A Perspective on the 9/11 Attacks

A week after the 9/11 attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, my doorbell rang one evening. Gail, my neighbor and a devout Christian, stood apologetically, sorrow etched on her face. “I brought this for you,” she said. It was a miniature marble mosque with a golden dome. “I searched all over the Internet for it. Just wanted you to know we are with you and your family.”

I knew instantly where she was coming from. American Muslims were under siege. That’s how it felt in the immediate wake of the fall of the twin towers. My neighbor was trying to put me at ease. The same scene was playing out all over the country. Concerned neighbors and coworkers who had known Muslims in their midst were offering moral support against insults, injuries and death threats by a minority of Americans who equated us with the murderous fanatics who rained death and destruction on that serene Autumn day. For every American who shot at Muslims, hurled insults and splattered pig blood on mosque doors, however, there were several who threw a protective shield around us. The police were deployed to safeguard mosques. Christian and Jewish women wore hijab to accompany Muslim women on their errands. Interfaith dialogues sprouted everywhere and leaders demanded that citizens abide by the law.

But the besieged feeling persisted. Fox and other right-wing media outlets openly questioned our loyalty, accusing us of being a fifth column. Muslims who were coming of age in 2001 reacted to this onslaught in one of two ways: many embraced the faith more strongly while some were intimidated enough to abandon it. The shrill anti-Muslim voices rose and fell over the years and now, ten years later, they have metastasized into well-funded Islamophobia with the rise of the Tea party and the more extreme elements of the Republican Party. One consequence has been that most Muslims have come out of their cocoons and are engaging with the larger American society in many more ways than they used to before the 9/11 attacks. A recent Pew Research Center poll is instructive. 48% of American Muslims think the American people are generally friendly toward Muslims, 32% think they are neutral, 16% think they are unfriendly and 4% “don’t know.”

Ten years on, two things about the Sept. 11 attacks stand out.

The first is the rejection by the overwhelming majority of Muslims of al-Qaida and its nihilistic ideology. This murderous fringe group offered nothing but death and destruction. We were able to see through its sophistry and condemned its leaders and foot-soldiers in no uncertain terms, even though Islamophobes claimed that we did not raise our voice against the extremists, a canard if ever there was one. The failure of al-Qaida is evident in the outbreak of the Arab Spring, the revolutions sweeping Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt, Libya and Syria that has already dethroned some entrenched dictators. The uprisings have all been indigenous movements in which al-Qaida played no role whatsoever, an obvious indication of their irrelevance and insignificance.

The second is the catastrophic overreaction of the United States. The war in Afghanistan against the Taliban began in October 7, 2001, and had the support of most nations of the world. But when President George Bush, in concert with his diabolical VP Dick Cheney, decided to launch the Iraq war on false pretenses of weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein’s connection with al-Qaida, America lost its moral bearing and purpose.

I remember joining a demonstration on March 28, 2003, in San Francisco, a week after the war began. About 2,000 Americans from all walks of life gathered to denounce the war - Quakers, Franciscan nuns and monks, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims and many others. Those who spoke, including one of America’s foremost Islamic scholars, Hamza Yusuf, explained how this was not a war of Islam versus the West but of America waging an unjust, preemptive war against a nation that had nothing to do with 9/11.

Recently, the Nobel economist Joseph E. Stiglitz wrote that President Bush’s response to the attacks “compromised America’s basic principles, undermined its economy, and weakened its security.” Truer words have rarely been written.

A conservative estimate puts America’s bill for fighting the two wars to at least $3.3 trillion, of which about $2 trillion accounts for the Iraq war. To put this in perspective, for every dollar that al-Qaida spent to pull off the Sept. 11 attacks, the cost to the United States has been an astonishing $6.6 million!

The deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, the erosion of values, and the staggering amount of money wasted, constitute one of the darkest chapters in U.S. history. How did values erode? Through repression of civil liberties, partisan definition of patriotism (“last refuge of the scoundrel”), wiretapping of American citizens, surveillance without judicial approval, torture, indefinite imprisonment, docile media acting as presidential mouthpiece, extraordinary rendition, and so on.

On this tenth anniversary of that infamous day, the question is: Did the 9/11 attacks make America weak? The attacks did not, but America’s overreaction and imperial overreach did. It is a lesson America can never afford to ignore.

Obama, Thoreau and the Inaugural Address

Anticipation for Barack Obama’s inaugural address mounts.

The nation is in the grip of a terrifying recession. Americans are losing their jobs right and left. There is no clear exit strategy for the disastrous war in Iraq. The government is bailing out non-performing industries that may cost future generations their future. Layoffs, bankruptcies and Ponzi schemes dominate the news. The winter of despair stalks the land.

Against this backdrop, can mere words perform miracles?

History teaches that they can. Think Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy. Uniting a nation torn by a brutal civil war, putting America back to work by conquering fear, passing the torch to a new generation of Americans – the words of these presidents nourished the soul and renewed the American spirit.

Barack Obama must deliver the goods when he addresses the nation on January 20. We are looking for hope and inspiration, not numbers and statistics. Facts and plans can come later; what we want now is to see the light beyond the darkness that surround us.

While Obama will probably evoke Lincoln in his speech, another American he should consult is Thoreau. The Bard of Walden was no Utopian. He made allowances for life’s idiosyncrasies and yet taught us how to lead lives of dignity and fulfillment.

Hard, honest and meaningful work (unlike, say, the work of speculators and money managers) was central to Thoreau’s vision of life. “I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.” With millions of people losing their life-savings to Wall Street greed and cruelty, we need to be reminded that “goodness is the only investment that never fails.” Obama has promised dramatic changes in the status quo but he should also tell us that ultimately “things do not change: we change,” that “what lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.”

Thoreau spoke uncomfortable truths with clarity and grace. His words were tough, true, lyrical and soaring, a synthesis impossible save for a few. While telling us unflinchingly of what lay beneath our feet, Thoreau also made us look up at the stars. His is a supremely difficult act to emulate but that’s what the 44th president of the United States must do in his inaugural address if we are to rise above our current crises and become a beacon to the world.

Confessions of an Insider

Scott McClellan’s “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception” is the buzz of the week. The former White House press secretary’s revelations, however, are not new. Seriously, is there anyone on earth who doesn’t yet know that George Bush is not inquisitive, that he doesn’t have an analytic bend of mind, that he stubbornly refuses to admit mistakes, that he is deceitfully self-delusional, that he gave free rein to the diabolical Dick Cheney to call the shots in major strategic decisions, that the Iraq war was a “solution” in search of a problem from day one of his presidency?

But even without any shock value, the book deserves attention. As the president’s long-time confidant, McClellan’s memoir offers a fascinating glimpse into the conflicting demands of loyalty and conscience and the dueling instincts of self-preservation and the urge to speak truth to power.

But first things first. Was McClellan motivated, to some extent at least, by money? Sure. Wanting to cash in while the opportunity lasts is an ancient human instinct. Just ask Bush memoirists Paul O’Neill, John Dilulio, Larry Wilkerson, Richard Clarke and others. Many more tell-alls are likely to appear after Bush leaves office but by then interest in his presidency will fade. If one had to make a bundle before it was too late, it had to be now, and McClellan used the opportunity.

As to the charge of hypocrisy that his conscience was fine towing the official line for nearly three years but that it began to weigh on him only after he resigned in 2006, there is also some truth to it. However, McClellan is no Archibald Cox, and to demand of him integrity that animates only the rarest among us is itself hypocritical.

The point, however, is that McClellan’s conscience, even if tainted, eventually caught up with him. “What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary,” is how he sums up his telling, if belated, insight.

What also emerges from several published reports is that the act of writing the memoir was cathartic for McClellan. It liberated him from his own delusions. Putting pen to paper, or keystrokes to word processor, brought to light what lay buried in his mind.

The central question that the memoir raises is this: Why did Bush do what he did? What drove him to create, in the words of novelist and essayist David Foster Wallace “an unmitigated horror show of rapacity, hubris, incompetence, mendacity, corruption, cynicism and contempt for the electorate”?

There is a key sentence in McClellan’s book that, I think, answers it. “The president promised himself that he would accomplish what his father had failed to do …” In other words, Bush Jr. was driven primarily by one goal: to outdo Bush Sr. That he wanted to outdo his father vis-à-vis Saddam Hussein is known but it also extended to his other presidential acts, in the way he dealt with his political adversaries and the illegal privileges he showered on his sycophants. (The presidency of George Bush should convince voters that they must give thumbs down to presidential dynasties in modern times).

At a personal level, there is no doubt that George Bush is a kind and compassionate man. When McClellan handed his resignation in April of 2006 as the White House press secretary, “tears were streaming down (Bush’s) both cheeks.” Those were genuine tears. But Bush is also a man with severely flawed instincts and judgments. Combine this with his overpowering need to prove his superiority at any cost over the old man, another president who also happened to be a domineering dad once, and you have a recipe for rapacity, hubris, incompetence, mendacity, corruption, cynicism and contempt for the electorate.

“What Happened” will contribute to our understanding of why historians are already labeling George Bush’s presidency as among the worst in American history, alongside the presidencies of James Buchanan (1857-1861) and Warren Harding (1921-1923), a verdict that is likely to stand the test of time.

Certainly no profile in courage, Scott McClellan has nevertheless given us an honest account of his White House experience that revealed its meaning to him only upon later reflection, and for that we applaud him.