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Interpreting Misfortune: The Need For Unwelcome Questions
Like most others, I was deeply shocked and saddened to witness the demise of New York's most visible landmark, and horrified to consider the toll in human life. I was no less bewildered by the destructive urge of a few who apparently acted with considered forethought . I find myself unable now to improve upon the national sentimentality, to utter the word or phrase that best captures the grief and melancholy so many feel. I'm left, rather, with a nagging plethora of questions -- few of which, I imagine, are likely to be heard on the evening newscast or seen in newspaper and magazine columns. § Why, during times such as these, must we be subjected to that gaggle of "national security experts" and "terrorism experts" who argue for billions more in military spending and who present the all-important choice as that between security and civil liberties? Why should the discourse be hijacked by that breed of pundit? Are they saying anything different now than they did when the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993? Is there anything new in their tone or in their emphasis? To what extent is the collective psyche molded by the presence on television of military strategists and generals, of government and law enforcement officials, of wartime heroes and ex-spies? Doesn't their omnipresence anesthetize the public sensibility for revenge and killing? Doesn't the viewing public end up with only one frame of reference? § Why not consult ethnologists for insight and perspective? Why not turn to foreign historians of the Middle East -- those who are impartial and not reluctant to criticize U.S. foreign policy? Why not provoke the undaunted mind of the sceptical epistemologist, who is savvy to tacit assumptions, questionable presuppositions, emotionally charged language, and ethnocentric bias? § Military spending in the United States increased by more than one hundred percent in the 1980s. Today the nation spends upwards of $310 billion per annum [*in 2004 the amount approached $500 billion], a sum greater than that of all the major European powers combined. Exactly how will more military outlays preclude someone from ambling down Times Square with an ampule of anthrax in his hand? How will fattening the Pentagon or CIA obviate loose networks of terror worldwide or deter an aggressor from destroying a beloved landmark? Trillions of dollars were spent on weapons systems over the last decade, but foreign embassies and government buildings and navy ships were bombed. Why will things be different this time around? § Do any of us know very much at all about the "terrorist's" language, culture, customs, history, social affiliations? Do we have an inkling as to why "terrorists" hate us? What basis for disbelief is a citizen left with when CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, The New York Times and Washington Post settle confidently upon a given set of facts? Why should their sources be trusted implicitly? What jots of truth lay in the pages of foreign newspapers, in the proclamations of American enemies, in the instincts of pacifists? § How much does the average American citizen know about our government's history with countries like Iran and Iraq, Israel and Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar? How much do any of us really know about Islam? How many Muslims can we count as trusted friends? How many books have we read on the subject? Are any of these questions relevant in forming an intelligent opinion on whether the nation should go to war?
Retaliation against the perpetrators may well be justified. Whatever the prevailing consensus, there is surely a deep need to broaden the range of existing inquiry and to ask uncomfortable questions. "The only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject," John Stuart Mill wrote, "is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind." (© Tim Ruggiero, September 17, 2001)
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