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![]() Just Above Sunset
August 1, 2004 - What to Make of the 9/11 Commission's Report
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Arthur Schrader writes
in the pages of The Colonial Music Institute something that corrects a mistake – Since 1881, a story has circulated among some Americans that the British played a march called
“The World Turned Upside Down” (hereafter WTUD or Yorktown/WTUD) during their surrender at Yorktown in October
1781. Over the years this story has been accepted by more and more Americans (though without corroboration). After 1940 at
least 33 American professional historians accepted the story and published it in their textbooks (still without corroboration).
This seems to have encouraged several American novelists and one British poet, Robert Graves, to adopt the story and embroider
it for their books. And then Schrader goes
on and explains at all in detail – and you can click on the link if you have a need to know more. We're not in the middle of a war on terror, they note. We're not facing an axis of evil. Instead,
we are in the midst of an ideological conflict. Whoa, Nellie! This from the man who said the war was wonderful – even if we screwed up everything quite badly since the
fall of Baghdad – because it was the right thing to do. We … need to mount our own ideological counteroffensive. The commissioners recommend that
the U.S. should be much more critical of autocratic regimes, even friendly ones, simply to demonstrate our principles. They
suggest we set up a fund to build secondary schools across Muslim states, and admit many more students into our own. If you
are a philanthropist, here is how you can contribute: We need to set up the sort of intellectual mobilization we had during
the cold war, with modern equivalents of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, to give an international platform to modernist
Muslims and to introduce them to Western intellectuals. Yeah, well. We could have done that in the first place. … we need to see that the landscape of reality is altered. In the past, we've fought ideological
movements that took control of states. Our foreign policy apparatus is geared toward relations with states: negotiating with
states, confronting states. Now we are faced with a belief system that is inimical to the state system, and aims at theological
rule and the restoration of the caliphate. We'll need a new set of institutions to grapple with this reality, and a new training
method to understand people who are uninterested in national self-interest, traditionally defined. What? Our experience over the last several years has been misleading?
We've got a long struggle ahead, but at least we're beginning to understand it? Who misled us? You might point the finger at Bush-Cheney-Wolfowitz. Or at
David Brooks. Toward the end of its widely praised report, the Sept. 11 commission offers a prescriptive chapter
titled "What to Do?" There, it makes an assertion that is genuinely shocking. It says that in our current conflict,
"the enemy is not just 'terrorism,' some generic evil. This vagueness blurs the strategy. The catastrophic threat at this
moment in history is more specific. It is the threat posed by Islamist terrorism [the report's emphasis] -- especially the
al Qaeda network, its affiliates, and its ideology." Carr is doing a different
riff on the theme of the apocryphal march. Carr doesn’t say the war was
the wrong way to meet the threat. He’s saying we never really defined
the threat at all - and the commission is finally doing that – even if they are doing it quite badly. … first we must agree on an internationally
acceptable definition. Certainly terrorism must include the deliberate victimization of civilians for political purposes as
a principal feature -- anything else would be a logical absurdity. And yet there are powerful voices, in this country and
elsewhere, that argue against such a definition. They don't want to lose the weapon of terror -- and they don't want to admit
to having used it in the past. Should the United States assent to such a specific definition of terrorism, for example, it
would have to admit that its fire-bombings of German and Japanese cities during World War II represented effective terrorism.
On the other hand, few Muslim nations want to go up against the power of organized terrorist groups by declaring them de jure
as well as de facto outlaws. You see the problem. What the commission fails to see is that the word "extremist" (or "Islamist") is not what will
be heard on the "Arab street," or indeed much of anywhere else in the world, when the new enemy is proclaimed. George Bush
initially reacted to the Sept. 11 attacks by calling for a "crusade" against terrorism, but many Muslims heard only one word,
"crusade," and they heard it in its historical rather than its rhetorical sense. The West, that word implied, is coming again
to take control of Muslim nations and holy places, just as it did after the turn of the last millennium. The president later
apologized for his thoughtlessness, but the damage had been done. So what do we do? This statement is half right and half wrong. Some terrorist attacks are caused by the use of strength.
For instance, the Shiites of southern Lebanon had positive feelings toward Israel before 1982. They were not very politically
mobilized. Then the Israelis invaded Lebanon in 1982 and occupied the South. They killed some 18,000 persons, 9,000 of them
estimated to be innocent civilians. The Shiites of the South gradually turned against them and started hitting them to get
them back out of their country. They formed Hizbullah and ultimately shelled Israel itself and engaged in terrorism in Europe
and Argentina. So, Hizbullah terrorist attacks were certainly caused by Sharon's use of "strength." Ah, history can be so very
irritating. And ambiguous. Iraq was not a threat to the United States. Period. Let me repeat the statistics as of the late
1990s: I
think Cole is upset. ___ From Joseph, who left life
out here in Hollywood to live in France – I agree with Carr and Cole. I suppose I have to say that Brooks now agrees
with me! As you know, I never opposed the war on pacifist grounds; I opposed it because of its likely counter-productivity. This speculation would have been a toss-up, had they done a proper job by sending
a serious force with a plan for what would happen after the "war" part was over. But
it was so clearly destined to be a cock-up. Why?
Because not only was it clear that they didn't understand what is clear to Brooks only now, it was clear that they
didn't want to understand. Now why would that be? Why would they not want to understand
that this was a war of competing world-views – not of armies and nations – where you win by convincing everyone
you are the better folks – not the stronger, more powerful, angrier and more righteously vengeful? You’re better than that. You convince everyone you are good –
and you don’t kill anyone you say is bad, along with twenty or thirty thousand caught in the crossfire by mistake. You are better – not deadlier and more dangerous. You show. You don’t tell. Their fear of your technological wizardry of death
– your smart bombs and armed silent drone aircraft and all the rest – is your defeat. Your power to make their lives miserable unless they comply with all your demands is your defeat. Displays of raw power assure some momentary safety and grudging compliance. That does work. “Look how tough I am. Don’t mess with me.” That works, if you can keep
it up. We have been told for so long that this was the
only thing that works. That’s it.
Only that. Punish evil and it goes away. We have taken the position that saying be good
or you’ll get hurt is the answer. None of this let’s make
things better crap. Well, as the saying goes, when the only tool you
have is a hammer, every problem is a nail. But we are better. The current war administration just doesn’t seem to really believe that at all. |
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This issue updated and published on...
Paris readers add nine hours....
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