The 11th of September is Catalonia's national day: la diada. It is a public holiday. This year, as every year, it should have been a day of celebration; then suddenly a tiny group of fanatics, five thousand kilometres away, changed the way the day will be remembered forever. (1)
I will not attempt to describe my reactions to the actual events of that day, too many other people have already expressed the horror I shared with millions. I believe that the balance sheet of that day is going to take a long time to draw up and it is still too early to guess what place the day will have in the record of Human History.
When my more optimistic side is dominant I believe the day will be remembered as the starting point for a complete re-appraisal of Western attitudes and policies towards the developing world. It could also mark the beginning of a complete re-assessment in the Muslim world of exactly which values are sacred, and a rejection of the dangerous game of using Islamic fanatics as short-term Band-Aids on the gaping wounds caused by inequalities in many Islamic nations.
When my more pessimistic side is to the fore, I fear that the day will mark the beginning of a spiralling series of events that will see the world's first act of nuclear terrorism, more civil wars and revolutions in Islamic countries. I fear it will possibly mark the start of the "developed versus undeveloped" World War, in which those who perceive that they have nothing to lose will attempt to destroy a civilization that they hate, not because they do not understand it, but rather because they have been taken in by its propaganda and are basically jealous of it.
I am, by nature, a pacifist. I prefer to avoid conflict, rather than foster it. Yet, as a victim of bullies myself as a child, I know that sometimes events conspire to make conflict inevitable. Had I been a young man in 1914, I know I would have done everything in my power to avoid having to fight in the First World War; it was an undeniably unjust and avoidable war. However, I am more ambivalent about the Second World War. The Nazi vision of humanity's destiny was so horrendous that there was perhaps no alternative left but to defeat it militarily.
In the past I have vehemently opposed US foreign policy
in many areas of the world, from Nicaragua, to Israel. Nevertheless, how
can I deny that some good has already come out of this particular conflict?
As I write, the Taliban's hold on Afghanistan is unravelling.
The horrendous mental and physical torture to which the majority population
of that country - its women (65%) - have been subjected for the last six
years is at an end in most of the country and could soon be ended all over
the country. All of this would not have happened, but for the terrifying
events in New York. What an indictment of the West that as they no longer
saw their interests threatened - and there was no profit to be had - in
Afghanistan, they did little or nothing to defeat the Taliban until after
the horrendous "wake up call" on the diada.
Will the War on Terrorism be just a case of the world's policeman getting tough? Or will it lead America to radically re-think the idea that they can act as if the world and its resources belong to them and them alone? Will this finally make the powers that be in the US wake up to the idea that the best way to protect their little nest egg is to spread some of it around?
The Arab states too have been flirting with disaster. Like the German industrialists of the thirties who feared the communists so much that they backed the Nazi party, imagining they could control the genie they had helped out of the bottle, the Arab states have, at best, turned a blind eye to, or at worst, actively stirred up the Islamic fundamentalist movement. They seem to have thought it a convenient side-show to detract Arab youth from the real cause of instability in the area: the control in a very few hands of the immense riches of many middle eastern countries, and the complete lack of a say in the running of the country by anyone not in the ruling elite.
Perhaps the events sparked off by September 11th will lead to a Muslim Martin Luther coming to the fore. The reformation of Christianity paved the way for the idea of the perfectibility of individuals and society, without which the whole structure of our modern world would have been unthinkable. Perhaps it is time for Islam to separate the true teachings of Mohammed from the sixth century traditions it became too closely tied up with. Millions of Muslims are convinced that they can be good Muslims without turning the clock back to the dark ages. Let them speak out! Let them tell the bullying minority represented by these fanatics that they will not accept atrocities committed in their name!
*****
Then the dark clouds come over me and I tremble at the sheer unimaginable horror of even a small nuclear device smuggled into a major city... and New Yorkers beware... your city of buildings rising to offend their idea of heaven means the Big Apple must be at the top of their target list.
Like many of my generation, I never expected to reach my forties. I was convinced that those little boys with their big toys would not be able to resist the temptation of pushing all those shiny red buttons and launching armageddon. Thankfully, a grain of sanity remained to seed the end of the cold war and the immediate threat of being one among millions vaporized in a fireball hotter than the sun diminished. Who could really have pushed those buttons, only someone who had not the slightest grain of humanity left within him? Yet, these fanatics have already proved that they are completely indifferent to the value of human life, even their own. Driven by a hate that goes far beyond even the word irrational, the idea of exploding an atomic bomb in a crowded city is not incomprehensible to them, it is merely the logical end to which that which passes in their minds for thought is steering them.
It is believed that these lunatics are also pursuing research into biological and chemical warfare. I can only hope that they have given the slightest consideration to the fact that infectious diseases know no frontiers and that a plague set off in the hated USA only needs the time it takes a jet aeroplane to reach the middle east to backfire on them.
In response to the horrendous attacks on the WTC, the US may have started a War on Terrorism, but there is no guarantee they will be able to control either when it is won... or lost... or which direction the war will take over the coming months, or even years. If Islamic governments do little to stop these organizations recruiting young men willing to die for a misinterpretation of the Koran, then we could see attitudes harden and thousands of potential suicide bombers willing to sacrifice their present for a dreamed of future.
So many people I have heard, or read, expressed such surprise
that whoever organized the attacks could find so many young men willing
to die for a cause. Good grief! Have they not read their history? From
the earliest dawn of man it seems that the creation of a military mentality
has not been so very difficult. Indeed, finding people willing to live
for their ideals appears to me to have been that much harder. These fanatics
believe they are soldiers in some holy war; the wonder is that there are
not hordes more of them blowing themselves up on an almost daily basis
throughout the hated West. At my gloomiest, I feel that it will only be
a matter of time until the events of September 11th become a regular occurrence,
in one form or another. For the sake of my daughter's future... and for
the sake of all sons and daughters everywhere, I just hope that my pessimism
is as wrong as my prediction that I would be radioactive dust before I
was thirty.