The September 11 attackers achieved the precise victory we
denied Timothy McVeigh. They suckered a nation into treating terrorists
as warriors instead of criminals. McVeigh saw himself as a freedom
fighter in a war waged by the U.S. government upon We, The People. We
saw him as a criminal, whose political motives could not transform
murder into an act of war. What McVeigh failed to do through a steady
stream of interviews, essays, and letters, the September 11 attackers
achieved without uttering a word. We spoke the word for them.
Whether in the midst of a personal crisis or a national one, our
first response is emotional. A storm of feelings at such times
overwhelms our capacity to reason and to articulate what is happening to
us.
No event in most of our lifetimes has more completely befuddled
us than last week's. No one had the words. Even those whose daily
lives and work consists of bringing language to life were speechless.
No wonder, then, that George Bush, famous for his lack of
linguistic talent, should seize so quickly upon the most apocalyptic
metaphor and signifier: war. In the moment of our shock and horror, it
seemed to all of us that there was no other word big enough.
But war is not the right word. If we fail to correct this
definitional error, this word will hijack our future.
By "war," we generally refer to a conflict between states or
nations or between factions within a state. It connotes parity between
the participants. When we declare ourselves to be at war with the
perpetrators of the September 11 attack, we elevate the attackers to the
status of nation, with consequences we probably neither intend nor
desire.
As far as we know, the attack was not the work of a nation or
state, but of individuals who have no regard for the laws and moral
codes to which the rest of us across the world subscribe and conform our
behavior. Such people are called criminals and the action we take
against them, to protect ourselves and to punish them, is called
criminal prosecution. It is not a war. To bring such people to
justice, we do not conquer them; we arrest them, indict them, bring them
to trial.
The difference in characterization is enormous. The rhetoric of
war justifies, to many minds already, a wholesale revision to the Bill
of Rights. We have seen the President call up tens of thousands of
reservists, though to what purpose remains unclear. Parents around the
country wonder whether their children may be drafted to fight a war
against an enemy whose face we do not even know. A war effort means the
growth of a bigger government, ironically at the insistence of those who
ran for office against "big government." It necessitates a re-ordering
of our priorities, with consequences to education, health care,
environment and economy.
There are also international implications to the difference in
characterization. What nation could deny us our right to prosecute the
criminals who murdered 6000 citizens and guests of this country? Many
nations may, however, balk to support a war effort, and, in doing so,
they may be exercising the calm and reason we cannot in our grief and
anger muster. Indeed, the unification of all the world's nations (with
the exception, perhaps, of Iraq) behind a prosecution of the attackers
as criminals would solidify the international community as one ruled by
law, a society responding to an offense upon the whole. If September 11
made clear how global our world today is, our response could engender a
global sense of mutuality, commonality, community. Law binds community;
it places all of us on one side arrayed against those who injure the
community. Who in the world doubts that murder is wrong? War, by
contrast, and as is already obvious in the "with-us-or-against-us"
ultimatums being issued by the administration, divides the community of
nations. By committing ourselves to war as a response, not only do we
lose the opportunity to lead a world united by law into this new
century, we condemn the world to the same destructive mechanisms of the
last century.
Acts of war, however destructive or reprehensible, do not carry
the same freight as criminal acts. War justifies killing. Indeed, acts
committed during war that overstep the rules of war, are prosecuted as
crimes against humanity. In our shock, we awarded to the September 11
attackers a rhetorical victory. We made warriors of criminals; now we
must make them back into criminals and treat them accordingly. By doing
so, we can reclaim our lives, from terrorists and politicians alike,
rather than yield to the chaos of war.
Patricia Novotny is an attorney and lecturer at the University of Washington
School of Law/Women Studies Department
in Seattle.
###
