Our cultural weakness
Jerry Falwell and Ward Churchill are about as far apart on the political spectrum as you can get. But they're both in agreement on one thing: On 9/11, our chickens came home to roost. Our country deserved what it got that day.
Falwell says it's because we pushed God out of our national culture and he couldn't or wouldn't protect us like he always had. Churchill says it's because we've inflicted genocide on the world for decades, and turnabout's fair play. Screw these guys; they're extremists. Their explanations for 9/11 are nothing more than a wank to justify their own warped view of reality.
But I am a big believer in cause and effect. These things don't just happen. Three big honkin' planes don't get slammed into major national landmarks without some reason for it.
Forget the terrorists' reasons. Forget all that crap about American imperialism and American arrogance. Forget all the intellectual egghead talk about "unprecedented" and "asymmetrical" and "root causes". Forget weaving the event into a broader narrative. That kind of talk is for historians and pundits whose ability to understand the present day is nil and whose hindsight is, at best, only about 20/40.
Terrorists will plot. What we do about it is a totally different story. I don't give a crap about whether their actions are justified. I only want them to fail.
So what exactly enabled them to succeed that day?
Here's where Falwell is right -- if only in a tangential way. Our culture was responsible, partially, for enabling the terrorists to succeed. Case in point: Michael Tuohey, who was running the ticket counter in Portland, Maine, where Mohammed Atta and Abdul Aziz al Omari checked into their flight that morning.
In the moments that Tuohey encountered these men, he was faced with a struggle. His instincts fired off a thousand warning signals that these men were terrorists, but he found himself split. Like an admonishing parent, he "slapped himself" and told himself that he was wrong to be worried about these men. "You're just being racist," his mind said:
He thought the pair were unusual. First, they each held a $2,500 first-class, one-way ticket to Los Angeles (via Boston). "You don't see many of those."Within that moment, the terrorists won the first battle of 9/11.The second reason is not so easy to explain.
"It was just the look on the one man's face, his eyes," Tuohey recently told me. ...
"I looked up, and asked them the standard questions. The one guy was looking at me. It sent a chill through me. Something in my stomach churned. And subconsciously, I said to myself, "If they don't look like Arab terrorists, nothing does.'"
"Then I gave myself a mental slap. In over 34 years, I had checked in thousands of Arab travelers, and I never thought this before. I said to myself, 'That's not nice to think. They are just two Arab businessmen.'" And with that, Tuohey handed them their boarding passes.
In over 34 years, Tuohey encountered tens of thousands of passengers -- none of whom turned out to be terrorists. Yet the one time a terrorist crosses his path, he doubts himself. He has no confidence in his experience, no confidence in his character. He mentally slaps himself for even considering that Atta could be a terrorist. He chides himself as racist for entertaining such thoughts, never considering that he might be qualified to make an assessment on Atta's odd behavior.
I don't think it's right to blame Michael Tuohey for his actions that morning. Rather, I think we ought to look at what his case tells us about our culture as a whole.
In the aftermath of the attack, we've looked at how the terrorists pulled it off, in an effort to prevent it from happening again. A thousand times, we've asked ourselves: wasn't there someone who noticed these men plotting to carry out these attacks? Wasn't there anyone who could have stopped them, or at least reported them to the proper authorities? My guess is yes -- about a thousand times.
How many times did someone see these guys and have their instincts buzz with warning signs? Everyone has described Atta as being a cold, lifeless, scary machine. Forget that he's Arab; there was something not right about the guy. And yet, not once did anyone go from that initial sense of concern to following through and calling the authorities. Some intervening force kicked in and stopped them.
That intervening force is the suicidal rot in our culture. But that "rot" isn't gays, and it isn't racism, and it isn't any of the stuff you usually hear guys like Falwell and Churchill throwing about. No, it's the always-second-guessing attitude -- the ever-present mentality that our beliefs and instincts can never be trusted. We're so programmed to constantly question our certainty that we have lost our sense of direction. When a terrorist like Atta shows up at the ticket counter, we're paralyzed. Instead of questioning him about his shady activity, we question ourselves and call ourselves racist for even thinking such thoughts.
A certain amount of self-examination is good for our well-being. Without it, we don't evolve or improve for the better. But when every fiber in your body is telling you DANGER DANGER DANGER, and that slapping hand of self-criticism intervenes, it's gone beyond its healthy role of reality-checker and into the realm of suicide-enabler.
What should be alarming is that the terrorists understand this weakness in our mentality. They know that we'll have a national debate about the war every time a U.S. soldier is killed. Never mind the actual numbers -- they're clearly losing when you take stock of the actual situation. But they know that the only way for them to win is to weaken our own resolve and to make us question our own actions.
Some say that our openness is our weakness. Terrorist attacks are inevitable, they say, because you can never fully prevent them in a state where people are free to live their lives without a high level of scrutiny from the authorities. I've always thought this argument rings false. Certainly our freedom and openness presents some challenges, but that's part of the cost of living in a free society.
Instead, I say that our weakness is our uncertainty that we're the good guys.
This war is asymmetrical. We have far more power and strength than the terrorists dare to dream for. The only way for the terrorists to win is for them to enlist us in the battle against ourselves. They are steadfastly, immovably, ridiculously committed to establishing worldwide Islamic empire on the earth. We don't have that same level of resolve (charges of our own empiric aspirations notwithstanding), and they know it.
I am utterly grateful to the powers that be, that a man like GWB was president in the aftermath of 9/11, and I am even more thankful that the American people had the character to re-elect him. The only thing that will win this war is straight talk and absolute clarity about our goals. We're on the right track; we're turning this baby around.
Posted by Matt at February 25, 2005 11:44 AM
