On September 11, we Americans lost something we cherished but perhaps should not have had anyway: our sense of invulnerability. What-ever we saw on the nightly news, however horrible, we consciously or un-consciously thought to ourselves, "Thank goodness that can't happen here.' Now we know, all too painfully, that it can happen here. Fortress America was only a mirage; the interdependent web meant that we were, all along, connected to suffering and violence that happened anywhere.
We are all deeply affected by Tuesday's events and its aftermath. In fact, we are all of us, at least secondarily, crime victims, with all the stress and feelings that that entails. And when one is a victim of a crime, one is left with both questions and fears. I remember a witty saying of several years ago, that a neo-conservative was a liberal who'd been mugged. My question is, now that we as a nation, in effect, have been mugged. How will change?
Other questions tumble forth, over and over in my mind. Some questions have no answers; some have answers each person must devise; some have answers we may not like.
Why did this happen to us? Why do these people hate us so much? This happened for reasons both positive and negative, and we must be honest and face this fact. Our president and other leaders have stressed the positive, saying that America was attacked because we stand for freedom, justice, and democracy, and this is certainly true. Unfortunately it is equally true that America became a target because of policies and practices of our government over many years that have adversely affected millions of people, and we have ignored them. Arab people and others around the world have concrete, rational reasons for fearing and mistrusting and even hating the U.S.
Make no mistake, even good reasons for hate do not justify terrorist tactics and never will, but we need to understand them if we are to prevent them. In an interview on Thursday, former Secretary of State Robert McNamara said that we must look deeper into the causes of terrorism, so that our efforts to stop the attacks do not instead bring more about. McNamara, one of the architects of the failed American policy in Vietnam, admitted we lost that war because Americans and their leaders had no understanding of the Vietnamese people and their history and what was really happening there; he warned we should not now make the same mistake.
More questions surface, at least in my mind, about our own culpability in the numbers of casualties in this tragedy. Why do our airports have such shoddy security, despite literally years of warnings by the Federal Aviation Administration? Why are airport security personnel the lowest paid and least trained people there? Why have we valued convenience over safety? Why do our airlines, unlike European and Asian carriers, al-low cockpit doors to be open during flights?
I also have questions about the American love affair with tall buildings. Technology can indeed build twin towers of 110 one-acre stories each, able to withstand high winds and even earth tremors, but it is only fragile human beings who must evacuate them in times of emergency. People with mobility or breathing issues had difficulty escaping the smoke-filled stairways at the lowest levels, but above the 90th floor even the able-bodied had almost no real chance of getting out. When was the last disaster drill in the World Trade Towers? And why did the New York Port Authority issue statements immediately after the first attack, assuring tenants they were safe, and saying that evacuation was not necessary?
Bill Sinkford asks, "Where was God or the Spirit of Life in all this?' The issue of theodicy, of why God allows evil to happen, has always been a difficult one for those who believe in an all-powerful, all-knowing deity. A God who would know this would happen, who had the power to stop it, and yet did nothing, would be a difficult God to believe in, let alone worship. American conservative Christian leader Jerry Falwell deals with the problem by absolving God and blaming the ACLU and secular humanists. Those with end-of-the-world beliefs say the attack was foretold in the biblical books of Revelation and Daniel or even the prophecies of Nostradamus, and that we are living in the end times. Other people may lose or have already lost their faith over this, as did many over the Holocaust, unable to reconcile their belief in an omnipotent God with this terrible tragedy.
Religious liberals have different answers. For the atheists among us, no answer is necessary -- there is no God and human beings sometimes act in despicable ways. For theists, those Who hold a belief in God/Goddess, our position is a strong stand for free will. For human beings to be truly free to choose, we must be able to opt for evil. If God were prevent every act of human evil, then evil would not really be an option, and free will would be a farce. For Universalists, our God is a suffering God, one who knows and feels our pain and suffers with us, like a loving parent who cannot stop a beloved child from choosing badly and getting hurt. For many of us of different spiritualities, the Spirit of Life is not a deus ex machine who will step in and stop human folly, but a force that moves in and through all of us at our best, when we human beings break out of our selfish concerns and extend ourselves in love for others. Many times this week, as we as a nation grieved, we witnessed instances of selfless hero-ism, and we took some kind-of comfort there. I know I did.
In addition to my many questions, I also have fears. In losing our treasured sense of security, we as a nation and as individuals have had to face our worst fears -- of loss of control, of unknown and unexpected dangers, of being unable to protect our loved ones, of people who are different. And when we human beings are unable to deal appropriately with our fears, we often turn to anger.
I fear we may be moving in this direction; opinion polls this week show that close to 90% of the American public wants us to retaliate force-fully and soon against all those who are responsible -- even If such retaliation harms civilian populations. That we are already able to countenance harm to huge numbers of noncombatants is shown by the deaths of over 500,000 Iraqi children as a result of the American embargo, which to date only a few Americans have protested.
In the 20th century, French existentialist Albert Camus wrote: "Many things are worth dying for, but nothing is worth killing for." To which I would add, especially not killing innocents for. Please don't misunderstand me -- I am in favor of using established national and international law to bring the perpetrators of this heinous criminal act to justice, whether in an American or an international court. But I am utterly and completely opposed to our becoming, in effect, an international terrorist by wholesale bombing of faraway countries. Such acts of revenge, however temporarily satisfying they may be to many, would only create more bitterness and desire for retribution, creating ever more terrorists.
We could never amass enough firepower to kill everyone who hates us, especially if we do nothing to stop the causes of their hatred. And even if we could do so, it would be immoral. Prophetically, 35 years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. warned us against using violence to counteract violence:
Violence as a way of achieving ... justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves every-body blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love; it destroys community ... Violence ... creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.
I fear both that bitterness and that brutality.
I have many other fears. I fear that our tendency to demonize our enemies will cost the lives and livelihoods and places of worship of Arab--Americans and those mistaken for them. (Such assaults and vandalism have already started to occur around our country.) I fear the kind of knee-jerk patriotism that was prevalent during the Vietnam War, so that those who hold differing opinions are vilified as "un-American." I fear that our leaders will now divert funds from desperately needed domestic pro-grams for education, job training, healthcare, and the environment, to be given instead to the military/industrial complex. I fear that too many of us will be willing to trade our constitutional freedoms to regain some of that lost sense of safety. As the mother of a 19-year-old I love dearly, I fear a long, drawn-out war and the re-establishment of the draft in a cause with which I do not agree and to which I cannot give my heart. I have all these fears, and I am trying, as I would urge all of you, not to guide my future actions on the basis of my fears alone.
Where do we go from here? Although we may feel helpless, there is still much we can do. We can donate blood, money, and clothing to the Red Cross, the UU Service Committee and other authorized agencies. We can stand up for people everywhere whose rights are denied and whose lives are blighted by hopelessness and oppression. We can learn about and use and teach to our children nonviolent methods of dealing with injustice and conflict. We can hold ourselves back from the tide of war fever that is sweeping our nation. We can make our religious community a beacon, a model of how diverse people can gain from each other and love each other in all our diversity -- for the power of love is indeed stronger than death and hatred.
O God of Hope, O Spirit of Life, may there be a new start, a new year of love and justice and peace, in our hearts and in our world. AMEN --ASHE--SHALOM--NAMASTE--BLESSED BE!
