This Sunday morning, Pentagon head General Crowley called us again to "do what it takes" to fight terrorism. His implication was that our vengeance must continue because more terrorists have vowed to wreak havoc on our nation. In his thinking, responding in kind honors not only the three thousand deaths on that terrible day, but also honors the thousands—we should acknowledge millions—of innocents who have suffered since that day.
This error in national policy is dragging us down. We have forgotten a fundamental portion of God's law from our Old and New Testaments, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord," Isaiah 63.4, Romans 12.19, and "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." We are called by our faith not to respond in kind.
The reason is the more powerful way God commands in our Bible. Many of the world's peoples look at our American response to 9/11 with concern and curiosity. To them, we have become weak, even suicidal, with our juvenile theory that we must continue paying back a bigger, badder dose of the terrorists' own medicine.
After ten years there still is no serious national discussion on alternative responses to this heinous crime we remember on this tenth anniversary; we rather assume closure depends on an exception for us to God's law on revenge and murder. We have still not asked our most qualified theologians, scientists and philosophers to lead such a discussion.
Let's be rational. It makes no more sense psychologically, scientifically, or theologically to find and delete—read ex-judicially execute or rendition—the world's terrorists than it does to set out to bully bullies into stopping their bullying. It works at first; we had and still have the power to eliminate evildoers all over the world. But it sends an unwise message: to survive in this world of multiplying evil people and suffering good people, what one needs is more power, more lethal weapons, and an improved ability to terrorize bullies and terrorists. In other words, pre-empt God's role in handling bullying terrorists like Bin Laden.
There's a better, stronger way. Part of it is training and upgrading national police forces worldwide to be responsible and accountable to their citizen's interest in democracy. This is happening already with some thousand or more special ops teaching troops deployed in several terrorism-prone nations. But there's more, much more needing change in our international policy.
Let's start with our terrible intelligence on the "Arab Spring" sweeping tyrants off their terrorist tactics against their own citizens. Our government and media community told us this happened because people living under these oppressive regimes were suddenly fed up to a breaking point.
It's not true. Millions in the Middle East have been reading for decades, taken to heart and followed the principles of the book by Gene Sharp: "From Dictatorship to Democracy," It's now available in thirty different languages and free on line through hundreds of links, to the consternation of the governments of Syria and Bahrain. Using his book as a manual for unseating tyrants, citizens have organized seminars with teachers such as Dr. Sharp and spawned opposition groups across the Middle East, rebuilding hope for democracy.
Our government was caught off guard. The people of Egypt rebelled against a tyrant we considered a friend. His American-made military should have guaranteed stability for his regime. Yet his army hardware was rendered ineffective. Instead of tens of thousands dying and the nation's infrastructure in shreds as in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Tripoli, only several hundred were killed. And they were unarmed citizens, easy prey for his snipers. The discipline of the citizen movement held. Mubarak lost.
Our own politicians, media and government should stop ignoring this worldwide strategy for countering tyranny and apply it to terrorism, its twin. It is homegrown American common sense, deployed now to the Middle East. Let's be proud.
We Americans will solve our economic woes and stand more proud and secure when our government views terrorism as a world problem, rather than a unique American problem. This requires the courage to change course toward the principles of the Arab Spring, and to achieve parity among the nations rather than our current vast superiority in military strength to deal with it. Plus, we have national heroes to honor such as Gene Sharp whose contribution merits acknowledgement if not full pursuit. Our national survival must now drive us to rediscover our heritage of a better, stronger defense against terrorism than the one laid out by Bush and Obama, and supported by our current political parties.
The full column, with more on a rational approach, continues: It's amazing how totally gullible our government was to Bin Laden's strategy behind organizing the bombing of the twin towers. He said it way back then, and his words are remembered among anti-American Islamists today:
"…He repeatedly asserted that the only way to drive the U.S. from the Muslim world and defeat its satraps was by drawing Americans into a series of small but expensive wars that would ultimately bankrupt them." That's Bin Laden's script for fighting us. We need a different, much better script for fighting his ilk, not to respond in kind at Bin Laden with his own medicine, but to choose a stronger moral deterrent."
The American Conservative, quoting Bin Laden on this issue, May 20, 2011, by Eric Margolis.
We Americans will stand more proud and secure when we acquire the courage to change course and deal with world terrorism responsibly, collaboratively and collectively on parity with the world's nations, instead of as the world's bully setting out to single-handedly to defeat the ghost of Bin Laden.
http://www.aeinstein.org/ the website of the Albert Einstein Institute.
Does this mean we should change our foreign policy? If America reads this book and follows it we citizens will be changing it. See also Noam Chomsky's article http://www.truth-out.org/after-911-was-war-only-option/1315582873 : "The jihadist movement, much of it highly critical of bin Laden, could have been split and undermined after 9/11, if the "crime against humanity," as the attacks were rightly called, had been approached as a crime, with an international operation to apprehend the suspects. That was recognized at the time, but no such idea was even considered in the rush to war. It is worth adding that bin Laden was condemned in much of the Arab world for his part in the attacks."
Our Obama administration has even denied the message of our national hero, Martin Luther King Jr., claiming he would support our government's policy of targeting our own citizens for covert executions contrary to due process language in our constitution. See my blog Jan. 26, 2011, for details, "What Would Martin Luther King Say."
Foreign aid works far better for our national interests when it helps other nations democratize their own society with schooling, access to health care, access to a fair economy, fair systems of jurisprudence, and helps them and us to see acts of terror for what they are: a crime problem. Plus, it is almost infinitely more cost effective than bombing the daylights out of three Middle East Nations (four with the coming war against Pakistan or Iran), so our biggest corporations can reap billions in profits through our obligation to rebuild what we destroy at huge taxpayer expense each time.
Also Look up Gregg Mortensen from Bozeman, his book, "Three Cups of Tea."
Check out more details of Gene Sharp's research influencing the Middle East:
http://blog.sojo.net/2011/03/21/how-to-start-a-revolution-a-new-film-about-gene-sharp/
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David Graber
Hardin, MT 59034
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