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| It's The U.S. Foreign Policy,
Stupid Haroon Siddiqui, The Toronto Star, 19 September 2001 AMERICA IS not the target of terrorism because Islamic fundamentalists hate American democratic ideals of freedom, liberty and "all that we stand for," as George Bush has claimed. Only if it were so. The problem may be much
bigger. This is what needs to be grasped, quickly,
even in this period of bereavement. There is a danger in this
television-driven drama's misplaced focus on the "how'' of last
week's horror, that Americans will not pay sufficient attention to the
"why'' of it. The worst possible
interpretation of the evil deed is to assume that it was carried out by
spiritually inspired suicide bombers seeking "martyrdom" as a
reward for trying to topple American hedonism. The mad bombers did not fit the mould of
pious avengers. On the eve of their evil act, two were consuming vodka and
ogling strippers at a bar. Another who had come via Germany liked to drink
and dance with his live-in girlfriend whom he had ditched before crossing
the Atlantic. They were trying to "meld in," to
avoid suspicion, say the experts who know not that no true believer would
ever behave so, even as a ruse. Nor did the bombers come from impoverished
hellholes, the breeding grounds of zealots and ready recruits for
extremist causes. They were educated products of privilege,
sons of affluent families from Arab nations that are among America's
strongest allies. This is scarier than we think. What we think is based on what we are told.
What we are being told in the wake of the biggest terrorist act is what we
have already been told, ad nauseam, in the years before. None of it
inspires much confidence. Osama bin Laden is the prime suspect, yet
we can't seem to get even the most basic facts on him right. He is said to have inherited $20 million.
Or $200 million. Or $500 million. All stashed in a Sudanese bank. Or
invested broadly. His accounts have remained frozen since
1998. Or maybe not. He has only a few dozen followers. Or a few
hundred. Or "3,000 Arab radicals from 12 countries." Or an army
of "35,000 warriors" assigned to secret cells around the globe. He lives in a cave with three rooms and
four wives, satellite TV, faxes and phones. Or he does not spend more than
one night in any place. Either out of ignorance or calculation, the
theories on the motives for last week's attacks avoid the most obvious:
America has many enemies. Not just because of globalization and a
McWorld in which Coke brings harmony to all. Or because of American
cultural domination. Or because America is arrogant and isolationist. Rather, it is due to
American complicity in injustice, lethal and measurable, on several
fronts: The Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, in which America stands by decades-long Israeli defiance of
United Nations resolutions, international law and the most basic standards
of human rights, keeping millions penned in military-patrolled enclaves. The decade-long American-led economic
sanctions on Iraq that have killed 500,000
children under 5, strangled a whole nation and destroyed the birthplace of
civilization. The mess in Afghanistan
where the CIA recruited and trained the likes of bin Laden to overturn the
Soviet occupation but dumped them once that mission impossible was
accomplished. Since then, the American-led economic sanctions — imposed
to help ferret out bin Laden — have inflicted a new wave of misery,
leaving thousands of children dead and about 1 million people starving. American strategic alliances with the
military and monarchical dictatorships of Algeria,
Turkey and Egypt, as well as the oil-rich Arab states, all of whom
crush even the smallest steps towards democratization. Add the American sanctions on Iran,
Sudan and Libya, "the rogue states," plus the miseries of
Bosnia, Chechnya and Kashmir, and you begin
to grasp the utter dismay, and sense of helplessness, gripping the peoples
of all these lands. Not all the conflicts can be blamed on
America but many can be and have been, especially in the last decade, only
to draw indifference or, more scandalously, a barrage of propaganda
blaming the victims themselves: that Muslim genes must account for all the
savagery and suffering surrounding them. It suits America
to avoid the real issues, and the double standard and hypocrisy enveloping
them. It suits Israel
to keep up the fundamentalist, terrorist mantra, especially now, as it
moves to create even more elbow room to crush the intifadah. It suits Russia,
which has cloaked its brutality in Chechnya as a war against terrorism. It suits India
on Kashmir. It suits China,
in battling Uighur separatists in Xingiang region, and in keeping America
on side for joining the World Trade Organization. With so many agendas at work, it is
difficult to keep it all in context. It goes without saying, but bears
repeating, that no grievance can ever justify what happened last week. But
the apologists for America and its allies are disingenuous in advancing
the racist notion, with nauseating regularity, that the victims burst out
in anger because their religion rewards them for it. Some no doubt believe
so. But to present them as the sole face of all the oppressed is to
distort reality. The public, more than the media, senses this. Some put it crudely: America had it coming. The surprise is how a broad spectrum of the Canadian middle class, including academics, professionals and business people, is coming to the view that America needs, beyond any tactical strikes or smart bombs it might deploy, a more humane and even-handed approach to the world. Haroon Siddiqui is The Star's editorial
page editor emeritus.
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