EDITORIAL
The imagination to do things differently
We had the chance to do things
differently.
Shortly after the terrorist attacks last year, we wrote in this
space, “These are sobering times, but within them is the hope that fresh
assessments can be made that will allow the United States to hook up with the
rest of the human family in a new way, aware of a new sense of vulnerability, a
more realistic sense of national limits and the need to consult broadly beyond
our borders if mutual understanding and cooperation is to be
achieved.”
The world was with us. “We are all Americans,” some
foreign headlines exclaimed.
The moment has been lost.
We could have reacted differently. We reacted in the easiest way
available. We went to war.
By this year’s anniversary of the attacks, we had squandered
much of the goodwill. The world has become wary, not supportive, of our
intentions and our methods. It was clear by that anniversary that the Bush
administration, having already embarked on an undeclared, open-ended military
campaign, intended to use the 9/11 observances as a steppingstone to war with
Iraq.
The danger today is that we believe the overblown rhetoric that
this administration is using to both convince the public of the need to go
forward with the war and to convince itself of the nobility of its intent.
At Ellis Island on 9/11, President Bush had not only history but
also God matching the United States with the duties of the moment. “We
cannot know all that lies ahead,” said Bush. “Yet, we do know that
God has placed us together in this moment, to grieve together, to stand
together, to serve each other and our country. And the duty we have been given
— defending America and our freedom — is also a privilege we share
… and our prayer tonight is that God will see us through, and keep us
worthy.”
If, indeed, God were as intimately involved in our moment of
determination as the president would have us believe, then that God might have
stooped and begun writing in the sand, reminding us of our own sins and of the
fact that God is the God of all creation.
For all truly religious activity, whatever the tradition, begins
with self- examination, and that is what we, as a culture and as a nation bent
on war, have refused to do since the attack a year ago.
We declare who we are — we are just, our enemies unjust; we
love every life, our enemies value none. “We fight,” our president
says, “not to impose our will, but to defend ourselves and extend the
blessings of freedom.” Our enemies hate us because they hate our freedoms
and our way of life.
There is, of course, an element of truth in all of that. However,
a larger truth, the episodes of history that have brought us to this point, the
record of our behavior in the region that had nothing to do with extending our
freedoms or respecting the rights of other cultures but had everything to do
with extending U.S. access to Middle East oil fields, is left out of the
speeches.
At times, the policy is embarrassingly transparent. On his way
home from the United Nations conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, last
week, Secretary of State Colin Powell visited two other African countries,
Gabon and Angola, (where we also have a Cold War history that may come back to
haunt us). There was no secret about why he chose those two. They produce oil.
They potentially could produce a lot of oil. Our interest in government
stability, in giving aid for environmental projects, is directly linked to our
need to maintain access to oil.
The president has shown himself adept at playing the Catholic card
in domestic politics and in extolling the virtues of Pope John Paul II, but we
doubt he will quote the words the pope spoke on the first anniversary of Sept.
11: “A resolved joint effort is necessary and urgent to activate new
political and economic initiatives to resolve the scandalous situations of
injustice and oppression that continue to afflict so many members of the human
family, creating conditions favorable to the uncontrollable explosion of the
desire for revenge. When fundamental human rights are violated it is easy to
fall prey to the temptations of hate and violence. It is necessary to build
together a global culture of solidarity, that can return to youth hope for the
future.”
In a way, our elaborate grieving on the anniversary of 9/11 is
symbolic of what we fail to see. That moment of heartfelt connection with
victims of wanton, insane violence was made all the sadder by the fact that we
failed to draw the connection between our hurt and the hurt of millions across
the globe who are victims of insane violence almost daily.
Millions of mothers on continents around the globe ache for dying
children, for missing husbands. Relatives and friends the world over tread
between fear and courage, trying to find the whereabouts of political
prisoners, risking life itself to make that human connection. Just weeks before
our observance in the United States, relatives and friends stood around yet
another open grave in Guatemala, the latest excavations. They stood in fear
because the military and paramilitary are still assassinating people who get
too close to the truth. What a story the mothers and friends of the 200,000
plus missing victims of political violence and genocide there — a short
plane ride from our nation’s capital — would tell if only they had
the wherewithal to do it.
The United States has the largest microphone, the largest and most
skilled army, the most powerful economy and the longest reach of any country in
the world. We can fashion our story in a way no other culture can. What
religious leaders like the pope and others represented in this issue seem to be
asking is, Do we have the compassion and the wisdom to use all of that for the
greatest good? Do we realize that when we say, as the president did, “The
ideal of America is the hope of all mankind,” that many around the world
feel they pay an unfair price — in our exploitation of resources, our
manipulation of their politics, our disregard for their cultures — to help
us uphold those ideals on our soil?
We have, on this page, gone over the reasons war with Iraq would
be not only dangerous but futile many times before a new war with Iraq became a
public obsession. Those reasons are spelled out amply again in our coverage in
this issue.
While the military and strategic questions are important, vital
even, to considerations of war and peace, the deeper and more important
question for America now is whether it is losing sight of itself and what it
means to the rest of the world.
The United States can, as President Bush makes clear, go it alone.
We are that powerful a nation.
Can we, though, dare to have the conversation — with
countries in the Middle East, with the rest of the world — that an
alternative to war requires? Can we dare to summon the imagination to do things
differently?
National Catholic Reporter, September 20,
2002
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