By Phillip Bailey
Five years later and America’s wounds are still raw from Sept. 11. That’s to be expected; we’re a citizenry historically unaccustomed to the violence of foreign aggression inside our borders. Conventional wars have always been fought “over there.” Between the War of 1812 and Sept. 11, our only experience with terrorism on continental soil was incestuous; most notably in cities named Oklahoma City, Birmingham, Tulsa and East St. Louis, when citizens were tortured, lynched and bombed by fellow countrymen.
Sure we’ve gotten better at debating the historical tidal wave of Sept. 11, which includes babysitting a civil war, domestic security, and an open-ended “war on terror”. And not all of the Bush & Co. fear tactics work as well as they did in 2002. But our collective psyche is still being stalked by an international poltergeist that sends our basic democratic values into apoplectic fits. The hysteria about prosecuting the “New York Times” for treason must’ve brought a smile to bin Laden’s face.
There is nothing mutually exclusive, however, about mourning the unfathomable horror, securing America and punishing the perpetrators while simultaneously realizing that Sept. 11 was the culmination of a long, dirty, and secretive history between the West and Arab-Muslim world. No people are born warlike, fundamentalist or extremist, but humanity seems to have a universal aversion to occupation, despotism and misrule. And the West has added its ingredients to the pot of terror. Aborting democracy in the region by supporting monarchs, mullahs and military dictators just for our country’s global gas station and then to recruit, equip and train Islamic fundamentalists in proxy wars against the Soviet Union, well that added up to a bad recipe.
That’s not terrorist sympathizing and that’s not blaming America. That is a little something called history. And if we’re trying to avoid its repetition then realize that the post-Sept. 11 world needs more than bullying, bullets, and bombs and to solve its long-term problems.
Thanks to Cheney’s America, this American radical has learned we cannot blindly wrap ourselves in the flag – and I’m surprised conservatives, who are historically suspicious of human nature and unfettered government power, have espoused a foreign policy of Pax Americana that exempts the U.S. from those flaws. I’ve learned, thanks to Chomsky’s America, that real American radicals shouldn’t want to burn the flag – and I’m extremely disappointed that some compatriots on the left, who have heightened senses of criticism with an imperfect liberal democracy, barely offer a smidge of condemnation to fundamentalist Islam.
Five years later, America should remember Sept. 11, memorialize its victims and heroes, and capture and punish those responsible (five years later, still no bin Laden). We must resist cheap patriotic chest-thumping, nativist impulses and the erosion of our best democratic values. Instead the post-Sept. 11 America should emulate patriots like Paine, Emerson and Douglass. Each taught that fighting for America entails rolling up our sleeves to fight our enemies and to wash the flag of its spiritual sins and political mistakes. That’s the best way to remember the anniversary of Sept. 11 from here to eternity.
Philip Bailey is a senior majoring in Pan-African Studies. E-mail him at opinion@louisvillecardinal.com.
