but now, we must come to acting as adults in the worldHelen, I really hope this may come about as some sort of positive counterweight to so many individual pains and tragedies. I can certainly recognise what you are saying about justice and perceptions of its absence in many parts of the world. But I know that whatever else we get right or wrong, we CANNOT take the path of state-supported murder. It is tantamount to cutting the branch on which we sit.
I have been struck, through wide exposure to European radio and TV and newspapers over the last 48 hours
*, that (actually as Jo suggested) my views expressed recently may be closer to the educated mainstream than I had assumed likely. I think there is, in addition to the obvious and open-hearted sympathy for everyone caught up in the tragedy, a desperate hope that Americans will find a cool sane space of contemplation – and realise that much of the rhetoric they have been spoon-fed by their political system for generations contains much self-imagery that is completely delusional.
“Of all history's great powers, from Athens and Rome to Byzantium and imperial Britain, perhaps none has ever so dominated the globe as America does now.
Nor has any of these powers aroused such a complex of feelings, positive and negative, that could go some way toward explaining how extremists from a distant world could mount an attack of the unfathomable hatred seen this week in New York and Washington, followed by the unrestrained outpouring of sadness and support from some of the very peoples that America's terrorist enemies claim to represent.
America, with its daunting economic, political and military power, its pervasive popular culture, and its instinct to spread the freewheeling, secularist ways of American life — even to those who may prefer to shun them — has an impact on people's lives to the farthest corners of the earth. Just how great this impact is, and how, in many places, it is resented, may be more than many Americans can grasp.
If they consider their country's place at all, many Americans may see it in uncomplicated terms, as the "beacon of freedom" President Bush spoke of with moistened eyes this week. But the feelings of many of the peoples who live in America's shadow are frequently less sanguine, or at least deeply contradictory. Grievances run side by side, and often in the same person, with a consuming passion for things American.”http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/16/international/16AMER.html?todaysheadlinesAmerica is
not viewed worldwide as a beacon of all that is best in mankind, not by a long chalk: close friends admire and indeed share much of America’s values, but the complete mix of feelings is far more complicated. It is the twin realisation that (like it or not) the USA is a part of the wider world, and also that the wider world has some serious issues that the USA needs to come to terms with, which gives a hope that some good may arise from the ashes, not just more death and inhumanity.
“That fat, daydreaming America is gone now, way gone — as spent as the tax-rebate checks, as forgotten as the 2000 campaign's debate over prescription-drug plans, as bankrupt as our dot-com fantasies of instant millions, as vaporized as the faith that high-tech surveillance and weaponry would keep us safe……
We have no choice now but, as a horror- struck Hamlet said after being visited by the ghost, to ‘wipe away all trivial fond records’ from the table of memory, and hope that our learning curve will be steep.”http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/15/opinion/15RICH.html* as an example only of these emerging view trends here, let me quote from the Letters page of
The Times on Saturday, not generally a notably libertarian medium! (There were 8 published letters in all, three about more tangential matters such as potential terrorist access to plutonium)
1 “Firm and legitimate action must be taken to hit back effectively…/… But account must also be taken of the wider issues of foreign policy that provide an underlying cause of the deep animosity against the US which is fuelling these atrocities. In large part this hostility arises out of a perception across the Arab and Islamic world that United States policy is irrevocably committed to support for Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian lands. The obduracy of the present Israeli leadership, initiated with Ariel Sharon’s ill-judged act of provocation by parading near the Muslim sanctuary of the Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem during last year’s election campaign, has intensified the frustration among extremists within the Islamic world. If the issues that are generating such ferocious acts of terrorism are to be effectively countered, a deliberate American lead in renewed progress over the Arab-Israeli peace process, as was given by George Bush Snr at the end of the Gulf War in 1991, has to form part of the answer.” – Alan Munro, British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia ’89-‘93
2 “…However well intentioned, US governments have aroused a sense of injustice throughout the Arab and Islamic world and provoked feelings ranged from muted disapproval to fanatical hated. Western leaders should aim to cut at the roots of terrorism, not just its vile tentacles.” – Micheal Purcell.
3 “….While terrorism can never be right, the fact that those who carry out terrorist acts have often been driven to it by the failure of others to listen to their grievances needs to be recognised. It does no good to the credibility of the US or NATO to assume that right is entirely and irrefutably on their side.” – John Evers.
4 “I fully agree with Simon Jenkins (Comment, Sept 14) that the crisis calls for a distinction between determination and vengeance, acts of will and acts of idiocy. It is a time when head must rule heart. Assuming that the attack on the WTC and Pentagon is the work of associates of Osama bin Laden, the core complaints of the world of Islam – dispossession of Palestinians by Israel – must be seriously attended to; otherwise we will simply be helping bin Laden’s cause and validating fanaticism.” – Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, Leader Muslim Parliament of GB.
5 “Having grown up with 30 years of terrorism in Northern Ireland, it is disappointing to hear President Bush and his Secretary of State, Colin Powell, talk of revenge. Revenge has done nothing to solve the tit-for-tat loss of life in Ulster. It is only serving to heighten tension between Palestinians and Israelis. NATO countries must not be drawn into a military confrontation as a result of the attacks in the US.” – William Sellar.There is a range of views represented through the BBC services, including this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1547000/1547292.stmBob, I too have made a detailed study of the history of the Middle East, and could happily trade skirmishes about the Balfour Declaration and the detail of the Palestine Mandate until everyone else in the room was screaming for relief! But let us just look for a moment at the big picture: there are two groups of peoples in that area of the world, with an immensely complicated history of mutual stupidity and sometimes simply evil. The most recent attempt at a peace process was being undermined by the most accelerated grab of Palestinian lands for new Jewish-only settlements and roads ever seen in the region.
Does current US foreign policy make the eventual peaceful co-existence of these two tribes more or less likely?The thing that makes this most odd for me is that through all personal friendships and other contacts I have had with nationals from that whole region, and from deep-seated cultural predispositions I am a natural friend of the state of Israel, and continue to wish her citizens nothing but happiness. It is only cold logical analysis of the actual reality being played out daily that makes me so concerned that we do now what we
have to do eventually: facilitate a peace process based on mutual respect and
even-handed justice (even if we doubt some aspects of one or other or indeed both parties’ good faith).
And Bel, no, your dad was right despite the shameful displays we witness from time to time, so keep that flame burning. The world is continuously recreated in the image of our actions and our beliefs. If we act well and with justice, we leave our children’s world a small increment of truth and beauty; if we act otherwise, we rob ourselves of an increment of peace and happiness and leave a bill for future generations to pay in blood and misery. Keep faith with the good in all of us – as Insel has so vividly commented, a thousand incidences of this have been on view through this terrible week.
