After 9/11, exploring why it happened was often seen as tantamount to treason. President Bush explained Islamic extremists struck because of who the U.S. is rather than what it does: They were moved by hatred of America’s freedom.
When Chechen terrorists perpetrated a crime that overwhelmed the imagination by first terrorizing and then murdering school children in Beslan, the State Department was quick to answer why: it was because of what Russia does, not what it is: Russia’s Chechen policy was to blame.
The hypocrisy is startling. Terrorists who attack Russia have a reason grounded in political grievances while those who strike the United States do not.
President Putin cogently pierced the double standard: “Why don't you meet Osama bin Laden, invite him to Brussels or to the White House and engage in talks?"
Russia’s brutality in Chechnya is at the heart of Beslan, an unjustified evil visited on children bearing flowers for their teachers, as unjustified as 9/11. In a guerilla war, targeting civilians veers sharply into cowardice and eliminates any sympathy for what might be a just cause.
But if the Bush administration is smart enough to figure out the underlying causes of terrorism in Russia, how come it’s not smart enough to understand why America was attacked? The answer is that of course the administration does understand, but it cannot admit it. Doing so would open a national debate on decades of U.S. policy towards Arab and Muslim nations.
And that is exactly what is needed.
An examination of how the U.S. has spouted about spreading democracy since Woodrow Wilson while propping up dictators is a good place to start. The Cold War justification was to protect strategic interests from Soviet control. CIA-engineered coups in Islamic Iraq, Iran and Indonesia resulted. That reason is now gone.
Bush still talks about bringing democracy to Iraq while his regime supports undemocratic governments across the Muslim world.
If we take bin Laden’s statements at face value, we know he is moved by hatred of these regimes, which he intends to overthrow. Not that bin Laden would replace them with democracies. But pulling the levers at Washington’s disposal to press Arab governments to reform steadily towards democracy would undermine the extremists. In countries where there are no elections for the executive or for a legislature, where there is no freedom of the press, speech or assembly, how else can legitimate dissent express itself except through blowing up bombs? Give people the vote and freedom of speech and the terrorists will be marginalized.
Instead, Bush has solidified bin Laden’s arguments. The al Qaeda leader used to preposterously say American troops were occupying Saudi Arabia because the U.S. has a few thousand soldiers in barracks there. So Bush justifies bin Laden’s absurd remarks by indeed invading and occupying an entire Arab nation that was long the center of Islam. The region has been inflamed and a vacuum opened now filled by terrorists after the removal of a Cold War-era dictator, once coddled, who was a bulwark against Islamic extremism. Meanwhile Washington continues to coddle other Arab dictators and excises out of the Senate’s intelligence report on 9/11 any references to the Saudis’ possible role in the attacks.
The second point that needs urgent debate is Washington’s total support for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The Bush administration has ended negotiations based on Madrid and Sharon has declared the Road Map dead.
Rather than change his policy toward Palestine, that is, withdrawal from occupied lands, suicide bombers attack, Sharon counterattacks, and suicide bombers attack again. An unending Israeli military occupation perpetuates the violence.
It’s the same murderous cycle in Iraq, which seemingly won’t end until that occupation does. Instead Sharon has trained US forces in the Israeli tactics of bombing houses of suspected militants, leading to more attacks and further US responses.
On Chechnya, Putin sends his foreign minister to Israel to pick up the same preemptive strategy that was also liberally offered to Bush.
Putin, Bush and Sharon have all responded to terrorism in like kind: they deny their policies have anything to do with it and employ a militarism that is leading to unending chaos.
They repeat the mantra: We will not negotiate with terrorists. But negotiations aren’t always needed. Unilateral changes in unjust polices are. Sharon doesn’t need dialogue with Arafat to pull back to the internationally recognized 1967 borders. Bush doesn’t need to negotiate with bin Laden to end his unyielding support for Arab dictators and Sharon. Putin can pull his troops out of Chechnya, perhaps replaced with UN peacekeepers.
Militarists aren’t needed, but statesmen with the courage to reevaluate trouble-making policies, even at the cost of national interests. Only then might the world pass through this era of terror.
Joe Lauria is a journalist who has covered international affairs at the United Nations for the Boston Globe, the London Daily Telegraph, the Montreal Gazette and other publications. He is also an award-winning investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London.
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