The anger, the hatred, the
fury, the malice, the contempt for life that motivated the plotters
of the terrorist assault on Americans is a disease as old as mankind.
If we allowed such untamed anger, hatred, fury, malice, and contempt
to infect our minds, then the assassins would have succeeded not only
in destroying precious lives but also in corrupting our morals.
Hardly any foreign leader has questioned the necessity of America's
military efforts to incapacitate and punish the murderers. We have done
little, however, to prevent the spread of the terrorist obsession to
others still tempted to join anti-American conspiracies. We urgently
need broad-based efforts to reduce, if not eliminate, the root causes
of the evil that struck us on September 11.
Since that awful day, little has gone right. The hunt for the Al Qaida
terrorists has been only partially successful. Nobody knows how many
of these desperados are still at large hatching other savage plots.
The anthrax scare has confronted us with another variation of the lethal
weapons that hidden enemies can unleash upon us. The potential arsenal
of biological and chemical weapons seems immense. Worse yet, we have
failed to defuse the pervasive anger gripping millions of Muslims who
harbor no ill will toward the American people but are utterly frustrated
by the unwillingness of our leaders to end the oppression of the Palestinians.
We have not worked hard enough on calming the enraged tempers among
them and among us.
We have not sought to meet and reason together how we can better get
along with each other in spite of our ideological differences. Instead,
we are continuing to malign each other. Blind ignorance and intolerance
characterize the radical Muslims who fantasize about an imaginary American
"Satan." Regrettably, however, too many Americans have allowed
themselves to counter radical anti-Western agitation by indiscriminately
vilifying as "evil" the religion of 1,200 adherents of Islam.
This is not the time to upset moderate Muslims further by killing more
of their people in reckless military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Improved relations with the Arab countries and the rest of the world
are far more important in the war against Al Qaida than regime change
in Baghdad. We failed to get rid of Saddam when we had the opportunity
to do so eleven years ago. We should try it again only if in the process
we are not producing still more indignation and opposition. We need
supportive friends and respect their well-meaning advice.
Few people in the administration and on Capitol Hill seem to comprehend
how crucial the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is for
the improvement of our relations with the Muslim world. If enlightened
Israeli leaders, the Bush administration, and Congress were willing
to end the mindlessly oppressive occupation of the West Bank and Gaza,
America's and Israel's standing in the international community would
vastly improve overnight. Denouncing desperate Palestinians as thugs
and praising Ariel Sharon as "a man of peace" only aggravates
the tensions between Americans and Arabs. Such name-calling is bush
league diplomacy.
On September 11, 2002, we find our country deeply frustrated, not only
in our foreign affairs but also domestically. Pillars of corporate business
are being tried in criminal court. So are Catholics priests. The economy
and the financial markets are stumbling. The Attorney General is tempted
to tamper with our first and fourth amendment freedoms.
No voices from abroad are questioning our ability as a society to solve
our present economic and military problems. Most foreign governments,
however, doubt that our new, self-centered and imperious foreign policy
will yield us the international consent and support we need to succeed
in our worldwide war on terror.