Are We Now Becoming the Terrorists? Essay -- September 11 Terrorism Es

Are We Now Becoming the Terrorists? Terrorism is a weapon of the weak. Shut out of the great conversations that shape our histories and unavailing to control the grand forces that shape our destinies, terrorists strike out in angry desperation to force those they have identified as their oppressors to pay attention to the engagement of the alienated and to hear the terrorists demands. The events of September 11 were just such a gesture. The horror we snarl watching a jet flown deliberately into a high building and watching people leap to their deaths to escape the flames and collapse of the ruined skyscrapers filled us with a strange awe and a feeling of helplessness. We felt forced to pay attention. The first question on everyones lips was what can we do? What can we do to prevent this from happening again? What can we do to penalize those responsible? How we answer these questions will decide whether we live in a civilization worth defending, or if we, too, argon weak. This unprecedented attack on American soil brings into focus the connections between our freedoms, our security, and the international system. Our choices over what to do are constrained by the ways these parts of our lives are connected. Our leaders and representatives, responding to the theories and analyses of their advisors and of the think tanks that ordinate themselves to studying such questions, have al spend a penny begun to speak of September 11 as this generations Pearl Harbor and the need to prepare for war, and of the trade-offs we will have to bump off for our security. Their first responses - and those of many of us - are to lash out at those who have wronged us. However, to lash out now is a path fraught with n... ...saster mitigation and peacekeepers, but we are the single largest supplier of arms to the already intensely violent Middle East. And because Israel is our strategic ally in the region, we wont even allow word of whether its policies towards Palestinia ns are racist. If we are to do anything, we must be ready to take a path more difficult than anyone has suggested so far. We must be ready to be thoughtful and sober, and to look for political solutions to the problems in the world that are now producing the threats to our security. Today, we feel like now is the time to act. Our pain, our helplessness, our frustration at discovering we are vulnerable makes us want to take control over our lives again. We are ready to retaliate against acts of angry desperation with anger and despair. But now is not the time to become terrorists ourselves.