Questions for Study and Writing - Where Do We Go From Here?
Strategies
of Response | The
Larger Meanings of Terrorism | Spiritual
Responses
Terrorism and Postmodernism
|On Human Dignity
Strategies of Response [back to top]
The first set of links below contains some narrowly strategic suggestions and prognoses.
"The View from Inside" Foreign correspondent Robert D. Kaplan remembers his days among the Afghan guerillas and says the U.S. must not be afraid to be brutal. <http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/interviews/int2001-11-02.htm>
"The Necessity of Fear" Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA spy in the Middle East, argues that Islamic radicalism can only be countered with stunning, overwhelming, military force. <http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/interviews/int2001-12-28.htm>
"A New Grand Strategy" Benjamin Schwarz and Christpher Layne argue against the U.S. continuing in the role of global policeman. <http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/01/schwarzlayne.htm>
"Does Bush Want Another Terror Attack?" The author believes the president's current policies may result in more such attacks. <http://www.strike-the-root.com/bottoms9.html>
"A New Agenda to Counter Terrorism" This far reaching paper by Foreign Policy In Focus predicts the failure of most military efforts to fight terrorism. <http://fpif.org/justice/tobedone.html>
"The War No One Can Win" Patrick Seale explains that the war goals of both Bin Laden and the United States government are impossible to achieve and will result in an indefinite and destructive stalemate. <www.mafhoum.com/press2/67seal4.htm>
"Keeping the Net Secure" Reed Hundt believes that the internet may be the next major target of terrorism. <http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/01/hundt.htm>
"Interview With Benjamin B. Ferencz" This 2001 interview with a former Nuremburg prosecutor briefly explains arguments for establishing an international criminal court, which could be used to try those accused of genocide or terrorism. <http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/atc/20010101.atc.06.rmm>
James Buchan on 9-11. An English writer predicts that Iran will gradually align itself with the West. <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n19/mult2319.htm#buchan>
The Larger Meanings of Terrorism [back to top]
Discussion of the final meanings of 9-11 can often become more general. These links to articles by political, academic and religious leaders place the issue of terrorism in an ever-widening perspective.
United Nations Security
Counsel (UNSC) Resolution 1373, adopted on September 28, 2001, set forth
a long list of demands to be fulfilled by each member state of the UN
with regard to terrorism. This link will familiarize you with U.N. efforts
against terrorism. <http://www.un.org/Docs/sc/committees/1373/>
"Nobel Laureates Warn that our Security Hangs on Reform" A petition widely disseminated in December 2001. <http://musiciansforpeace.org/librarydocs/nobellaureates.html>
"Terrorism Crisis"
This site, specially developed by the Conflict Resolution Information
Source in response to the September attacks, is an extraordinarily rich
collection of analyses about how to reduce terrorism. <http://www.crinfo.org/terrorism/>
"Pro Patria, Pro Mundo" William Greider writes that since corporations have been lobbying against government, they should take more responsibility for combatting terrorism. http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20011112&s=greider
"Collective Passion"
Edward Said says America is acting like a mob in its pursuit of Islamic
terrorists. "We need," he writes, "to step back from the
imaginary thresholds that supposedly separate people from each other into
supposedly clashing civilizations and re-examine the labels, reconsider
the limited resources available, decide somehow to share our fates with
each other as in fact cultures mostly have done, despite the bellicose
cries and creeds." <http://web1.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2001/552/op2.htm>
"A Call for Caution and Prudence" Paul Kurtz, Editor-in-Chief of Free Inquiry magazine, says all religions need to establish a tradition of critical readings of their texts, of interpretations suitable to today. "These documents," he writes, "were spawned in nomadic and rural societies in the infancy of the race and are not appropriate for the modern world." www.secularhumanism.org/library/www/kurtz_09_01.htm - 34k -
"Beyond Jihad Vs. McWorld" The author of 1995's well received "Jihad vs. McWorld," attempts a synthesis of the "clash of civilizations" and economic exclusion explanations for terrorism. Islamic fundamentalism "has causes," he writes, "and [it's] zeal has its reasons, but market conceptions of interest will not succeed in fathoming them....[I]f the only choice we have is between the mullahs and the mall, between the hegemony of religious absolutism and the hegemony of market determinism, neither liberty nor the human spirit is likely to flourish." <http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020121&s=barber>
"All you Need
is Love" A surprising account of how a terrorist group itself stopped
terrorism. http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/12/hoffman.htm
Spiritual Responses [back to top]
The following three pieces, two by spiritual leaders, and one by writer and ex-President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Havel, invoke a religious sensibility as the ground from which to confront terrorism. "Healing After Terror" Rabbi Michael Lerner's position seems designed to make conservative critics howl: "We recognize that human beings have also been distorted by a history of pain and cruelty embedded in patriarchy and in class societies, manifesting in wars, violence, abuse, and oppression. But that history need not determine our future. We live at a moment when we can clearly envision and begin to build a world based on love and respect for others." http://www.tikkun.org/magazine/index.cfm/action/tikkun/issue/tik0111/article/011103.html
"No Peace Without Justice, No Justice Without Forgiveness." In his 2002 New Year's Address Pope John Paul rejects all forms of spiritual coercion. "To try to impose on others by violent means what we consider to be the truth is an offence against human dignity, and ultimately an offence against God whose image that person bears. For this reason, what is usually referred to as fundamentalism is an attitude radically opposed to belief in God. Terrorism exploits not just people, it exploits God: it ends by making him an idol to be used for one's own purposes. . . ." http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/messages/peace/documents/hf_jp-ii_mes_20011211_xxxv-world-day-for-peace_en.html
"A Speech by Vaclav Havel" At Independence Hall, Philadelphia, on July 4, 1994, Havel gave this speech in acceptance of the Philadelphia Liberty Medal. He suggests that today human rights and human freedom must be nourished by something other than old conceptions of God, or newer conceptions of rational or scientific understanding. He imagines a "post-modern science producing ideas that in a certain sense allow it to transcend its own limits." http://www.hrad.cz/president/Havel/speeches/index_uk.html
Terrorism and Postmodernism [back to top]
Interestingly, postmodernism became a subject of discussion after 9-11. Is the supposedly value-neutral stance of postmodernism -- i.e. that no culture is "better" than any other -- still tenable after the attacks? Or by demanding that thinkers put themselves in the shoes of their subjects, is postmodernism only, as Stanley Fish wrote, "another name for serious thought?"
"The Mullahs and
the Postmodernists" Jonathan Rauch writes that, "The postmodern
left has become as fixated on its one value as the anti-modern mullahs
are on theirs." http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/01/rauch.htm
"Condemnation Without Absolutes" Stanley Fish's explanation of a postmodern understanding of the attacks. http://weber.ucsd.edu/~ecomisso/condemnation_without_absolutes.htm
On Human Dignity [back to top]
And finally, "On Human Dignity: A Letter To George Kennan by Isiah Berlin." Written in 1950, as the horrors of both the Holocaust and Stalin's Russia were becoming widely known, Kennan, an Oxford professor, made the distinction between human freedom and "the very capacity for freedom." At a time when political and religious movements, each full of conviction, are competing for the allegiance of citizens of both Islam and the West, it may provide the most basic and useful perspective of all.
"A Letter to George
Kennan" by Isiah Berlin, 1950.
<http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020128&s=berlin20020128>
