Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts Issue No. 31 September 16-22, 2001 Quezon City, Philippines |
A Time for Peace, Not Retaliation BY
ELIJAH WALD Back to Bulatlat.com Alternative Reader Index As
I write, another expert is on television, saying that tougher security measures
are needed to prevent future terrorist acts. He is saying that the United States
has always put civil liberties ahead of security, and now may have to rethink
that. If
there is one lesson in the destruction of the World Trade Center and damage to
the Pentagon, it is that such talk is idiocy. Technology has made it possible
for a couple of individuals to destroy the largest building in the world with
nothing but the will to do so and whatever it takes to hijack a passenger plane.
Likewise, a biological or chemical bomb that would kill thousands of people
could be carried in a suitcase. If
we want a safer world in this situation, we cannot achieve it militarily. For
decades, the United States has acted as if, as the world's most powerful nation,
it could safely explore violent solutions to international issues, while itself
remaining inviolate. Every time the United States has bombed a major city -- be
it Hiroshima, Hanoi, Baghdad, or Tripoli -- people on the ground must have
wished that they could do the same to New York or Washington. As United States
operatives facilitated and supported murderous, terrorist regimes throughout
Latin America, Africa, and Asia, millions of "innocent" civilians
must, in their pain and anger, have wished that similar death and destruction
could be visited on us. As we learned in Oklahoma City, such feelings are felt
even here in the United States, raging at deadly governmental assaults on
homegrown cults and militias. President
Bush has been arguing that the way to avoid attacks on our cities is a missile
shield. One has to assume that even now he is trying to figure out where this
assault came from, and how to retaliate. It is the dogma of American leaders
that violence must be met with violence. Whether such responses are moral or
immoral is arguable; what is certain is that they do not make anyone safer.
Those of us who argue for dramatic action to reduce world poverty, to destroy
the international arms trade, to rein in the awesome powers of American,
European, or other major capital, are often called utopian dreamers. Quite
the contrary, the dreamers are those who think that brut force will bring any
kind of lasting safety and peace anywhere, anytime. It would be absurd and
insane to say that the death and destruction in New York was deserved, but it
was certainly fueled by the same sort of logic that has informed much U.S.
policy in the last few decades -- that overwhelming military strikes are a valid
way of advancing policy. It would be insane to say that it was our turn to be
confronted with tragic loss of civilian life, but it was a fantasy that we could
be spared forever. This time, no "weapons of mass destruction" were
used, and yet the death toll seems certain to be in the thousands. Will
this persuade our leaders that this is no time to tear up arms control treaties
and let nuclear weapons proliferate as never before? That this is not a time to
reduce United States diplomatic outreach to the rest of the world and increase
military might? To try to take steps that would reduce the hopeless misery that
fuels insane responses from people throughout the world, rather than supporting
virtually any oppressive regime that guarantees profits to American businesses?
Or will this tragedy just plunge us deeper into fear, violence, and the
senseless pursuit of invulnerability through military force? I
cannot claim to have a solution to the world's woes, but anyone not criminally
insane will have to grant that we cannot fight and bomb our way out of this
problem, that force will not bring a solution.
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