Subject: Rushdie on Sept 11
Fighting the Forces of Invisibility
By Salman Rushdie
Tuesday, October 2, 2001; The New York Times, Page A25
NEW YORK -- In January 2000 I wrote in a newspaper
column that "the defining struggle of the new age
would be between Terrorism and Security," and fretted
that to live by the security experts' worst-case
scenarios might be to surrender too many of our
liberties to the invisible shadow-warriors of the
secret world. Democracy requires visibility, I argued,
and in the struggle between security and freedom we
must always err on the side of freedom. On Tuesday,
Sept. 11, however, the worst-case scenario came true.
They broke our city. I'm among the newest of New
Yorkers, but even people who have never set foot in
Manhattan have felt its wounds deeply, because New
York is the beating heart of the visible world,
tough-talking, spirit-dazzling, Walt Whitman's "city
of orgies, walks and joys," his "proud and passionate
city -- mettlesome, mad, extravagant city!" To this
bright capital of the visible, the forces of
invisibility have dealt a dreadful blow. No need to
say how dreadful; we all saw it, are all changed by
it. Now we must ensure that the wound is not mortal,
that the world of what is seen triumphs over what is
cloaked, what is perceptible only through the effects
of its awful deeds.
In making free societies safe -- safer -- from
terrorism, our civil liberties will inevitably be
compromised. But in return for freedom's partial
erosion, we have a right to expect that our cities,
water, planes and children really will be better
protected than they have been. The West's response to
the Sept. 11 attacks will be judged in large measure
by whether people begin to feel safe once again in
their homes, their workplaces, their daily lives. This
is the confidence we have lost, and must regain.
Next: the question of the counterattack. Yes, we must
send our shadow-warriors against theirs, and hope that
ours prevail. But this secret war alone cannot bring
victory. We will also need a public, political and
diplomatic offensive whose aim must be the early
resolution of some of the world's thorniest problems:
above all the battle between Israel and the
Palestinian people for space, dignity, recognition and
survival. Better judgment will be required on all
sides in future. No more Sudanese aspirin factories to
be bombed, please. And now that wise American heads
appear to have understood that it would be wrong to
bomb the impoverished, oppressed Afghan people in
retaliation for their tyrannous masters' misdeeds,
they might apply that wisdom, retrospectively, to what
was done to the impoverished, oppressed people of
Iraq. It's time to stop making enemies and start
making friends.
To say this is in no way to join in the savaging of
America by sections of the left that has been among
the most unpleasant consequences of the terrorists'
attacks on the United States. "The problem with
Americans is . . . " -- "What America needs to
understand . . . " There has been a lot of
sanctimonious moral relativism around lately, usually
prefaced by such phrases as these. A country which has
just suffered the most devastating terrorist attack in
history, a country in a state of deep mourning and
horrible grief, is being told, heartlessly, that it is
to blame for its own citizens' deaths. ("Did we
deserve this, sir?" a bewildered worker at "ground
zero" asked a visiting British journalist recently. I
find the grave courtesy of that "sir" quite
astonishing.)
Let's be clear about why this bien-pensant
anti-American onslaught is such appalling rubbish.
Terrorism is the murder of the innocent; this time, it
was mass murder. To excuse such an atrocity by blaming
U.S. government policies is to deny the basic idea of
all morality: that individuals are responsible for
their actions. Furthermore, terrorism is not the
pursuit of legitimate complaints by illegitimate
means. The terrorist wraps himself in the world's
grievances to cloak his true motives. Whatever the
killers were trying to achieve, it seems improbable
that building a better world was part of it.
The fundamentalist seeks to bring down a great deal
more than buildings. Such people are against, to offer
just a brief list, freedom of speech, a multi-party
political system, universal adult suffrage,
accountable government, Jews, homosexuals, women's
rights, pluralism, secularism, short skirts, dancing,
beardlessness, evolution theory, sex. These are
tyrants, not Muslims. (Islam is tough on suicides, who
are doomed to repeat their deaths through all
eternity. However, there needs to be a thorough
examination, by Muslims everywhere, of why it is that
the faith they love breeds so many violent mutant
strains. If the West needs to understand its
Unabombers and McVeighs, Islam needs to face up to its
bin Ladens.) United Nations Secretary General Kofi
Annan has said that we should now define ourselves not
only by what we are for but by what we are against. I
would reverse that proposition, because in the present
instance what we are against is a no-brainer.
Suicidist assassins ram wide-bodied aircraft into the
World Trade Center and Pentagon and kill thousands of
people: um, I'm against that. But what are we for?
What will we risk our lives to defend? Can we
unanimously concur that all the items in the above
list -- yes, even the short skirts and dancing -- are
worth dying for?
The fundamentalist believes that we believe in
nothing. In his world-view, he has his absolute
certainties, while we are sunk in sybaritic
indulgences. To prove him wrong, we must first know
that he is wrong. We must agree on what matters:
kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches,
disagreement, cutting-edge fashion, literature,
generosity, water, a more equitable distribution of
the world's resources, movies, music, freedom of
thought, beauty, love. These will be our weapons. Not
by making war but by the unafraid way we choose to
live shall we defeat them.
How to defeat terrorism? Don't be terrorized. Don't
let fear rule your life. Even if you are scared.
Salman Rushdie is a British novelist and essayist.
Distributed by NYT Special Features
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Tom O'Donnell, Ph.D. The University of Michigan
| email: twod@umich.edu
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