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Foreign Policy With "Moral Appeal" Is Not A Defense
Against Terrorism This is a response to Su Yang's commentary. You assert that by neglecting the "moral appeal" of U.S. foreign policy in favor of technology we have invited the 911 and future terrorist attacks. This argument is similar to the one rapists sometimes use when they explain their actions by blaming the woman they raped because she dressed too provocatively. Moreover, in making this argument you have ignored the underlying causes of the anti-American sentiment and focused instead on a small aspect of the problem. Ultimately, the solution is to understand and get at the root of the problem, not to devise a foreign policy that appeals to the morality of the extremists like Bin Laden and the Taliban. There's a fine line between explaining terrorism and justifying it. Unfortunately, in the process of making your argument, you've crossed that line and become an apologist for the terrorists, especially when you stated that they are "…first and foremost the victims of the process." We're all victims of something, but to compare any hardship endured by the hijackers and suicide bombers with the hardship of those who died in the 911 attacks is beyond comprehension. They are victims, but for the most part they are not the victims of American foreign policy, they are the victims of their own mistakes and bad luck. I'll assume for the sake of argument that you crossed that fine line accidentally. However, I think you should examine the "moral appeal" of your argument and the accuracy of your statements if you'd like anyone to take your argument seriously. Nevertheless, I'll ignore your half-truths and limit myself to the problems inherent with your proposed solution. What is a moral foreign policy? Your
theory incorrectly assumes that we can agree with the extremists
on what a moral U.S. foreign policy is. This is simply not
possible given the current state of human evolution. If you
and I can't agree, then how do you expect to convince the
extremists that some revised version of U.S. foreign policy
is moral? What do you think would happen if we stopped supporting Israel? At best there would be a major war in the Middle East, at worst we'd have another Holocaust, the use of nuclear weapons, and a world war. All sides have made mistakes in dealing with this issue, including the US, but please remember that the U.S. did not create this problem. By the time we became involved in the region in the 1940s there were already 700,000 Jews and 150,000 non-Jews in what would later become the state of Israel. It was an impossible task at that point to simply ask the Jews to leave, and if we didn't support them the Arabs would have attempted to exterminate them. The only solution is to continue to support them and encourage them to live in peace with the Palestinians and to help to establish a Palestinian state. Your theory also assumes that we will never make a mistake executing an otherwise moral policy that could be viewed as immoral by other nations or people. For example, the accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999 was regarded by many as a deliberate act on the part of the U.S. against all logic or reasonable argument. You also assumed that there is no way for an extremist or terrorist to distort the truth and use this distortion to their advantage. For example, Osama Bin Laden claims that the U.S. killed 1 million children in Iraq. In his 1998 interview with John Miller of ABC News, Bin Laden alluded to the starving children in Iraq when he said: The prophet said, "A woman entered hell because of a cat. She did not feed it and blocked it from finding food on its own." She is going to hell for blocking cat to death, but what say to those who agreed and gave reason for the hundreds of thousands of troops to blockade millions of Muslims in Iraq? This is perfect example of how an irresponsible person can distort the truth and use it to incite people against an innocent target. In this case, Bin Laden distorts the truth by using an incomplete analogy to accuse the U.S. of blocking Iraq from finding food. I offer the following more complete analogy: The woman was being punished by her peers because she started killing every cat which was born with white fur and threatened to kill other white cats in her neighborhood. Despite her punishment, she refused to stop trying to kill white cats, and her refusal resulted in the death of her own cat. The woman is going to hell. The woman in my extended analogy is not the U.S. as Bin Laden implies. The woman is Saddam Hussein, and the white cats are the Kurds, Iraqi Shiites, and Kuwaitis. He is directly responsible for the death of children in his country, not the US. In fact, out of compassion for the starving people in Iraq, the U.S. helped establish a food-for-oil program under which Iraq is allowed to sell $1 billion worth of oil every 90 days in order to buy food. Another flaw in your theory is that it assumes that there's no rational reason they would attack the U.S. if our foreign policy was moral. In fact there are many arguably rational reasons to attack including the desire to increase personal prestige and power. Who are the terrorists? While I will agree that some misguided and badly executed U.S. foreign policies have inflamed anti-American sentiment, it is not the root cause of the hatred. The key, as you said, lies in "understanding the mechanisms that create the "extremists." In other words, we need to ask the question -- What motivates someone to become a terrorist or support a terrorist? According to the Terrorism Research Center (http://www.terrorism.com): "Psychological motivation for terrorism derives from the terrorist's personal dissatisfaction with his life and accomplishments." Other analysts have come to similar conclusions: "The terrorist's mind is its own place, and like Milton's Satan, can make a hell of heaven, a heaven of hell. Whether it is the Unabomber, Aum Shinrikyo or Baruch Goldstein (who killed scores of unarmed Muslims in Hebron), terrorists are almost always misfits who place their own twisted morality above mankind's." Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek International Editor, http://www.msnbc.com/news/639057.asp As long as the U.S. is rich and powerful people unhappy with their life or position in the world will resent us. Success breeds contempt. However, it would be wrong to conclude that our success is the only reason we are hated. Hundreds of millions and probably billions of people around the world are impoverished or oppressed, but they show little if any hatred toward America. There is something different about the Arab world that allowed this hatred to grow and magnify the importance of every move that America makes. The Middle East attempts to modernize Over the past 40 years almost every Arab state has attempted to join the modern world, and nearly all have failed. They failed for many reasons including bad luck, bad ideas, poor implementation, greed, corrupt leaders, inefficient forms of government, and arguably a lack of help from the West. To add insult to injury they were repeatedly embarrassed militarily by Israel (with U.S. support). They can't understand why the U.S. has given so much support to Israel, which is the only democracy in the region, and relatively little assistance to them. Even the wealth generated by oil couldn't save them and arguably had a negative effect by undermining their motivation to improve. Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek International Editor (http://www.msnbc.com/news/639057.asp), wrote: But for the Arab world, modernity has been one failure after another. Each path followed-socialism, secularism, nationalism-has turned into a dead end. While other countries adjusted to their failures, Arab regimes got stuck in their ways. And those that reformed economically could not bring themselves to ease up politically. Once the Arab states failed in their efforts to modernize, they fell victim to another common human weakness. They couldn't win the game, so they rationalized that the game wasn't worth winning. Now a small percentage of them have come to the conclusion that they can't compete with the West because the U.S., Britain, and Israel have oppressed them. This small minority decided to turn their backs on the modern world and retreat to their caves so that they can play the game as it was played 600 years ago during the glory of the Ottoman empire. To their credit all of the Islamic countries in the world have condemned the 911 attacks, and I believe the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims reject the use of violence despite their anti-American sentiments. All it would take is a little success to bring them hope and slowly turn the tide in favor of the U.S. and against the extremist minority. Appeasement is doomed Your argument implies that the extremists and their supporters will be satisfied if America acquiesces to a few of their demands and implements a foreign policy that appeals to them morally. Again the Terrorism Research Center disagrees: "A group that achieves its stated purpose is no longer needed; thus, success threatens the psychological well-being of its members. When a terrorist group approaches its stated goal, it is inclined to redefine it." Al Qaedas professed goals are to force the withdrawal of Jews, Americans, Brits, etc. and their economic and cultural influence from all Islamic countries. In his 1998 interview with ABC News, Bin Laden said: We pray to God, Praise and Glory be to him, to help Muslims expel the Americans and Jews from Islamic countries. Based on these goals and the preceding explanation of what motivates terrorists, I conclude that changing U.S. foreign policy will not result in a decrease of terrorist attacks. In fact I believe it will result in an increasing number of attacks because they will perceive the U.S. as weak and will demand more concessions than we could possibly give them. A world government Your analogy of the world as a village dominated by one family is an interesting one that is worth extending to match reality. Let's assume for a moment that one family is much more successful than the other families, by virtue of hard work and good luck. Another family is impoverished due to a run of bad luck and bad decisions. There is a natural inclination for the impoverished family to resent the wealthy family. You can take that emotion and use it as motivation to work harder and keep trying to improve your situation, or you can use it as motivation to attack the wealthy family. If an individual living with the poor family attacks the wealthy family, then your "world government" will have to decide whether the individual should be punished. If the world government votes to punish the individual, but the poor family refuses to turn the person over to the authorities, then they will either need to ignore the violation or use force to go into the poor family's house and bring the individual to justice. Bringing someone to justice in a court of law means that you must be able to provide sufficient evidence to meet the higher standard of the law, and you must be able to provide a fair trial. In the real world neither of those requirements is easy to satisfy. Despite the apparently convincing evidence that the U.S. has gathered, it's unlikely that we have a smoking gun with Osama Bin Ladens fingerprints on it. He's too smart for that. If we don't kill him and his associates, we will remain vulnerable to more attacks from al Qaeda in the short term. Of course, wiping out al Qaeda won't put an end to terrorist attacks, but it will send a message to other terrorist groups that the cost of doing business has been raised. Longer-term solutions are needed, but until they take effect we are going to have to continue disrupting and eliminating the existing terrorists. Therefore, we have to go into Afghanistan and kill him and his associates. I know it sounds like we are subverting justice by not bringing them to trial, but you have to be realistic. There is no change we could possibly make to U.S. foreign policy that would change their minds about the U.S. We also have to put pressure on any nation that supports terrorists to end that support. If these "terrorist states" refuse, then we might have to use our military forces again. Bush's statement that we will "end the terrorist states" was a notice to these countries that they'd better start fighting terrorism instead of supporting it. Of course, it probably won't be necessary to take military action against all these states if we are successful in Afghanistan, but sometimes rhetoric serves a purpose. Last but certainly not least, the U.S. and other nations need to find a way to bring the troubled Islamic countries into the modern world and show them that they can be successful playing by the rules. It's not our responsibility to do this, but it is in our best interest. This is the most difficult task we face, because we have to strike the perfect balance between doing too much and doing too little. Finally, since you mentioned that Albert Einstein supported the United Nations I feel compelled to point out that he also supported Pacifism and Zionism (in fact he was offered the presidency of Israel). When Hitler came to power Einstein renounced his earlier pacifist stand in recognition of the threat posed by the Nazis. (The author is a Software Development Consultant in California.) |