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September 11 is as much a blemish on human history as any of
these macabre and horrendous events, and has touched many people
quite deeply. But what have the governments in different parts
done to counter such violence that has been the cause of the
devastation of complete societies and the extermination of
millions of citizens all over the world? Rhetoric from America
is extremely belligerent. There is practically no mention by the
American state of why some people become so aggrieved with the
US as to turn ‘extremist’ and willing participants of such
attacks. Even if military action does go ahead, without a
clearly definable enemy when do ‘we’ know that ‘we’ve’
won? The problem can only be addressed by taking the world as a
whole, by finding the cause, by talking and thinking, and not by
heading straight into foolhardy military genocide repeatedly
which will be a catastrophic mistake at a critical moment. It
must be remembered that terror invokes terror.
In this
painstakingly and systematically researched book, John Cooley
locates Islamic militancy not only in the conservative and
oppressive societies of the Third World, but, in the words of
Said, places it within the context created by "powers like
the United States, which has tried to have and eat its cake in
all ways, manipulating the militants one day, abandoning them
the next, inadvertently keeping them in business, then attacked
by and finally going to war against them." To fight the
Russians in Afghanistan, the US trained Islamic militants,
"using the intelligence services of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and
Pakistan." Such are the ‘one-night stands’ in
international relations, or as Said emphasises "strange
love affairs that go disastrously wrong" and that
inadvertently move towards creating an enemy as antagonistic as
the Soviet Union or the Islamic world.
The resentment
felt against the USA would hardly disappear, argues Cooley, if
it’s foreign policy was liberalised—the World Trade Center
could have been Canary Wharf. I hope that one positive thing
that this terror might generate is the realisation of the
interdependency of the world—if they want market liberal
democracy in the West, this is going to be at the expense of the
South, and they then either have to consider themselves at war
constantly with less fortunate countries as their anger erupts
(which would be for absolutely no one’s benefit). Poverty
could be one of the central causes of escalating terrorism.
The book draws
attention to the ugly events of imperial high-handedness that
are often put across as false illustrations of benevolence and
high ideals of bringing democracy to these fanatical followers
of Islam. The nature of American institutions seems to give her
the license to intervene whereas a country like Iraq could
never be permitted to do so. Rumsfeld can be nonchalant about
looting in Baghdad, but is unable to imagine similar attacks on
museums and the White House in Washington. Limits to what the
outsider can do in the affairs of another country are never
understood. Vietnam, Bosnia, or Somalia is no lesson to the
framers of foreign policy.
Ironically, when
one American enemy disappears, a search for another begins. With
Russians unthreateningly mute, it is now the turn of
international terrorism, Hispanic narcotrafficers, Islamic
fundamentalism, or Third World instability. Respectable
scholarship refuses to show its concern and remains subservient
to the standard doctrinal camouflage of America’s real
motives. The hard fact the USA and other NATO members have to
face is that acts of terrorism, atrocities, and a generalised
culture of violence arise from and are shaped by their way of
life and by what at least some of them believe in. Jorge Luis
Borges is not far from truth when he writes, "I foresee
that man will resign himself each day to more atrocious
undertakings; soon there will be no one but soldiers and
bandits." To this end America has a bigger hand than any
other oppressive regime.
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"GOOD
shall overpower evil." "We will smoke the barbarians out
of their holes." These are George Bush’s utterances after the
terrorist attack on the Twin Towers and before the Afghan war,
liturgical yet predator-like. The meanings attributed to words can
never have a one-hundred-percent guarantee, being always
contaminated by their opposites. Structuring and categorising
reality is not all that simple. Can we really attain a more
realisable view of things in this world of mere representations
underpinned by nothing but the non-transparency of language? Thus we
distrust the very notion of reason, and the idea of the human being
as an independent entity. This deep-seated skepticism burns away the
intellectual ground on which Western civilisation is built.
