Intelligent Stupidity

Mark Twain said Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it. I love America. America is a fantastically wonderful idea. America is a place where that idea is made tangible every time we speak freely and live securely. I love my country. I love America. But when my government tells me that bombing another country is how we make the world safe for democracy, I’ve cannot sit idly by.

No one disputes the fact that there are those who wish to do America harm. But is the best way to prevent America from that harm actually to humiliate an entire region and to pepper a country with bombs-bombs whose blasts destroy indiscriminately? I don’t think so.

Let us say for a moment that you’re a male Iraqi teenager living in Baghdad. You’re life has its ups and downs. Sometimes you get to play a game like soccer only you ride horses and score with a dead goat. You have some laughs-impress the ladies. You don’t really care about global politics. Then, all of a sudden, the place where you live gets bombed-your parents are killed and then written off by the aggressors as “collateral damage”. Your environment shifts pretty quickly. Now there are scores of people shouting from the rooftops that America did this to you-that they did this to you because they hate your god-because they hate everything you stand for.

That boy has no viable independent media or easy access to unbiased books. Who is there to tell him that America was just trying to “make the world safe for democracy”? and if anyone told him that, would it change the fact that America just wrecked his life? Can we really be surprised if that boy makes his new life with a welcoming community of extremists who tell him that the only good American is a dead one? Can we really be surprised if that boy straps dynamite to his chest for his parents-for his country-for all that he has known?

Now, I hope you’ll excuse the fact that this is a decidedly sensational tale that I’ve merely conjured up, but that does not mean that it is not a particularly poignant and realistic story. I tell it in an attempt to illustrate a point: Only a profoundly vehement hate can drive terrorists to commit atrocities. Terrorists aren’t born terrorists. They aren’t born wanting to hurt people. Even those who harbor a general animosity towards the United States won’t be driven to extremism unless somehow triggered. I don’t want it thought for a second that I’m justifying their actions-just trying to understand them-understand that there are reasons why terrorists do what they do.

So, how do we best deal with terrorism? How do we reconcile the fact that terrorists have proven themselves capable of committing massive atrocities with the fact that terrorists are individual people who don’t all act for the same irrational reasons? I’d like to say that I had a solution-that anyone had an acceptable solution-that any solution could ever be acceptable. I’d like to be able to say that we hade some way to eradicate every person who has committed or conspired to commit terrorist acts without harming the innocent. But I can’t say that. No one can say that.

I can say that the best way remains to minimize factors that lead to terrorism-to never validate-to keep a wary eye-to gather intelligence and to act on that intelligence covertly. I can say that launching massive preemptive wars for questionable reasons doesn’t minimize factors that lead to terrorism. I can say that the victims of collateral damage have mothers and fathers; sisters and brothers; sons and daughters; who will likely not excuse the country who did this to them for any reason. I can say that at best any justice we seek to impose will be imperfect and at worst it will only serve to exacerbate the problem.

Dr. King said, “Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness.” It is a cycle that ends only when one party, in what would otherwise be a never ending conflagration, takes the high road and says “Not anymore.” The high road is seldom the easy one, but who, in a conflict between the United States and the forces of terror, will take that higher road? It has got to be us. We must once again stand as an example of civility and understanding to a world that constantly challenges those ideas. We must for goodness’s sake.