“I shall never forget as long as I live! “ This was the phrase that I heard most often when I visited New York shortly after the Sept. 11 2001 attacks that brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
It came from old ladies who could hardly contain their tears as they looked upon the still fuming debris of Ground Zero. And it came from young joggers who said they stopped every day to offer a prayer for the dead. Mayor Rudi Guiliani asserted it, as did hotel receptionists, taxi drivers, and the editors of the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and New York Post.
How could anyone forget such an event? There are moments in history that, no matter how deeply buried under the avalanche of years, retain a place in common memory.
But memory is a trickster. The issue is not that we remember an event. Our memories are reshaped by narratives through which they are expressed. What matters is how an event is remembered.
Initially, the Sept. 11 attack provoked disbelief among Americans. This had been a bolt, or rather two bolts, out of the blue. Like other events that we cannot easily gauge and store-up in our mental archives, this had no ready explanation. To ask why it had happened was almost as irrelevant as to ask why there are earthquakes, plagues, hurricanes and, indeed, death itself.
A few days later, by the time President George W. Bush came to visit Ground Zero, disbelief had given birth to anger. This was raw, sizzling anger of the kind that, had the United States not been a mature democracy, would have translated into lynch mobs and indiscriminate attacks on nations and groups blamed for the tragedy.
Because there is always something good even in the worst of events, the Sept. 11 attacks gave the Americans a sense of national unity that they had not experienced for generations. For decades the Americans had felt that their nation was strong and rich enough not to need the drumbeat of unity to face adversity.
Three years later, almost all Americans would still insist that they remember Sept. 11. But the question is: What is it that they remember?
Broadly speaking, three versions of Sept. 11 have entered the American psyche.
The first and the most common version is that of an unprovoked attack by a group of fanatics who just hate the America for what it is.
The second version is that of an attack carried out by individuals expressing grievances that, at some point and in some form, need to be addressed. In this version the US was attacked not for what it is but for what it does.
The third version, based on conspiracy theories and peddled by charlatans like Michael Moore, would not have merited mention had it not been for the disturbing fact that so many Americans seem to believe it. Nevertheless, let us ignore this version because it could only lead us into a maze of lies and affabulations.
So, what about the first and second versions?
Is America attacked for what it is or for what it does?
President Bush, and most other Republicans, favor the first version. In his speech in New York last week, accepting the presidential nomination, George W. Bush described the United States as “the hope of the oppressed, the greatest force for good on earth”, and implied that those who attacked it represented universal evil.
Those who favor this version point to the freedom the Americans enjoy, the openness of their society, the tolerance that the US has for all beliefs and life styles, and, of course, American wealth and scientific progress that is supposed to arouse the jealousy of “the forces of evil”.
Others, like Ms. Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat Party’s leader in the House of Representatives, and others of her camp, uphold the second version: The US is attacked for what it does. At one point Ms. Pelosi even compared Osama Bin Laden, the leader of the Al-Qaeda terrorist group, to the American “Founding Fathers” who had, according to her, also been “religious zealots.”
Those who favor this version come up with their list of real or imagined “wrongs” that the US has done: Supporting Israel against the Arabs, refusing to join the Kyoto environmental accords, backing dictators of the right, such as Anastasio Somosa while knocking dictators of the left such as Fidel Castro, and, digging deep into history, the mass murder of native Americans and the oppression of black slaves and their descendants.
The final report of the Congressional committee set up by Bush to examine the causes of the Sept. 11tragedy, tries to reflect both versions. As a result, the report is based on faulty analysis and offers a defensive strategy that, if implemented, could make the US more vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
But what if the two versions are really one? Is it not possible to say that the United States does what it does because it is what it is?
Over 2000 years ago Aristotle taught that character is action. In other words: You are what you do, and do not.
So, what is the United States?
The simplest answer is this: It is the only global power in the sense that what it does or does not has a direct major effect on most aspects of international life. The US is the world’s biggest market. A small recession in the US economy could wipe out millions of jobs in more than 100 countries. At the same time the US is the only country with the military and political clout to tip the balance in most issues. It is thus no surprise that the US is involved in all the 66 active or semi-active crises in the world, often as guarantor of fragile peace deals.
Needless to say everyone would like to deploy American power in his own favor. Some see the US as an 800-pound gorilla that is useful for heavy lifting but becomes suspect if it manifests a judgment of its own.
Some Arabs are sore because the US would not let them march in and wipe Israel off the map. Some Israelis are sore because the US is not prepared to back the mass expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank.
The Indians resent that the US would not allow them to teach Pakistan a lesson. The Pakistanis are sore because the does not sell them the weapons that could tip the military balance against India.
The mullas of Tehran hate the US because it would not let them create a Khomeinist mini-empire in the region.
Nostalgics of the Shah hate the US because it refuses to march on Tehran to topple the mullas. Slobodan Milosevic and other Serbian mass murders now in jail or in hiding know that without US intervention no one could have stopped the genocides that they had organized.
In Afghanistan, the Taleban, and the drug barons and fanatical mullas who prospered under them, know that had it not been for US intervention they would still be in power in Kabul. The Baathist know that had the US not marched on Baghdad, Saddam Hussein would still be ruling from one of his palaces rather than doing the crosswords in his jail cell.
The logical conclusion of the theory that America is attacked because of what it does is to hand over American policy to its enemies and critics.
And, if Sept. 11 teaches the Americans one lesson it must be precisely not to allow that to happen.
