Cowards and Crusades

I'm sitting neck deep in numbness, I guess we all are, trying to grapple with the aftermath of the World Trade Center-Pentagon Attacks. Can we call it 911? Somehow it seems appropriate, like a cry for help.

Many things in the rhetoric surrounding 911 keep bothering me. First was how all our government officials kept referring to the attackers as "cowardly." Trust me, any terrorist determined to do something like this is no coward. Misguided? Undoubtedly, but it takes fanatical discipline to take one's own life in the service of anything. Especially when one has to train for suicide for months as they must have. No, our leaders seem to be calling the terrorists cowards simply because they did not meet us on a "field of honor" as soldiers. Where they could be conveniently cut down at 1800 meters by a heavy caliber Gatling gun firing depleted uranium flechettes at the rate of 750 per second. All aimed by another Tim-McVeigh-in-training, no doubt. That would be so very honorable indeed! And they would be so very dead. But not cowards. In a similar vein, Bill Maher took a lot of flack when he said that our lobbing cruise missiles from hundreds of miles away is cowardly. I agree with him. I sure hope Bush and his boys don't think that way. We can't expect a few cruise missiles will solve this; we're going to have to get up close and surgical. But I digress. There's no cowardice in not meeting us with all our high tech weapons on an open field. What's really going on is a simple put-down, a way of de-humanizing the enemy so that our people can feel good about killing them.

And not make our people grieve too much about anyone else caught in the crossfire. But this is one time we can't afford to take any innocent lives. We can't give them any reason to get more recruits and more martyrs. And that brings up another thing that bothers me--the way that Resident Bush has cast this as a battle of Good versus Evil. He's even vowed to rid the world of Evildoers. C'mon George, you're not a comic book superhero; moreover you are mistaken about us, because we've never been entirely Good.

We say we don't like to attack civilians, but we have killed plenty of civilians in our wars. During World War II in the name of avenging the London Blitz and Pearl Harbor we dealt mass destruction on a far greater scale than we ever received. How Good were we when we blasted the civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? And they're only the most famous examples. How Good were we when we fire-bombed Dresden, Hamburg and Tokyo? We destroyed hundred of square miles of homes and we killed 50,000 or more in each of those cities too. But firestorms come without the radioactivity of atomic destruction, so few people remember it now and fewer still are taught about it in school.

Need something closer to our new century? We don't even have to go back to Vietnam or Korea for that. We bombed a hospital in Grenada when we invaded there, but the casualties were only a few dozen for that. What's a little collateral damage between friends? Need bigger numbers? How about when we destroyed whole city blocks in Panama City trying to capture Noriega? At least 2000 were killed there but in the US hardly anyone knows about it. (There's a little footage of the destruction in a recent feature movie, The Tailor of Panama, if you don't believe me.) We blew an Iranian airliner full of passengers out of the sky. Ten years ago in Baghdad we took out 300 civilians with one bomb on an air raid shelter that we thought was a command post, not to mention all the other uncounted civilian deaths. Then last year there's the Chinese Embassy we hit thinking it was a Serbian stronghold. All mistakes, to be sure. Precision guided mistakes.

What wasn't a mistake though was destroying Baghdad's water purification system in Desert Storm. Then we clamped down trade embargoes so it's never been rebuilt. That's been the source of countless children dying in Iraq for ten years now. But then Saddam Hussein is Evil and we have to keep the pressure on him. Funny, but I'm sure that's the way the terrorists look at us too: America is Evil. That comic book simplicity of Good versus Evil is going to get tossed right back in our face.

Then there's the third thing Bush said that bothered me. That this was an attack on Freedom. Which Freedom, George? There's two kinds, you know, Freedom To and Freedom From. I think he means Freedom To. Freedom to make a profit whenever and however the hell we want.

I suppose it's too much to ask Resident Bush and Congress to look to our own actions in the world to understand why we engender so much jealousy and hate. But it's terribly obvious to people in other countries, especially in the third world--the oppression created by our capitalist culture is a huge omnipresent force. We soak up such an enormous portion of the world's resources and take advantage of cheap (almost slave) labor in dozens of under-developed countries. Even the poor in our country live like kings in comparison to most of the rest of the world. The American Dream of a car, a house and a TV in every room is completely out of reach for most of the world's population. No wonder they don't see our profit motive as a freedom or a right.

But what about that other freedom, Freedom From? Well the Bushies are happily dismantling that one right now with their new Home Security cabinet post. It may seem like a great idea now but once put into place, like the CIA and the NSA were in 1947, these things have a way of growing deep roots. There will come a day when this Terrorist War will be over. And then instead of going away, Home Security will have nothing to do but watch US. How long will it be before someone decides to use this office against his political enemies? Or people who don't go to his church? Right now it still feels like we have Freedom From in this country but make no mistake. We have just given up our freedom from unreasonable searches. We have just given up our right to be considered innocent until proven guilty.

And speaking of proof, I haven't yet heard of any evidence that directly links Osama Bin Laden to 911. Oh he's the prime suspect all right, but consider this alternate scenario. Achmed Jihad-Leader-Wannabe doesn't think Osama's been aggressive enough, so he concocts his own attempt on the World Trade Center and doesn't sign it, knowing that we'll come down like a megaton of bricks on Afghanistan and take out his rival. Not only does Achmed get the reins of power, he gets an instant martyr for the cause too.

It could be a dozen things like that. Maybe it's not a wannabe, but it's Saddam again, or even Qaddafi. Who knows? Let's just watch CNN parrot the White House's press releases and build up war fever instead of trying to find out what really happened.

Then there's my favorite bit of rhetoric. No student of history, the Resident called the fight against terrorism a "crusade" at one point. His handlers immediately backpedaled on it of course but that's playing right into the hands of anyone who wants a holy war. Why shouldn't he use that term? Well, there were at least eight major crusades back in the Middle Ages as Christians brutally tried to push Islam out of Palestine. A few crusades actually conquered the city of Jerusalem, but most only succeeded in butchering lots of innocents. No wonder the very mention of crusades is foolish when you are trying to inspire peace- loving Muslims to help rid us of the fanatics who did this.

In spite of that stumble though, Bush enjoys wide support. He did much better in his speech of September 20th and he's gone out of his way to say that we are not against Islam in general and that the terrorists blaspheme the peaceful core of Islam. At least most of the world seems to be behind us right now, because they realize that the people who did this can hurt anyone who isn't up to their holy standards. We have to stand together against them.

It's marvelous to watch but there are many more chapters yet to be written. We'd better be double careful not make any precision guided mistakes this time. We can't afford it. I expect that the campaign will drag out a lot longer than anyone in our military expects and there will be mistakes though, so Dubya had better enjoy his 80+ popularity rating while he can. Even if it does end well and Osama is dragged kicking and screaming to trial, expect another wave of these guys in five or ten years, claiming communication with his spirit or at least carrying his flag.

And that brings us to the last fact: the terrorist leaders have not come out and "signed" their act, taken responsibility for it. They have sent us no demands, given no criteria for making the violence stop. In this they ARE cowards. Like all the leaders down through history, they convince others to die for their plans. As human beings we have a lot of growing up to do. We have to learn to stop obeying our leaders when they demand we do violence to each other. Maybe the real way to end a conflict like this is to be like Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi or yes, even Mohammed, and not play the war game at all. Is it too late to start showing some respect for the other cultures in the world and make some amends for past sins? I'm sure these wise men would say it's not too late. The most courageous thing of all might be to not strike back in the face of such violence, to turn the other cheek and extend the hand of peace.

I don't hold out much hope that we'll be that perfect this time around, but I'd settle for at least rebuilding the places we destroy and bring them into the 21st century instead of the 6th century where the Taliban seems to want them.

The only bright side in all this is that now we won't have to endure the latest Schwarzenegger Vehicle. And that's a pretty small brightness indeed.

Thanks for reading and until next month the Closet is closed.



(C) 2001 - Rusty Pipes


Official Disclaimer: Due to the circumstances which led to this column, the normally humorous disclaimer will not appear this month. We stand behind every word above.