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| Volume VIII, December 2001, Number 4 |
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| Editor’s Note |
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On September 11, 2001, crimes against humanity were carried out through coordinated terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon by means of airborne gasoline bombs. With 4,500 innocents murdered -- men, women and children from over 80 countries -- and 19 terrorists dead, and with anthrax spores circulating through the mail, Americans began to know fear. Without warning, the protective oceans were vaporized. We suddenly became the near neighbors of a large number of people who meant us grievous harm. Individuals who had seemed benign or at least ineffectual all at once became the "Other," capable of unprecedented atrocities.
The stunned Bush administration took action almost immediately. U.S. military forces were dispatched to pursue the mastermind of the hijackings (by his own later admission to The Telegraph of London, November 11), Osama bin Laden, and his mafia, al-Qaeda, by making war against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that is protecting them. As of this writing, most of the country has already fallen to the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance, and the Taliban have fled in disarray. Bin Laden and company are on the run, perhaps hiding in remote mountain caves. The hunt will go on, though their capture or death will not extirpate the movement, which apparently consists of loosely organized cells all over the world. Making martyrs of its leaders may even attract new recruits (see Wikorowicz on the Islamist "Salafi Jihadis").
Al-Qaeda cannot conquer the United States, of course, nor is that its goal. It is apparently seeking to replace the current rulers in Saudi Arabia and drive the West out of the Muslim world. But the attacks were a wake-up call for Americans. It is no longer safe to be ignorant or to let our children remain ignorant. This country, the winner of two world wars and the long struggle against international Communism, suffers from weaknesses that have nothing to do with soldiers, weapons, planes, ships, tanks or command, control and communication and everything to do with politics and diplomacy.
We have just lived through an era -- and the horrors of September 11 have not put an end to it -- in which every act of the government in foreign affairs was a move in a domestic political game played for electoral advantage. To placate A or B, American politicians offend Y or Z. But acts have consequences. President Bush seemed genuinely nonplused that the United States could be the object of hatred, but most people reading this page would not be. And when some claim that our freedom and representative system of government have generated this hatred, it does not ring true. Most people around the world admire and share our values. But they would like to see us behave with more of Jefferson's "decent respect for the opinions of mankind."
The Mediterranean world, the Muslim/Arab world -- the cradle of modern Western civilization, the direct transmission line of ancient learning to a benighted Europe -- is full of people who are angry about our callous indifference to their suffering. That suffering is not unique, but disputes from Palestine, to Iraq, to Kashmir, to Mindanao have produced a unique despair. Some of these people, going against their deeply embedded religious prohibitions, have even used suicide and the murder of innocents as weapons in their political struggle. Muslim religious leaders have condemned the attacks of September 11. In Saudi Arabia, the chairman of the Supreme Judicial Council, Shaikh Salih Al-Luheidan, said on September 14: "As a human community, we must be vigilant and careful to oppose these pernicious and shameless evils, which are not justified by any sane logic nor by the religion of Islam." The chairman of the Senior Ulama in Saudi Arabia, Shaikh Abdulaziz Al-Shaikh, said on September 15: "The recent developments in the U.S. constitute a form of injustice that is not tolerated by Islam, which views them as gross crimes and sinful acts."
The hard-line, true-believers in al-Qaeda are beyond the reach of persuasion, but they can be deprived of recruits. Propaganda in the form of full-page ads in newspapers or talking heads on Al-Jazeera TV is pointless, however. The leaders manipulate susceptible young men by playing on their sympathies for the Palestinians and the Chechens -- and now the Afghans. Palestine is the core issue that has to be addressed, say most mainstream analysts, from hawks like Zbigniew Brzezinski and Anthony Cordesman to liberals like Mary McGrory and Tom Friedman to conservatives like Georgie Anne Geyer and Pat Buchanan. Even Samuel Huntington of Harvard, author of the ubiquitous "clash of civilizations" canard, has just recommended that Washington distance itself from Israel as a step in the direction of lasting peace. Nelson Mandela is on record as having told President Bush at the White House on November 12 that treating Yasser Arafat as a pariah gives the appearance of bias.
Supporters of the hard line in Israel define terrorism to include not just the murder of innocents but acts by groups that engage in violence to drive the Israeli occupier back inside its 1967 borders. Israel accuses Iran of state sponsorship of terrorism for supporting their coreligionists in Lebanon in the struggle to liberate the south of their country. This is a major sticking point for U.S.-Iran rapprochement, despite Tehran's post-9/11 cooperation with Washington in Afghanistan.
Few hands in the Middle East are clean, and the Israeli government has much to answer for, in terms of both politics and human rights. In this issue of the journal, a review of the Oslo process and its demise (see both the Zunes article and the symposium) as well as Ellen Siegel's eyewitness account of the massacres at Sabra and Shatila are reminders of the vicious circle in which Israel has trapped itself. In part, this is the accomplishment of the current leadership, but its weapons are labeled "Made in USA." For more detail on the subject, see the searing "A Gaza Diary," in the October Harper's Magazine, written by New York Times reporter Chris Hedges. His description of the cruelty of the Israeli occupation is must reading for those -- and their numbers have ballooned over the past two months -- who wonder why some Muslims might have reason to hate America. The United States chose sides in a war back in 1967, promoting instability and abetting a humanitarian disaster.
The horror that rained down on us this fall, or something like it, had been dreaded by those who study the Middle East, some of them members of the editorial advisory committee of this journal (see their essays beginning on page 1). Many had warned that the justice that had been delayed for so long was turning into a festering desire for revenge. Now, though the clock cannot be turned back, might be a time for fresh thinking. The parameters of a just peace between Israel and the Palestinians have long been known, and it appears that the administration might try to seize the day, free of some of the constraints of the past.
In a time of open debate, the Middle East Policy Council has a contribution to make. For the past 20 years, it has attempted to expand and inform the U.S. political discussion through two policy forums: this quarterly and a Capitol Hill conference series (see the proceedings of the most recent one, inside). In an effort to expand knowledge and understanding, the Council also sponsors teacher-training workshops for secondary-level educators on the history and culture of the Arab world and Islam, a popular program that we do not even have to advertise. People want to educate themselves, to know more about U.S. foreign-policy choices. It is not enough to wave the flag; nor is it appropriate to silence dissent. This is America, after all.
Anne Joyce
November 2001
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