Making The World A Safer Place
Nineteen men hijacked four passenger jets on September 11th. One crashed in rural Pennsylvania and the terrorists crashed two into the Twin Towers and a third into the Pentagon. They killed 266 passengers and crew and over five thousand people on the ground. I heard and followed these horrific events early Tuesday morning. I kept away from television until that evening. I wanted to give myself a chance to respond without being overly influenced by the media.
With many of you I felt and continue to feel a deep pain over those who were dying and being bereaved: mothers, fathers, children, grandchildren, nephews, nieces, friends, lovers, neighbors, colleagues, and other relations. I tried to abide with my own pain at the immeasurable pain of others about which I could do nothing. Nothing can make these families whole. Nothing can bring back the voice of a loved one. At rock bottom this was a horribly painful day. Each death is a cause of sadness, especially unexpected death, but when unexpected death occurs on such a massive scale the pain and sadness call out for us to abide with compassion in the suffering.
Much of the world mourns with us. Most of the world wants to seek out those who did it. That is an imperative we must follow. This needs no discussion.
What needs reflection is what I began seeing even on the first evening when I watched television at a friend's. With the exception of New York Mayor Giuliani, who was palpably grief stricken by the losses, the other politicians and commentators I happened to see were already beating drums of war and retaliation. John McCain's two-liner was the media winner: "God may forgive you, we will not." A few days later I read Time columnist Lance Morrow who urged us to "relearn... hatred" and claimed that "what's needed is a unified, unifying Pearl Harbor soul of purple American fury-a ruthless indignation that doesn't leak away in a week or two."
Late one evening I listened to a San Francisco talk show. About half the callers wanted to strike back, to retaliate. The host kept asking callers who wanted to blast, bomb, nuke, or otherwise destroy villages, cities, countries, or whole peoples: What would that solve? Would that stop terrorism? the host asked. And so I want to ask: What will be the outcome of giving into the hatred, ruthlessness, and retaliation urged by the Lance Morrows of the world? Will the world be a safer place?
The "Logic" of Retaliation
Retaliation is an attempt to avenge a wrong, to right a wrong, to try to pay someone back for a wrong against us. Feuds are good examples of the logic of retaliation. Imagine after a period of tension a Smith kills an older Jones. A wrong has been done and it needs to be righted. So a Jones kills one of the older Smith's. The wrong has been righted. Everyone can be at ease. Justice has been served. It is over. Right?
Wrong. From the perspective of the son of the older Smith who has been killed, what he sees is a father murdered out of vengeance. The younger Smith has to rise to the occasion and avenge his father's murder and the horror caused by the Jones' taking the law into their own hands. So the younger Smith kills one of the younger Jones's. Has the wrong been made right? You already know the answer. From a Jones's point of view only another wrong has been committed and it must be righted. The spiral continues. We have a feud, a running battle, a war, and each act of retaliatory violence only makes things worse.
The problem is that all of these killings look different from different perspectives. That's why retribution and retaliation do not right a wrong. Retaliation may seem to be justified to the people inflicting it, but it rarely seems justified to those upon whom it is inflicted. Instead, they feel wronged, feel that an injustice has occurred, and these perceptions and feelings motivate further violence that is justified from their perspective. I am reminded of a poem which ends: "And each drew his sword on the side of the lord." Hatred never ends hatred, that is an ancient truth.
We Must Respond
We as a people and as a nation must respond rather than react. Most of the world would support an intense and careful ferreting out of those responsible for this act of terrorism. The entire world would support these people being brought to justice before an international court of law. That is the one thing we could do which would expose to public scrutiny the underbelly of terrorism and help uproot it. That response would show respect for the law, respect for the autonomy of other nations. People across the globe could unite, we could move forward, and there would be no further loss of innocent life, including the loss of young American soldiers.
Unfortunately, the most recent events in Washington (as of Saturday evening) suggest that we are going to mimic the policy that Israel has been following and use our superior weaponry to bomb suspected terrorist locations, assassinate individuals, and engage in pre-emptive strikes. As Israel has shown, that policy always kills many innocents, causes great suffering for entire peoples, and increases hatred. That kind of policy creates Islamic Lance Morrows who celebrate hatred, ruthlessness, and retributory fury. It creates people who are willing to kill themselves in order to retaliate.
The nineteen men who were willing to commit suicide to inflict a harm on America were trying to retaliate. Why do many Americans want to retaliate? Because we have been attacked and deeply wronged. After we attack people in other parts of the world, how will they react? Will they feel that wrongs have been righted and we have only paid them back? Or will they see us as the aggressors? How will the children in the refugee camps or watching television in Syria or in Egypt come to view the United States if we seek out military retaliation rather than bringing those responsible to justice? Retaliation only breeds more violence. Bringing those who are guilty to justice need not.
The future awaits us and our actions will shape it. There is a profound choice facing us. I fear that by the time this column is published we may already be engaged in military retaliation. If we do retaliate rather than bring the guilty to justice, there will be new people dead and bereaved: mothers, fathers, children, grandchildren, nephews, nieces, friends, lovers, neighbors, and other relations. Retaliation will only increase hatred and the world will not be a safer place.
I hope my fears prove unfounded and that we will not engage in ruthless retaliation, in what is sometimes called state terrorism. We are a strong nation. We have the emotional resources to abide in compassion with pain and in solidarity with the bereaved. We have the technical resources to uncover those who are the wrong doers. We have the prowess to bring them to an international court of justice. We have an opportunity to make this world truly a safer place.
- Bart Gruzalski, 17 September, 2001
[ Reprinted with permission from the author. Copyright © 2001 by Bart Gruzalski. All rights reserved. ]