The war that the United States has been waging against the nonwhite peoples of the world for over half a century came home on Sept. 11.
Nothing does and nothing can justify the brutal terror attack that has killed thousands of innocent civilians. It is a crime against humanity of the highest order, and the sympathies of all right-thinking people must be with the families of the victims. But we must understand what led to it and draw the right lessons from it, or as Santayana suggested, we may be condemned to relive it. Let us not pretend that this was the only harvest in history that was never sown.
Everybody (so it seems) is beating the drums of war, in a way not seen since Pearl Harbor. George W. Bush, speaking to the nation, said “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these attacks and those who harbor them,” suggesting that retaliation will not only be swift and severe but indiscriminate, that it will target the innocent citizens of the country from which the perpetrators happened to plan this attack.
Our imperial fantasies of being able to destroy entire countries without incurring a single American casualty, of being able to antagonize half the world and simultaneously assure complete safety, have crumbled when brought into contact with reality. We must find a different way, but, unfortunately, most Americans seem to have decided that what we really need is more of a failed and untenable policy.
In this Orwellian world we have lived in for almost six decades, we have internalized the debasement of language so thoroughly that we rarely question it. We have been told, and have thought, that our “national security” is imperiled by Cubans’ desire to live free of external domination, by anything that threatens U.S. corporate profits, that it is rests on the ability of our government and our corporations to control the rest of the world.
Now, confronted with the first significant threat to real national security in a long time, we must finally see that our security is not enhanced by military aggression against other countries, by buildup of expensive military equipment that could not possibly have availed against an attack like this or by attempts at total economic domination of the Third World.
Massive retaliation will just keep us locked in a cycle of violence. We have come to the sharp limits of the security that can come from the boot on the neck, and must, instead, try what can come from the open hand.
Mutual disarmament and peace based on global justice are the only way. Let us be first in peace as we have, for so long now, been first in war.
Rahul Mahajar
Antiwar activist from Austin, Texas
