THE HATE THAT ARROGANCE PRODUCED ?
BY JULIANNE MALVEAUX
What could possibly make somebody aim a plane at an office building?
What could make one human being plot to end the lives of thousands of others?
It’s hate, an awful, gnawing hate, and the hate that so many countries in
the world feel for the United States. In many ways it is the hate that our
own arrogance produced.
Now, perhaps, is not the time to point fingers. Too many lives have to
be mourned and too many people have to be buried. Most of us are stunned and
saddened by the events of September 11, shaken by the magnitude of the
terrorism we just experienced. We’ve seen terrorism like this before, but
usually on television, on other soil, in another country. Except for the
Oklahoma City bombing and the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, we’ve
not seen terrorism like this before, and never at this magnitude. Unused as
we are to the degree of violence, we may have forgotten how often we are
complicit in massive violence. Tuesday’s terrorism pierces our smug
innocence and forces us to experience that which innocents have experienced
all over the world. But when the mourning is finished, and we collect our
wits, we have to ask ourselves why this tragedy happened. Some sway we
should ask why it hasn’t happened sooner.
The United States has insisted on playing 700-pound gorilla with the rest
of the world, failing to cooperate with international treaties, to
participate in international conferences. Our message has been “our way or
the highway”, and it seems that such a message begs someone to humble us.
Our grandmas used to tell us that the bigger you are the harder you fall. No
one hoped that the World Trade Center would come toppling down, but many
wondered how the hubris the US has showed the world would play itself out.
You can’t be the biggest, the baddest, the strongest, the mightiest, without
having some measure of compassion, cooperation or humility. You can’t insist
on taking your bat and ball whenever the game doesn’t go your way without
expecting someone to rewrite the rules. We have rankled opponents who have,
in turn, sought cracks in our armor. Sadly, startling, it looks like they
found our vulnerability at large airports and the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon. The bloodthirsty among us clamor for revenge, but the sage might
assess our additional vulnerabilities. What if not two, but twenty large
buildings toppled on the same day? How, then, would we cope?
Now, our leaders are the cooperation of the “civilized” world in
developing a coalition against terrorism. If the coalition is to work, it
will have to include more than the G-8 superpower countries. We’ll need
Russia and China, but also parts of Asia, Latin America and Africa. If we
join with these countries in coalition, we may need to temper our
unilateralism and develop just a bit of humility. Everyone knows we are the
world’s largest power; perhaps now is the time for us to develop a reputation
as the world’s greatest team player.
If we need help on fighting terrorism, we might offer help in economic
development. Some of the hate that we’ve engendered, after all, comes from
the great gaps between rich countries and poor ones, and the great disdain
with which poorer countries are treated. We throw a pittance at world
problems – a couple of million dollars for AIDS in African when the
staggering need is for multiples of that amount; a few hundred thousand for a
world conference when countries with a fraction of our GDP offer multiples
more. We’ve pranced around the issue of debt forgiveness for Africa,
watching our African allies struggle to both repay loans and provide basic
services in their countries. Meanwhile, we hand Israel and Russia money
because of our “strategic” relationship with them. And we circle the world
preaching about human rights will amassing an impressive set of human rights
violations all our own. We’ve done all this because we are the biggest and
the baddest; we’ve done it because we can. Our arrogant hypocrisy has
repelled our allies, and been a partial cause of this week’s tragedy.
When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Malcolm X described that act
as “chickens coming home to roost”. His harsh language was at least
partially responsible for his suspension from the Nation of Islam in 1963,
yet Malcolm’s words resonate a day after the World Trade Center tumbled. How
do we spend $29 billion on the CIA and know nothing a massive attack in the
works? How do we leave our pentagon, our military headquarters, so
unprotected that a plane can simply crash into it? And how do we
miscalculate the consequences of our arrogance. If we thought we were
invincible, we now know we are not. We are living with chickens come home to
roost, the hate that arrogance produced.