A Distant View of 9/11 part 2

The people called “demons”

Now before we plunge ahead, for a moment let’s look again at that idea of asuras, or “demons.” The term here refers not to fiendish devils with horns, tails, and cloven hooves but to human beings who’ll do anything monstrous to serve their own ends:

• The men who’ll cut the thumbs of village weavers so that cloth mills far away can turn a better profit.
• The heads of state who’ll shoot and starve three million of their own people.
• The cigarette men who’ll pay psychologists and ad agencies to sell tuberculosis and cancer to children.

In the Bhagavad-gita, apart from all that’s said about spirituality, most of Chapter Sixteen tells of men demonic in nature, men proud, arrogant, conceited, harsh, and blind, men who’ll do the vilest things for wealth and power—liars, cheaters, and murderers, often quite sophisticated and refined, who’ll promote vicious enterprises that bring suffering and destruction to the world.

We know of such men: We recognize them easily among the leaders of countries other than our own.

Send our brave young men

Coming back to what I saw from my distant vantage point in the Middle East: The drama of the twin towers, the hijacked planes, and the burning Pentagon was so emotionally gripping, the outrage of the American people so strong, their resolve to protect their homeland and their way of life so determined that who could doubt the rightness of their cause?

Yet from far away in the Middle East, unplugged from the television, getting most news only in summary, I saw not details but broader patterns, patterns that seemed familiar, and unsettling. The sequences were too smooth, too natural, too inevitable, too much like a script.

An unexpected horror, an unprecedented threat, had pulled all America together. An evil villain from Arabia—his next strike could be anywhere!—commands a shadowy network of fanatics sworn to destroy us. Our President vows to drive this evil from the world. Congress rises as one to stand behind him. Allies from around the globe join hands in a coalition. Men and planes and ships, tanks and guns and the latest high-tech gear move off in strength to Afghanistan to crush that evil force, wherever it may be.

In outline: A tragic disaster and a terrifying threat, and to protect all we hold dear and sacred we send our brave young men to — — what by coincidence is the most strategically and economically crucial part of the world. Southeast of Europe … northeast of Africa … south of Russia and the former Soviet Union … west of India and China … and right in the middle of the world’s largest known reserves of oil.

Orwell and the Arabs

As a teenager, I’d been sobered by George Orwell and his negative utopian vision of 1984. Do you remember Emmanuel Goldstein, enemy of the people, the plotting, scheming, deadly mastermind (nonexistent, to be sure) of whom the doublethinking followers of Big Brother were whipped up into constant hatred and fear? How curiously familiar.

Goldstein was Jewish, of course. Yesterday the Jews, today the Muslims.

Now we have our Bin Laden, that deadly mastermind, always plotting and scheming the overthrow of the United States. He’s real. We’ve seen his picture. He hates us. He wants to destroy our democracy. We need to send our troops to go get him—corner him, surround him, smoke him out. Yet the wily Arab escapes us.

What else might be escaping us here?

Global war against terrorism!

Before 9/11, if our President had told the American people we need to rush soldiers to Afghanistan and Iraq, would we have acquiesced? Yet after 9/11, to defend our homeland, our democracy, our American way of life—suddenly now all terribly at risk—we stood ready to send men, send planes, send weapons, spend any amount of money. Global war against terrorism!

And note, if you will, that’s it’s a war that has no definable end. It’s not that the emperor can surrender his sword and the war will be over. Even if we kill or capture Bin Laden, now we know it’s no longer enough, for his evil network will live on, threatening our homeland, our democracy, our American way of life. And even if we were to crush Al Qaeda. . . .

In other words: Now that the Cold War is over, the Global War on Terror has begun, and it will require our courage, our fortitude, our patriotism, our sacrifice—for years, for decades, perhaps for a generation or more.

Now we have our soldiers and weapons planted in the Middle East. And we’ll have to keep them there for who knows how long. Because the war on terror will be a long one. And we’ll need to be there “to keep peace in the region.”

But that passage from the Bhagavatam haunts me: The state executive heads “try to equip themselves with all kinds of deadly weapons to bring about a war in a peaceful society. They have no ambition other than personal aggrandizement…”

Could it be true?

 

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