I was raised on Manhattan's Upper-West Side and so did not see the planes hit that morning, and the towers falling or the subsequent fires. But I smelled the smoke. That night, a very acrid, artificial and out-of-place smell made its way north from Ground Zero.
Many things arose from those fires and many things were obfuscated by that smoke. The greatest emotions, perhaps, are sadness and anger -- sadness for the people who died and for those who lost close friends, relatives and loved ones, and anger at those responsible. However, after the immediacy of grief, we have been left with fear. I know I am more afraid every time I get on a plane or walk through Times Square.
What few seem to admit, at least in public, is that they have an intense desire to know why these attacks happened. Too many seem content to repeat slogans about good and evil, crime and punishment. That those who perpetrated these attacks are evil -- that is to say contrary to the values upon which our society is based -- could go without saying. That the attacks were a crime, and that those who planned and funded them ought to be punished -- perhaps even killed -- is equally obvious. However, this is where most people stop thinking, and this is not a good thing.
Robert Butts '06's Sept. 30 column "Speak No Evil" mentioned that no one seems to want to remember the attacks, or to say the facts right out. I feel a far greater thing is missing, and that is an attempt at understanding why the attacks happened, and what we as a people can do to prevent future attacks beyond dismantling terrorist cells. I do not claim to be an expert, or to have answers. However, since no other world-class newspaper seems to be willing to address this issue, we will begin here, you and I, with some questions that we have both been thinking about. Since you have no pulpit, I will posit just a few:
Let us take a look at our foreign policies. What has the United States done to elicit such anger from so many people? Our news media report that the Arab world is increasingly anti-American, and that people are lining up in droves to join Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. I accept none of the current explanations. We have, in the past, supported far worse regimes than Israel -- from all the various Latin-American dictators with their death squads to the corruption of the Shah of Iran -- and nowhere has this resulted in the dedicated and organized hatred evidenced by the World Trade Center attacks. Maybe we should start thinking.
Let us look closer to home. Are the people we are going after really guilty? The government would have us believe that those being detained in Guantanamo are all card-carrying members of Al Qaeda. They are all enemies, not only of the United States, but also of civilization as we know it. They are not, for the most part, United States citizens, but nationals of various Arab states. This is all well and good, but how are we to know that any of the above statements is true if the media are not allowed to get a different perspective? What is more, even if everything the government states is true, how can we know that international standards of human decency and human rights are being followed? And what is to prevent the government from arresting you or me on charges of terrorism and hauling us off for some unknown length of time to an "undisclosed location?" Maybe we should start thinking.
Finally, should the United States be allowed to go after any state or individual it suspects is linked with terrorism? Has the idea of national sovereignty gone the way of the dinosaur? Have international governing bodies become meaningless in the face of military might? Does it mean nothing that most of the world is against the new War on Terrorism? Our government's policies would seem to answer these questions: yes, yes, yes, and yes. Maybe we should start thinking.
The main censor on thinking about these issues is not the government, but rather the very fear that terrorism inspires. It is a fear of being called unpatriotic in a world increasingly characterized by the motto, "You're either with us or you're against us." It is also a fear of political debate, for it is often thought that debate makes a nation indecisive and therefore weak. Many people these days feel the need to choose between freedom and security, and most want security now and freedom later. However, this is the pitfall that is obscured by the smoke.
Unless we are given the freedom and the courage to ask troubling questions, we will never have an enduring security because we will be in the dark about the causes of our situation. We are behaving like a child who is shocked by an electric fence, and proceeds to lash out instead of turning off the electricity. If we continue to lash out at any country that is not "with us," we will soon be quite alone in the world. Maybe we should start thinking.
