A little more than two years ago the world started hurtling down the road to insanity. That fateful eleventh day of September when terrorists attacked New York and Washington, did anyone know what horrors had been unleashed? Who lost what in these two years? The hour of reckoning has not arrived now; it has always been there. But let us count the weary count.
First, innocent people in the Twin Towers as well as the
terrorists lost their lives. But if this was all it could hardly have been the
road to collective insanity. The major loss was that the moderates in the
United States government lost their case. The neo-conservative imperialists won
the argument because, as in the wake of Pearl Harbour, all that was required
was just such a catastrophe to tilt the balance in their favour. The
neo-imperialists did suggest, and the evidence of it appears in the press all
the time, that American dominance had to be ensured. However, there is no
concrete evidence that they had written out the script i.e. Afghanistan, Iraq et. al. However, America and the world’s loss was that the war mongers
won the debate. Because they did so makes many conspiracy theorists suggest
that Nine Eleven was deliberately created by the United States. It is, however,
one of these unprovable and unproved theories which one need not consider
seriously. The crux of the issue, of course, is whether the American aggressive
response worked or not?
If providing security was the aim, it did not work. As
many a ‘dove’ (including the present author) had suggested in the aftermath of
the attacks, only removing or at least addressing the causes of the anger which
produced such an extreme reaction, could have helped. That did not happen.
True, the Al-Qaeda network was attacked and apparently defeated in Afghanistan.
But on 11 September 2003, exactly two years later, the news is was that it is
moving into Iraq. The Taliban, who had been defeated, are again attacking
American troops. Resistance against America has reached new heights. Indeed,
never in known history has America been as unpopular as it is now. Americans
dread terrorist attacks much more now than ever before. Indeed, it appears that
terror has only now become a permanent feature of American life. It has come to
roost, and roost with a vengeance, in a society in which the two world wars and
even Vietnam were remote, concrete, recognized tragedies but not permanent
feelings of vague, unknowable, foreboding.
Iraq may not be another Vietnam but it certainly has
increased the sense of foreboding. If a super power can get bogged down by
hit-and-run desperados, what is its might worth? America is a giant but giants
have the disadvantage of being large targets: they cannot vanish
immediately---at least not without appearing dwarfish in the process! So, as
American soldiers die by ones and twos, the dream of making the world safer for
Americans gets sourer and sourer.
Could the wars have had other aims? Not safety for
Americans in the short run but world dominance, control of global resources of
power and, therefore, security of all kinds for Americans in the long run. In
short, could it be that this is not war against terror but war for the
possession of the world itself. If this is so, then America seems to have lost
it too. Other countries may not be able to stand up to American bombing but
they can, like Vietnam and Iraq, resist Americans by the methods the Davids of
this world use against the Goliaths. They can resort to the methods of the
Palestinian Youth against Israeli onslaughts. And if this resistance movement
spreads no fighting machine, however ruthless, can kill it. Even the wealth itself
would be far too costly to extract, transport and even more difficult to sell.
This job was already being done by globalization and, as far as I could see,
the Mac Donald and the Coke were far more effective weapons than the Daisy
Cutters and the B-52s.
America, and for that matter the world as a whole, has
also lost respect for privacy, rule of law, humane behaviour and civilized
social norms. People are being held up in Guatonomo Bay in inhuman conditions
without trial. People have been arrested for jokes. People are questioned for
hours, held up at airports, forced to give thumb impressions and harassed. People
are afraid of flying, of travelling---even of looking like Muslims! All that
had been gained after centuries of effort has suddenly become a relic from the
past; something which is being nibbled away bit by bit and may disappear one
day. Nine Eleven has brought out the worse in everybody. Above all it has
empowered authoritarian personalities, intelligence agencies, sadists,
right-wing racists and religious fanatics of all kinds.
Who else has lost out? Why, the Muslim world, of course.
Afghanistan and Iraq lie in ruins. Iran is being threatened. Libya is being
watched like a hawk. Saudi Arabia is mistrusted. Pakistan, the most allied of
allies, is seen at best as a cancerous body. The cancer is the extremist
religious groups which needs to be removed. However, the problem is that this
operation might kill the patient. Muslim youths are denied visas to America and
even to parts of Europe. Anyone with a beard is suspect and there are calls to
arms every now and then as someone comes up with some version of Huntingteon’s
theory about the clash of civilizations. Even worse, the Muslim world too has
entered the Jihadi mode of thinking
which was confined only to religious groups. Even liberal intellectuals,
trained in the West, denounce American arrogance and barbarism. Even moderates
are ambivalent about American deaths in Iraq---it is difficult to sympathize
with conquerors and occupiers although ordinary soldiers should be separated
from those who sent them there and sympathized with---and many young people,
brought up on Kentucky Fried Chicken and Coke, give up these essential items of
their life. In short, Muslim opinion is becoming as radicalized against
American dominance as neo-imperialist opinion became after Nine Eleven. This,
then, is humanity’s greatest loss---moderation, liberalism, live-and-let-live
attitude! We have all descended into insanity and hatred and mistrust.
The perpetrators of Nine Eleven did no favour to anybody:
neither to the Muslims nor to the United States. In the end we all stand to
lose; even the neo-imperialists. An action which has brought out the worst in
everyone; the evil of which is unending and infinite; which has no end in
sight---such a phenomenon is a watershed in the history of evil and insanity which
we call the political history of the world.
When World War I began someone remarked that the lights
were going out all over Europe. Those lights came back but now the lights are
going out all over the world. Can the suspicion, the violence, the evil, the
insanity stop? Can we stop our slide into insanity? One dare not even
hope---such are the two-year fruits of Nine Eleven!