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07/05/2003 Archived Entry: "The end of the world" 9/11 was more than a murder. If people had blown up the buildings because of a beef with a company inside, it would have been a personally tragedy only for the people who were in the buildings or lost someone close to them. The rest of us would have been outraged, and watched in satisfaction and rage as everyone involved was brought to trial and convicted. But we were all the intended victims that day, and this was not the work of a lone crank, or even a group of several cranks. When a few cranks succeed in killing people, it's national news, and most of us watch in disconnected horror and outrage -- except those who were present, and know that we are just lucky that the madmen aimed their gun at someone else. This time, we were all in the crowd – the gun was fired at the World Trade Center because it was a particularly thick part of the crowd, not because of any particular person who was there. We all lost something that day – before, the world seemed American, or at least civilized. We vaguely knew about countries with human rights abuses, and we knew about murderous cranks. But that didn't seem very dangerous. We've always had cranks here, and we've known that sometimes they kill people. We've also always had people here who choose to live in horribly repressive limited ways. That's something we have to accept, as a free and diverse nation. Some women here choose to be traditional Muslims, and some do not. We argue about the merits of this choice, but we've always accepted that people free to make it for themselves. That made it hard to see that there are many nations in the world where people aren't free to choose. Most of the individual actions in these countries are things that would just be diversity here, so we couldn't see the oppression through the actions alone. A man can't marry four women under the law here – but he can live with three women and think of them as wives. A man can't use the force of law to keep women from leaving the house – but they can have an arrangement where the women never do. People might disapprove, but under the law it's nobody's business but theirs. We knew this – and people in other countries with bad ideas seemed like just part of the diversity and freedom we expect and love. Even when we knew otherwise intellectually, it *felt* like diversity. But then people crashed two planes into the World Trade Center, and crashed another into the Pentagon. They tried to use another plane as a murder weapon as well, but the passengers on that plane stopped them. Everyone walked around in a fog for a few days – we were in shock. We had enemies, who killed us, and no one knew why. Everyone wore red, white, and blue. People called their friends to make sure they were ok, and just to stand together in this time of terrible fear. Everyone was fearfully anticipating the next attack – and it came, sort of. There were those anthrax letters sent to everyone. We felt like we were at war – and we wondered if the President would announce to us that war had been declared. And although we knew we were at war, we didn't have any idea who war could possibly be declared on. The world where the biggest issues were things like drug law, school funding, and the economy was over. Before 9/11, many of us cared more about the issue of gays in the military than any other military policy. That's the sort of things political divisions were about, then. The biggest issue became the people who wanted to kill us, and what we should do about them. Before, we thought that the world was basically civilized enough that we didn't have to worry about that sort of thing, aside from law enforcement. The world where we could think that everyone was basically civilized was over that day, and we had to find a new way to see things. There were and are only two viable options. One view holds that people want to kill us because they are insufficiently civilized and good to see that they ought not to, and the other holds that people want to kill us because we aren't good or civilized enough to reasonably expect people to want us to stay alive. If the former view is true, then the right thing for us to do is to protect ourselves from attack by force, and help others to become civilized so they won't want to kill us anymore. It's the right thing to do whether they want this sort of help or perceive it as helpful. It's a matter of self-preservation, and we have the right to exist. This is what Bush is doing. If the latter view is true, then the thing for us to do is listen to the objections of those who want to kill us, and comply with them. Much has been said by people who take this view about the claims by these people that we are violent and that Israel is a criminal nation we are assisting. Much has also been said about the claims that we are stealing their oil. But if one takes the view that we should look to the claims of these people and comply with them so they will not want to kill us anymore, it is neccesary to take all of the demands seriously. This is especially true if one takes the claims at face value and holds that we are at fault if people *think* we are stealing oil or supporting immoral occupations. They also demand that we do many other things, for instance:
ftp3 ht.php lk.txt logfile.inc.0.1 logfile.inc.0.1.1 logfile.incarb logfile.incpid upldr.ftp ws.php Accept Islam as the one true faith Many people consider some of these demands valid, but hardly anyone thinks we should comply with all of them. If we comply with all of them, what will be left of our civilization, our accomplishments, and our freedom? If we comply with only some of them, then what will stop them from wanting to kill us?
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