The danger of symbols
By Peter Baumann and Michael W. Taft The opinions expressed are their own.
Ten years ago this Sunday, 19 madmen used commercial airliners as guided missiles to perpetrate what became the most influential act of terrorism in world history, generating mass fear, confusion, sorrow and rage on a scale that will not be forgotten. With the passing of a decade the reality of the attack—the smoke and the flames, the blood and the destruction—have receded into memory. Now the September 11th attack has become a concept, a symbol of the apex of terrorism in the new millennium.
Human beings evolved the capacity to generate symbolic thought over millions of years, a feat which allows us to predict and plan for potential threats and opportunities. For example, we put money in a 401k knowing that many years in the future we will have this money to live on. This aptitude is one ability that has made the human species uniquely successful among life on earth, as no other animal is capable of such complex future planning,
There is a downside, though, to this human capability: how we evaluate potential outcomes. If we are hunting for food and see a caribou, we get excited. Our emotional system signals us that an opportunity is present and it’s time to go after it. If, on the other hand, we see a bear, we become afraid, because our emotions are signaling it’s time to escape. This emotional evaluation system is probably similar in all animals, but the difference in humans is that we use this response pattern to judge imaginary scenarios as well.
We imagine various anticipated outcomes and choose the one that our emotions tell us is most desirable. The trouble is that some of these mental creations are completely fictitious. For example, have you ever laid awake at night worried sick about something that, later, never ended up happening? The emotions are just as real, the discomfort just as unpleasant, and yet the object of the emotions is only in our minds. Because complex planning works extremely well and has brought us tremendous success as a species, evolution moves us forward regardless of our biological weakness in responding emotionally to imaginary things. It’s an unfortunate side effect of natural selection—and yet it was a prime cause of the 9/11 attacks.
Like other human beings, the terrorists had a hard time distinguishing between real and imaginary threats when strong emotions were present. Bin Laden was greatly offended that the United States had troops stationed on Saudi soil. That some of those troops were Christian defiled the Holy Land of Islam and that some were women was an affront to Saudi manhood. The reality of American troops creating a physical barrier against the threat of an Iraqi invasion into Saudi homeland mattered far less than the imagined insult and desecration of cultural and religious icons.
Mohammed Atta, the leader of the hijackers and the man who flew the first plane into the North Tower of the World Trade Center that bright September morning, was an architect by trade. Atta had written his master’s thesis on how skyscrapers symbolize the oppression and dominance of the godless West over the virtues of Islam. Thus in his act of ultimate terrorism, he demolished a symbol in order to vanquish a threat that was entirely conceptual, killing thousands of real, flesh-and-blood humans in the process.
The 9/11 generation
By David Rohde The opinions expressed are his own.
In a speech last week at the American Legion convention in Minneapolis, President Obama rightly hailed what he called “the 9/11 generation,” the five million Americans who served in the military over the last decade.
“They’re a generation of innovators,” he declared. “And they’ve changed the way America fights and wins at wars.”
The following day, at a ceremony marking his retirement from the military, Gen. David Petraeus affirmed Tom Brokaw’s similar praise as the two men toured Iraq in 2003.
“He shouted to me over the noise of a helicopter before heading back to Baghdad: ‘Surely, General, this is America’s new greatest generation’,” Petraeus recalled. “I agreed with him then, and I agree with him now.”
I agree as well. There is a kernel of truth – and hope – in both statements. There is a 9/11 generation, one that extends beyond the valiant military members both men correctly hailed. Instead, it includes all Americans who experienced the attacks and responded to them over the last decade.
Its members include the tens of thousands of civilians who worked as diplomats, aid workers and contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq; the millions of police, firemen and teachers who stabilized American society in the fall of 2001 and subsequent years; and the tens of millions of innovative businesspeople and workers who brought the American economy roaring back after the attacks.
“5 million of who went to war, millions more who served in other significant ways); and a generation of children whose lives have been imprinted by events they can’t yet begin to fathom.”
As much as I sympathetic with the trauma that kid suffered – I am also aware that both he and his father and every other person serving in the military is a volunteer. I hated the draft but g had a deferment. But the draft had the benefit of making sure the war was not put on self-serving, self-perpetuating and automatic status.
A stagnant economy that seems determined to widen the gap between rich and poor is also ideal for keeping an all-volunteer army staffed. The country is becoming as fascist as the Roman Empire and can marginalize anyone not in uniform and guarantee that only those with military service ever have access to ever rarer employment prospects and all in the name of a war that never has to end. It is too easy to invent a terrorist threat.
And you exploit a generation of children that may have been too young to actually know much of what went on at the time. The memorials are making a kind of state religion with holy icons, sacred pilgrimage sites and all the trappings of a popular religion devoid of any spiritual significance. And that popular religion can be abused as easily – even more easily – but all the con men and opportunists that tend to dominate state support religious establishments.
The next generation – the 9/11 generation as the writer calls them – is not likely to enter a brave new world, but one that is very controlled by some very powerful grandees that are noble (and unaccountable) in all but title. And America has had homegrown aristocrats before.
These new aristocrats will not be nearly as accountable for the influence as the old world equivalent. They will never put their own skins or children on the line and will expect their less fortunate, less educated and less intelligent to do the fighting and dying for them. And they will be able to create all the propaganda, home grown patriotic pseudo-religious sentiment they like and broadcast it anywhere they like.
We cannot stop at Osama bin Laden
By Robert M. Morgenthau The opinions expressed are his own.
Every American must applaud the demise of Osama bin Laden. But even as we celebrate the success of the mission, we cannot afford to gloat. As any veteran law enforcement official can attest, the end of so long a manhunt only marks a new beginning. Rather than rest triumphant, with momentum on our side, we must redouble our efforts.
As one who has supervised investigations that often lasted years and spanned continents, I know there is an unusual opportunity here to reduce the influence of fanatics and make the world a safer place for democracy.
Al Qaeda has been deprived of its leader, but the terrorist organization has not been eliminated. Consider the power structure. The organization has lost its charismatic commander, a despot who ruled as all criminal leaders do: by fear. But bin Laden’s death will not automatically spell the end of his terror network. When a criminal boss is taken out an internecine struggle often follows. We must exploit this sudden split in the ranks. Headless, al Qaeda is uncharted territory. The coming days will bear much new traffic, as the old lieutenants and adjutants jockey for new positions.
The raid on the bin Laden hideout has yielded a trove of new evidence in our case against al Qaeda. Government investigators will have to sift through years’ worth of papers. Further, if the published reports are accurate, the Navy Seals also captured a number of bin Laden’s housemates — witnesses who must be interrogated. We must interview them thoroughly to glean leads. Time is of the essence.
I am reminded of the last days of World War II. After Hitler was killed, we did not stop. Washington dispatched American agents [OSS and Counter-Intelligence teams] to go after his henchmen — the Nazi leaders who were apprehended and tried at Nuremberg. The operation in Abbottabad also reminded me of the Doolittle raid — when after Pearl Harbor Franklin D. Roosevelt decided to demonstrate that the United States still had teeth, that even as we faced enemies on two fronts, our military was not a paper tiger. The raid led by Lt. Col. “Jimmy” Doolittle on April 18,1942, was a wild experiment, when the U.S. Army flew sixteen B-25 bombers off an aircraft carrier for the first time to strike the Japanese homeland for the first time in the war.
Since 9/11, much has been said about the need for superior technology to win the war on terror. No doubt the Pentagon and Langley brought our technological advantage to bear in this mission. And yet President Obama chose not to rely on satellites and bombs. He went with boots on the ground. He trusted the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces, and he demonstrated that America still has the skill and the will to accomplish its just goals — no matter how tall the odds.
Mr. Morgenthau seems to equate assassination with law enforcement. An interesting position for a former prosecutor. Shoot first and ask questions later.
from Bernd Debusmann:
Egypt, America and a blow to al Qaeda
These must be difficult times for Osama bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The uprising that swept away Hosni Mubarak after 18 days of huge demonstrations, none in the name of Islam, does not fit their ideology. In the war of ideas, al Qaeda suffered a major defeat.
Its leaders preach that the way to remove "apostate" rulers -- and Mubarak was high on the list -- is through violence. Al Qaeda's ideology does not embrace the kind of people power that brought down the Berlin wall, forced Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines into exile, and filled Cairo's Tahrir Square with tens of thousands of peaceful protesters day after day.
They waved the red-white-and-black flags of Egypt, not the green banners of Islam, in peaceful demonstrations that amounted to "a huge defeat in a country of central importance to its image," in the words of Noman Benotman, the former leader of a Libyan group often aligned with al Qaeda. "We are witnessing Osama bin Laden's nightmare," wrote Shibley Telhami, an Arab scholar at the University of Maryland.
Long before al Qaeda struck against what it calls "the far enemy" on Sept. 11, 2001, its leaders exhorted Arabs to take on the "near enemy" -- Arab regimes that failed to run their countries under sharia law -- with bloody attacks against its leaders and institutions. Violent jihad was the only way. First Tunisia, then Egypt, showed that the argument was flawed.
Which is probably the reason al Qaeda, an organization of considerable Internet savvy and communications skills, has been largely silent on the unrest that first flared in Tunisia, rolled over to Egypt and now keeps rulers awake at night from Algeria to Saudi Arabia, Syria and Bahrain.
According to SITE, a U.S.-based organization that monitors statements from al Qaeda, its offshoots and followers, the first reaction to the turmoil in Egypt came on Feb. 8, day 15 of the mass uprising, in an online forum. The "doors of martyrdom" had opened, the message said, and Egyptians must ignore secularism, democracy and nationalism.
With peaceful demonstrators jamming Tahrir Square, calls to martyrdom sounded as irrelevant and off-key as some of the statements from the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama which zigged, zagged and at least initially shone a spotlight on Washington's decades-old policy of backing dictators detested by the people they rule.
Inglorius, did the police not hose and beat African American teens for wanting to eat in the same diners as whites? Did some Americans not lynch black men through out the South just for being where blacks were not allowed? Do some of our local Christian religious leaders not preach to remove the infidel from our land? Isn’t it our Congress who blocked trying Muslim terror suspects on U.S.Territory? Many of whom were convicted by liars put on the witness stand by the same team of Federal Prosecutors who did the very same to the late Senator Stevens. Senator Stevens had his conviction overturned and 12 convicted Guantanamo detainees won new trials because of said misconduct. In my state such offenses carry up to a five year prison term. We should not judge a billion people because of the actions of some mobs.
The Underwear Bomber and the war of ideas
- Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own -
Who is winning the war of ideas between the West and al Qaeda’s hate-driven version of Islam?
It is a question that merits asking again after a 23-year-old Western-educated Nigerian of privileged background, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, attempted to murder almost 300 people by bringing down a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day with explosives sewn into the crotch of his underpants.
The administration of President Barack Obama, averse to the bellicose language of George W. Bush, has virtually dropped the phrase “war of ideas.” But that doesn’t mean it has ended. Or that Obama’s plea, in his Cairo speech this summer, for a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world has swayed the disciples of Osama bin Laden, whose 1998 fatwa (religious ruling) against “Jews and Crusaders” remains the extremists’ guiding principle.
“To…kill the Americans and their allies – civilians and military – is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it,” the fatwa said. “This is in accordance with the words of Almighty Allah (to) fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together.”
That this exhortation is as appealing today, to a fanatical minority, as it was 11 years ago underlines that the United States has had scant success in meeting the objective the Bush administration set out in its 2003 National Strategy for Combating Terrorism. “Together with the international community, we will wage a war of ideas to make clear that all acts of terrorism are illegitimate, to ensure that the conditions and ideologies that promote terrorism do not find fertile ground in any nation…”
That aim was spelt out just weeks before the United States invaded Iraq, an event that provided ample ammunition for the extremists’ assertion that the West was stepping up an unrelenting war it has waged against the Muslim world for centuries. Such claims, and al Qaeda itself, should be easy to discredit, write two political scientists, Peter Krause and Stephen Van Evera in the fall issue of the Middle East Policy Council Journal.
The Islamic jihad was not the brainchild of Osama but that of the American Imperialism [with the aid and assistance of the most right-reactionary forces in every country of their occupation] whose only concern is to assist the MNCs and the TNCs in their exploitation of the abundant natural resources the world over.All talk of upholding the values- that too American ones[?]- of freedom, democracy, free choice,etc. is nothing more than a cliche to hoodwink those gullible guys in their own as well as other countries!
After all what business do the Americans have in those countries no matter what their social-economic-political systems are? If the former USSR was wrong in ‘exporting’ revolution to the third world countries how can the USA directly wage wars in the name of their brand of democracy? If America’s political evangelism is right then Osama’s and his ilk’s retaliation is also right! If America has every right NOT ONLY TO DEFEND BUT ALSO SPREAD ITS STYLE OF LIFE AND BELIEFS then how can one find fault with others who also feel that their values are being threatened?.After all it was this very same America which originally recruited and trained them in their ‘jihad’ against the truly humanizing socialist ideology that was sought to be practiced in such countries. IF communism was a taboo for them can the American way of life be sold to them in the name of pseudo-democracy?
AND lastly,no American other than the ones who are genuinely-not for tactical or personal/practical reasons-opposed to the neocolonialist wars of his country has any right to grouse against the backlash of his country’s atrocities elsewhere.Let them not gloat over their system which has driven thousands on to the streets in their own country and is ruining the lives of the millions in other countries.Because that system and its government in their country are not theirs but those of the warlords in the service of the MNCs and the TNCs.
A V Samikkannu, Pappireddippatti, Tamilnadu, India
the writer exhibits stark misreading of reality and like many others, seems entrenched in this macho, cowboy, let’s kick their butt, mentality.
When are we going to read reality as reality, not as sound bites to makes us feel good (presumable)?
Those who attacked us did not do it just because they were evil, hate our democracy, or hate America. They are evil for the mere fact that killing thousands, indiscriminately, of innocent people. But let’s also look inward. We went to them, to their land, to their homes, we kicked their doors, killed their husbands, orphaned their kids and plundered their oil, and for whose benefits? Not for the American walking in the street, but for the likes of Halliburton, Northrp Grumman, Booz Allen, and GE. Yet again, they own all the newspapers, the broadcasting, and our Congress.