NEW YORK, New York, September 14, 2001 -- Tuesday's aerial attacks on New York and Washington have been covered so thoroughly in the press and on TV that there's not much to add. However, I can't help making a few observations.
I used to attribute the Arabs' hatred of Americans strictly to our level of aid to Israel. And it's true that Israel gets more US military assistance than any other country -- 45% of all US military aid to foreign countries, in fact (my source is the Statistical Abstract of the United States, published by the Department of Commerce). But that, in itself, doesn't explain what's going on.
Early Alzheimer's?
Our aid to Israel may be considerable -- but the extremist Islamic elements have a very selective memory; they seem to have no recollection of the times we've helped them out (albeit when it's been convenient for us to do so). The Afghan militia got a lot of military assistance from us when they were fighting the Soviet Union (which, you'll recall, invaded Afghanistan in 1979). The NATO bombing of Serbia and Serb-controlled Bosnia was another recent example. Were we spending time, money, and lives over there just for fun? Nope -- we were doing it to help Bosnian and ethnic Albanian Muslims, who were being ethnic-cleansed into oblivion by the Serbs.
And our old friend Saddam Hussein of Iraq can pontificate about American "evil," as he did in a press release on Wednesday -- but he, too, has a selective memory; the billions of dollars we secretly funneled his way to help him in his eight-year war against Iran are forgotten.
Without oil money, the main way of getting around in the Middle East would still be by camel.
Then, you have the huge amounts of direct aid and military sales to Egypt (second in line, after Israel, in foreign aid from the US) and Saudi Arabia (more military sales than any other country). Of course, these are "moderate" Arab states, so that doesn't count.
The other way we help out -- friendly nation that we are -- is simply by buying billions of dollars' worth of oil from the Arab countries every year. Without that money, the main way of getting around in the Middle East would still be by camel.
Fundamentalism -- it's not just for Christians anymore
Recently, we've been encouraged to take a broader view of Islam than that projected by the Muslims who carry automatic weapons and hijack planes. The other day, C-Span's BookTV featured a lecture by former Congressman Paul Findley, who discussed his recent book, Silent No More: Confronting America's False Images of Islam. I haven't read the book -- but in his talk, Findley argued that the majority of Muslims are vastly different from the ones we see on TV (for example, the Palestinians who were dancing in the streets after the World Trade Center towers came down).
I have no doubt that this is true. My old next-door neighbors in suburban Chicago were an Algerian, his American wife, and their two children. The kids were being raised in the Islamic faith -- and were subjected to a lot of abuse from their schoolmates, who didn't differentiate mainstream Muslims from the gun-toting kind. The kids' father, for his part, was a professor of mechanical engineering, an all-around reasonable guy, as next-door neighbors go, and not the sort of person I picture taking up arms.
Fine -- that's all well and good. Unfortunately, mainstream Muslims are not who we're dealing with, at this point. We're dealing with the branch of Islam that asks its followers to turn off their brains. With these guys, independent thinking (or, perhaps, thinking of any kind) is not only discouraged -- it's punishable by death.
It would come as no surprise if the Taliban regime suddenly decided that quietly sending the missionaries home, instead of executing them, would be good PR at this point.
For an example of how this works in practice, I direct your attention to a religious trial currently going on in Kabul, Afghanistan. The Taliban militia, who loosely govern the country, are holding a proceeding, in which the defendants are two Americans, four Germans, and two Australians, who are accused of the crime of proselytizing Christianity to Afghan civil-war victims to whom they've been providing humanitarian aid. The defendants are part of an organization called Shelter Now International.
The trial is being presided over by Chief Justice Noor Muhammad Sakib, a jurist quoted in the Christian Science Monitor (Monday, September 10) as telling the defendants, "We will convince you of your crimes on the basis of the evidence." So much for judicial objectivity -- this "Chief Justice" sounds more like what we call a "prosecutor" (if not a "grand inquisitor") in this country. The Monitor story goes on to state, "One edict of supreme Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, says that foreign missionaries should be expelled. Another says they should be executed."
The defendants in this case have been in detention for five weeks, during which time they've been denied access to legal counsel and not even informed of what they're actually being accused of.
It's acknowledged by the Taliban regime that Saudi exile Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in Tuesday's attacks, is cooling his heels in Afghanistan, as a guest of the Taliban. However, they appear to be reconsidering the wisdom of such hospitality, over the past couple of days -- probably in hopes of heading off the arrival of cruise missiles from US warships. My guess is that this might spill over and affect their handling of the kangaroo-court proceeding against the Christian relief workers. It would come as no big surprise if the "Chief Justice" and the higher-ups in the Taliban regime suddenly decided that quietly sending the missionaries home would be a good PR move at this point.
Lessons learned vs. more of the same
Despicable though Tuesday's attacks may have been, it's important to understand why they happened; what it is that could possibly provoke the level of rage seen in bin Laden's group and others. Those of us who live comfortably in an affluent society, far from the realities of life in a refugee camp or in a city like Beirut, can't grasp what it is that would motivate people to strap dynamite to their backs and walk into crowded restaurants, drive into crowds of people in exploding cars -- or participate in suicide missions like this week's hijackings.
Chomsky says, "We have a choice: we may try to understand, or refuse to do so, contributing to the likelihood that much worse lies ahead."
I had a history professor in college who had grown up in Nazi Germany. He knew a thing or two about terrorism -- and also about world wars, nuclear bombs, and the danger of ignoring or dismissing your enemy's motives. Discussing the Cold War, he spoke of the importance of understanding the geopolitics that led the Soviet Union to threaten the US: "Understand why they behave the way they do... or else," was the way he put it.
American dissident Noam Chomsky comes from a different political perspective but echoes the same view, in a piece on Z magazine's Web site: "[W]e have a choice: we may try to understand, or refuse to do so, contributing to the likelihood that much worse lies ahead."
And much worse may indeed lie ahead. The damage to New York City was unthinkable, by the standards of what most of us have experienced -- but it pales by comparison to the damage suffered by many European cities (not to mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki) during World War II. This is important to keep in mind, as we embark on "The first war of the 21st century."
Dropping some tactical nuclear weapons on Afghanistan might satisfy some of the lust for revenge that runs through a lot of Americans, but it wouldn't solve anything. Some statesman or other (I don't recall who) is said to have remarked, "The only way to stop a revolution is to kill all the revolutionaries." Substitute "terrorism" and "terrorists," and that's the situation in which we find ourselves. Cruise missiles might wipe out bin Laden -- but the movement he represents can always recruit more manpower.
Sliding through the checkpoint
So we may have to stop complaining and learn to live with the terrorist threat, for awhile at least. That's what they do in Europe, after all. Some time ago, I got a note from an e-mail penpal of mine, who lives in London. "I was late for work this morning," wrote my correspondent, "because the rail line I normally take was blown up by the IRA last night. So I took a taxi." Nothing out of the ordinary, was the implication. Terrorist activity is a normal part of life over there, and we may have to live with the fact that Tuesday's attacks weren't the last we'll see. Which brings me to another issue that's been discussed at length on TV this week: airport security.
After the airplane hijackings of the 1970s, this country instituted what was supposed to be a much higher level of security at its airports. And it was an improvement -- we go through metal detectors, send our carry-on luggage through the X-ray machine, and so on. But the security system is full of holes you could drive a truck through. Or at least slide a trombone through.
I've travelled to several trombone workshops and conventions over the past 15 years or so, sometimes travelling by air -- the last time I did so was in 1989. A trombone is a delicate piece of equipment, so rather than checking it with my other baggage, I always carried my horn onto the plane. This, of course, involved putting it through the X-ray machine on my way in. Now, a trombone, being made of brass, just looks like a solid piece of metal on an X-ray -- and you could conceal a pretty sizeable firearm or other weapon inside the bell of the instrument. Or, better yet, you could convert the slide itself into a formidable weapon. It's essentially a hollow gunbarrel; two of them, in fact.
You'd think the security staff would take one look at the trombone's image on the X-ray machine and say, "Wait a minute -- let's have a look at that thing!" But you'd be wrong -- I skated right through the checkpoint every time. Nobody ever opened the case; they just sent me on my way. I was aghast -- what made them think my trombone was just a trombone, and not a home-made rifle?
Maybe the airlines should take a page out of El-Al's book. As the Israeli national airline, they realize that they're Public Enemy #1 in the eyes of terrorists, and as a result, they have no choice but to take security seriously.
I'm sure that after this week's events, one's ability to get on a plane with a trombone will be severely restricted. But why did it take a disaster like the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks to get the airports to do something?
Maybe the airlines should take a page out of El-Al's book. As the Israeli national airline, they realize that they're Public Enemy #1 in much of the Arab world, and as a result, they have no choice but to take security seriously. My college roommate -- a light-skinned Danish guy, not likely to be mistaken for a Palestinian terrorist, but with a scruffy beard nonetheless -- told me that he once took an El-Al flight home to Denmark. Before he could get on the plane, he was questioned for about 20 minutes by an El-Al security guard, who grilled him on every aspect of who he was, where he was going and why, etc.
That might be a good start. We might have to go further, though. I'd feel much better, when I got on a plane, if I knew that a background check had been done on every ticketed passenger. Some might consider that an invasion of privacy, but hey -- no one's forcing them to fly.
Whatever else might happen as a result of Tuesday's hijacking/attacks, the one fact we're stuck with is that things aren't the same as they were last Monday. We're going to have to come to grips with what we call "terrorism," how and why it occurs, and what we want to do about it. Personally, I'm not getting on a plane until I'm sure there's no way to do what the hijackers did the other day. I probably won't fly to a trombone convention anytime soon -- or if I do go, I'll leave my horn at home. But the most important lesson is the one my old professor tried to convey -- it's essential to understand why your enemies do what they do. Dismissing them as insane fanatics, without addressing their motives, merely ensures that they'll keep blowing things up.
Copyright © 2001 John J. Kafalas
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