Hindus, & provide SEVA (service) to the community. For more info, visit www.hscnet.org. More info. on Hinduism is available at: www.hindunet.org.