September

September, even before Labor Day, has a way of washing out the summer’s mental cobwebs. The great semantic debate of August, prompted by the 9-11 Commission report, was whether terrorists do it because of who we are or because of what we do. On the one hand, maybe we should stop doing things that make them mad. If we stopped supporting Israel, invading Iraq, having troops on Muslim soil, supporting dictatorial governments (never mind that the most dictatorial ones are the ones who provide financial support for the terrorists) and then maybe they wouldn’t hate us.

September, even before Labor Day, has a way of washing out the summer’s mental cobwebs. The great semantic debate of August, prompted by the 9-11 Commission report, was whether terrorists do it because of who we are or because of what we do. On the one hand, maybe we should stop doing things that make them mad. If we stopped supporting Israel, invading Iraq, having troops on Muslim soil, supporting dictatorial governments (never mind that the most dictatorial ones are the ones who provide financial support for the terrorists) and then maybe they wouldn’t hate us. On the other hand, maybe they hate us because we’re free and want others to be free.

Uh… who cares? Look around.

Terrorists are preparing to kill journalists to force the French government to lift the ban on headscarves for Muslim schoolgirls. Other terrorists in Iraq killed 12 Nepalese cooks because, they said, “They were working for the Jews and the Christians.” Chechen terrorists are holding 400 people hostage in a school, having killed some number and according to Tass, threatening, “for every destroyed fighter, they will kill 50 children and for every injured fighter – 20.” This week, a female bomber blew herself up along with 10 commuters on a Moscow subway; last week, it was two Russian planes blown up in mid-air, apparently by Chechen women. Two Palestinian bombers left Hebron where there is no Security Fence and blew up buses in Beersheba. American troops cleaning up after Moktada Sadr in Najaf found more than a dozen mutilated bodies – men, women and children – apparently killed by Sadr supporters during the siege.

The Americans, French, Italians, Russians, Nepalese, Iraqis, Spanish, Afghans, Israelis and Algerians all have different domestic and foreign policies, different governmental systems and different relationships with the U.S., with Israel and with Islam. All have been targets because different terrorist groups have different political agendas, but all of them include the totalitarian exercise of power.Terrorism unites them because to the extent they can scare civilized people into giving them what they want, they win. And, if they can’t scare them, they’ll kill them with no remorse.

This is the ideological (and sometimes material) swamp that breeds them.

America is not the mythical “Great Satan,” and America – whether in thought, word or deed – is NOT the cause of terrorism. We are not absolved of the requirement to examine our beliefs and our behavior, but it is the height of self-absorption to think the elimination of terrorism depends solely on the nuance of American behavior – it depends in part on understanding what the terrorists want and denying it to them; and then eliminating them.

In some ways this war is different from previous ones, but it is still the same drive by bad guys to control territory, people and resources – which is why the good guys have to fight on the same principles in different ways in different parts of the world. September is a good month to remember how and why we fight.