By
Halford H. Fairchild
Professor of Psychology and Black Studies, Pitzer College
Published in Psych Discourse: The Monthly Newsjournal of The Association of Black Psychologists, 2001, 32(10), pp. 18-19.
“Instead of demonizing our enemies, we must recognize their humanity. Instead of saying that the individuals who committed these heinous acts were filled with hate, we should recognize that they were also capable of and filled with love: Love for their families, love for the innocents killed in their countries, love for their religion, love for their leaders. They were filled with hope that their deaths, and the deaths of innocent Americans, would lead to a change for the better.”
I offer sincerest condolences to the families of the thousands of innocent civilians killed in the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. This unimaginable tragedy should serve as a wake up call to bring peace to the world that we share with billions of others.
A few days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, the national spokesman of the Nation of Islam, said to the press that the killing was a case of the “chickens coming home to roost.” The public and the mass media promptly excoriated him for the remark, as did Elijah Muhammad, the late leader of the Nation of Islam.
What Malcolm meant was that the violence against the icon of American society, the President, was a case of violence begetting violence. Where Malcolm erred was in making his assertion at the wrong time, when the wrong target (a much beloved President) was assassinated.
But the retaliation against the United States on September 11, 2001, presumably by Middle East soldiers, was a much more apt case of the “chickens coming home to roost.”
For many years, now, the United States has waged a one-sided war against people of color in the Middle East. It has supported some nation states that have used “made-in-America” weaponry to kill many thousands of civilians. The U.S.'s own militia has struck from afar—using stealth bombers, cruise missiles, so-called smart bombs—to strike terror into the hearts and minds of people in Iran, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Sudan, and similar locales.
In this ongoing conflict, the United States has engaged in an “inversion of reality.” The U.S. militia is seen as just, noble and courageous; the “terrorists” are seen as evil and cowardly. But whereas the U.S. strikes with stealth technology by bombing from afar, those who attempt to fight back against the mammoth military machine of the U.S. sacrifice their lives to do so. Who, here, is the coward?
Of course, we must decry the killing of innocent civilians for any reason. Nothing can justify the hijacking of four U.S. commercial jetliners and crashing them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the fields of Pennsylvania. But while we mourn the loss of American lives, let us be reminded of the lost lives of Palestinians, Iranians, Afghanis, and others, who have witnessed the terror of American “smart bombs” for several years, and who have suffered tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of casualties.
It is ironic that U.S. politicians are describing the attacks on September 11 as “acts of war.” Yet, this country has been waging war against the rest of the world for more than 200 years. Indeed, the settlement of North America by European malcontents was in the context of war: against the indigenous and African populations. The early European immigrants generated unimaginable wealth by stealing African people to work the land stolen from the First Americans. These wars of conquest are now a fait accompli: an accomplished fact. The indigenous populations of North America have either been exterminated or remanded to desolate “reservations,” Africa remains under the yoke of European (neo)colonialism, and the descendants of African captives are effectively neutralized through policies of mental and physical incarceration.
The United States has accomplished this domination of the world through the doctrine of “might makes right.” We have a military force that is unassailable. Only the U.S. can fly from Missouri to Afghanistan, refuel in mid air, drop 20,000 pounds of high explosives, and return to Missouri unscathed, indeed, unseen. In this context, it is laughable to see U.S. fighter planes now patrolling the skies over major metropolitan areas. No one in the world can mount the kind of long distance attack on the U.S. as the U.S. can mount on others. Instead, the pathetic strategy of those who seek retaliation against the U.S. is for them to sacrifice their own lives as in the hideous displays in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington.
Most worrisome is the talk of war, and the undoubtedly severe retaliation that will soon be meted out throughout the Middle East. Already, the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan has been called home, as have various relief agencies in that country. These actions presage a violent and deadly use of force to punish those suspected of being responsible for the unprecedented destruction in New York and Washington. But what the warmongers fail to realize is that the acts of “terrorism” against the U.S. were themselves retaliations for the terror being rained on Middle East populations for many years. So as we retaliate against their retaliation, what is the likely result? Surely, we are on the precipice of a very dangerous and deadly time in world affairs.
Instead of retaliation, the United States should see the violence of September 11, 2001 as a wake up call for peace. Just as Japan was soberly awakened to the futility of their war against the U.S. when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were atom bombed; so too the U.S. should recognize that the suicidal tactics of committed freedom fighters cannot be prevented. Only peace can prevent a recurrence of the terrible tragedy of September 11th.
It is natural and perhaps normal to seek retribution for the taking of thousands of American lives in New York, and hundreds more in Washington, D.C. But it is pure insanity to strike back at shadows, killing unknown scores of innocent civilians. Each civilian killed by made-in-America weapons creates scores of committed individuals who will seek retribution in the spirit of “Death to America!” Violence begets violence. We should also have the courage to say, “I have seen the enemy, and he is us!”
The only rational solution to this crisis is for the U.S. to stop the violence and negotiate with those who have grievances against this country. This is not to say that the U.S. must surrender, as Japan did after the atomic bombings of two of its cities. But it is to say that we must do everything in our power to ensure that such violence does not recur.
We must recognize that the only lasting solution to international conflict is at the table of earnest and committed diplomacy.
This country spends $300 billion every year on military preparedness. That is an awesome number. But one way to understand it is to recognize that $300 billion a year is $800 million a day, $30 million an hour, $500,000 a minute, close to $10,000 a second. The Bush administration asked congress for an emergency appropriation of $20 billion to respond to the crisis; Congress awarded $40 billion. And while much of that appropriation will be devoted to rebuilding the devastation wrought by the suicide attacks on September 11th, much of it will pay for the effort to rid the world of terrorists in Afghanistan and perhaps a dozen other countries.
The solution is to appropriate monies for peace. Even an allocation of one billion dollars, a paltry sum in comparison to military spending, could lead to world peace. The money should be spent by bringing divergent factions to the diplomatic table. It can bring leaders and common citizens to forums designed to articulate and iron out differences in ideology. A larger allocation, transforming military spending into spending for peace, could go a long way toward eradicating the underlying sources of un-ease in our world: hunger, poverty, ignorance, and preventable illnesses. Solving the problem of terrorism—by nation states and individuals—is as simple as allocating the funds to pursue the peaceful resolution of conflicts.
Instead of demonizing our enemies, we must recognize their humanity. Instead of saying that the individuals who committed these heinous acts were filled with hate, we should recognize that they were also capable of and filled with love: Love for their families, love for the innocents killed in their countries, love for their religion, love for their leaders. They were filled with hope that their deaths, and the deaths of innocent Americans, would lead to a change for the better. Let us not let their deaths, and the deaths of victims on both sides of the Atlantic, be in vain. Let us commit ourselves to peace, to dialogue, and to the abolition of war.
Halford H. Fairchild is National Secretary of The Association of Black Psychologists and Editor of Psych Discourse, the monthly newsjournal published by The Association. He teaches psychology and Black Studies at the Claremont Colleges and may be reached at HalFairchild@aol.com.