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September
15, 2001
Struggle for the
Soul of a Nation
By Rahul Mahajan
A couple of articles I wrote recently,
condemning the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington,
DC, but also opposing the growing drive toward indiscriminate
retaliation, have generated a flurry of responses.
Many are of the condescending
"realistic" kind -- you don't understand, you have
to be tough with bullies. The considerable majority agrees with
me and expresses hope that peace will prevail.
The most disturbing by far
are from self-identified "left-leaning" people calling
for genocide. "I used to think like you before this happened.
Now, I for one can't wait to see the Arabs get what they deserve
- to be turned into charred, bloody corpses...If we can't find
them we can just follow their smell or listen for the sounds
of wife-beating."
"I grew up as a hippie
and anti-war protester during the 60's ... but this is different.
The war in Vietnam was immoral and the USA should never have
been involved ... but when you have butchers from Palestine,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Iraq attacking the United States,
it is time to obliterate the entire region then when the dust
settles and ALL the murderous Muslims are dead, open the area
up for immigration by all the homeless civilized people in the
world."
A bizarre reincarnation of
Hitler's plans for Slavic eastern Europe and Russia.
How could people who favored
and worked for peace and social justice so dehumanize an entire
people? If this is what the "left" is saying, what
is the right saying?
Many have been disquieted by
the footage of a few Palestinians, mostly children, laughing
and dancing when they heard of America's misfortune. Every time
there is danger of people working through their anger and trying
to think beyond it, one of the networks runs the clip again.
Many are no doubt thinking in the back of their minds that Palestinians
are subhuman.
Instead, they should reflect
on the phenomenal outpouring of racist virulence we have seen
in the past few days in our own country. The minuscule percentage
of Palestinians who exulted at the tragedy is probably far smaller
than the percentage of Americans who would call for massive
terror bombing in the Arab world.
And that, of course, is what
we mean by all this talk of going after those who "harbored"
the terrorists -- note that the resolution passed by Congress
authorizes the president to use any force he chooses against
these "harborers."
What does this mean? By living
in the same country as the people quoted above, am I harboring
potential genocidists? Are all Americans harboring the war criminal
Henry Kissinger, butcher of Vietnam, Cambodia, Chile, and East
Timor? How fine a line is it between killing people based on
their geographic proximity to terrorists and killing them because
of the color of their skin or their ethnic background?
Exterminism is the besetting
vice of our country. Most know of the incredibly thorough genocide
of the native population, with up to 98% of the original population
lost. Far fewer know that a Gallup poll in 1944 found 13% of
Americans calling for the annihilation of every single Japanese
person after the war was over. To see this crop up again after
all the progress we had made in eliminating extreme forms of
racism is disheartening and frightening.
It is becoming clear that the
emerging struggle in the public sphere is not only about our
foreign policy, about whether we will abandon military aggression
and domination in order to work for the security that can only
come from peace. It is also about how we will define ourselves
as a society, both internally and externally. It is a struggle
for the soul of America.
People opposing massive "retaliation"
and calling for international cooperation and the use of legal
channels to fight terrorism, and calling also for our country
to rethink its foreign policy, are being called un-American.
We are not.
Instead, we are holding out
our own vision of America. It is the America of those who spontaneously
organized to defend their brothers and sisters of Middle Eastern
descent against racist violence here. It is the America of those
who can see past their pain and grief to understand the pain
and grief of others around the world, who can disentangle the
few who committed this act from the 1 billion people of the
Islamic world who only want peace with justice.
We counterpose it to the America
of hatred and genocide, to the vision being put forth of a militarized
garrison state fighting an unending "war on terrorism"
that constantly creates more enemies, blights and destroy more
lives, and endangers all of us on the planet.
As Senator Carl Schurz said
long ago, "My country, right or wrong. When right, to be
kept right. When wrong, to be put right." CP
Rahul Mahajan is a member of the Nowar Collective
(www.nowarcollective.com).
He serves on the National Board of Peace Action (www.peace-action.org)
and the Coordinating Committee of the National Network to End
the War Against Iraq (www.endthewar.org).
(Identification only). He can be reached at rahul@tao.ca
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