The events of last week here in American left me completely speechless. It has taken me several days to even comprehend what has happened and to begin to come to grips with my feelings. I’ve been very disappointed at the reactions of several Americans, from the cowards who have seen fit to take the law into their own hands and attack innocent Arab Americans, to the intellectual elite, such as Noam Chomsky, who have implied that this attack was somehow justified and deserved because of America’s foreign policy in the Middle East. I’m sickened by both of these reactions, as I am by the greed and indifference of hotel chains and gas station owners who raised their prices, to gouge a wounded and disoriented American public.
These morally repellent individuals will need to live with their own shameful behavior, but to the terrorists who believe that there is righteousness in these actions I offer these words of advice:
Those who would attack America over ideological issues demonstrate a profound lack of understanding of the resolve of the American people and the way American society does (or does not) function. We are a diverse people from many countries, cultures and religions. That diversity was well represented in last week’s attack, in which thousands of Americans needlessly lost their lives. Those who perished were European Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans and Arab Americans. Those who perished were Christian, Jewish, Buddhist , Hindu, and Muslim. Also among the victims were the citizens of England, Germany, Russia, Japan, France, Australia, and over 40 countries who had come to America to work, live, vacation, or conduct business.
America is not a homogenous culture. In fact, we can rarely agree on anything. More often than not we are a dysfunctional family, mixing like oil and water, rather than the great American melting pot. Although our citizens may often isolate themselves into smaller, homogenous communities, there is nothing which forges a bond among family like enduring great tragedy, and this last week has done more to unite the American people, people of all races, creeds and religions than it has to divide us on issues of foreign policy.
As a frequent vocal critic of the policies of the United States government, I cannot imagine, nor ever conceive taking the lives of tens of thousands of innocent people in order to make a political point. The greatest freedom America affords its citizens is the right to disagree with our leaders and to express that dissent. More can be accomplished to win the opinions of the American public with advertising dollars and rhetoric than can ever hope to be achieved with violent out lashes against our citizens.
For all the millions of dollars funneled to terrorist organizations for ideological causes, greater service would be done with the American public by purchasing advertising, lobbying congress, and funding political campaigns. Images on public television of Israeli troops firing on crowds of innocent Palestinians might have changed American minds. Images of Palestinians cheering over the bloodshed of American citizens has damaged the cause of Palestine and Islamic groups more than any single event in human history. The terrorists who committed these dastardly acts were clever in their execution, but unbelievably stupid in the belief that this would alter American policy, or win the American people over to their cause.
By nature I am a pacifist. I have never supported or condoned violent retribution, and in fact, believe that retaliation for the sake of vengeance would be wrong. But the voice of terrorism was heard loudly and clearly last Tuesday. For many years, we have tried to broker peace in the Middle East to no avail. The language of peace seems unknown to these groups, and therefore, I honestly believe it is time for the United States to speak directly with the organizations which would slaughter the innocent, and we should speak the only language they seem to understand.
To the terrorists of the world, and the countries which support them, imagine the internal conflict faced by a peaceful, civil disobedient citizen of the United States such as myself in reaching this conclusion. I would have been one of the first citizens in the United States in the hear your point of view and listen to your arguments. Now, I can no longer hear anything in my ears but the ringing of explosives and the screams of my people.