Skip to comments.

Posted on 09/30/2001 6:00:27 AM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines

Americans have yet to receive from President Bush or his secretary of state an analysis of terrorist motivations that could give us an understanding of why we here in the United States are the object of such bitter anger and hatred that men are willing to die to bring death to the thousands of victims of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks.

We need to know what pain the perpetrators and their people are suffering that is so unbearable that they must strike out at what appears to them to be the origin of their misery. Is the home of the free and of the brave seen by others as the home of a people who care only about their own incredible economic success and not the suffering of others?

Of course there are explanations for our views that to us seem reasonable. We aren't responsible for the suffering of the entire world. Perhaps some who are the most bitter suffer because of their own mistakes or that of their forebearers.

Many thousands of Palestinians have been living for decades, for generations, in refugee camps while hundreds of thousands of Israelis live in settlements on land that Palestinians expected would become a part of a new Palestinian state.

One could argue that history tells us that when a war is lost, land is lost, not just in Palestine, but everywhere. Yet, the pain of the present is not mitigated by history lessons.

As we today in America reject blame for enslavement of Africans, or as young Germans lay Nazi atrocities on the doorsteps of their grandparents, so can Palestinians reject responsibility for a previous generation's war to destroy Israel. Today, Palestinians live and die in abject and hopeless circumstances in desolate surroundings. They look across the border at the flourishing orange groves that once belonged to their families.

Their pain now is what they are feeling and their anger is certainly fueled by the made-in-America helicopter gun ships and other weaponry that Israelis paid for with the billions of dollars we continue to send to Israel. Our ally in the Middle East is and should be Israel, a democracy, but this should not mean that Palestine is our enemy.

Retaliation for the fire-bombing of the World Trade Center Towers and the Pentagon to satisfy or assuage our anger and to compensate for our losses (if this were possible) would be fruitless, cruel, result in deaths of more civilians and would ultimately be unsuccessful. There is no way to stop people who are willing to give up their lives in what they call a just war against a nation whose culture they think threatens to swallow all others.

Responding to terrorism with terrorism will only continue the cycle. Only with understanding, kindness, love and generosity can we reach out to those people, our neighbors in this increasingly small globe -- not with guns and bombs.

We owe it to future citizens of this sad planet to find a way to peace. We must strive to understand the motivations of those who cause such cruel devastation and respond, not with devastation of these countries allowing such attacks, but with efforts to learn the causes of such behavior and to validate their feelings.

We must understand their pain, we must see their suffering and we must help to turn their lives around so that they, too, can share a life of some comfort and an old age of peace and tranquillity, so that their children can play safely without fear of land mines, can enjoy an education, breathe unpolluted air, be free of curable illness from which they now die so early, so that they can grow up to lead fruitful and peaceful lives. They, as do all people, have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It is quite clear now that an enemy, rogue nation or otherwise, does not need ballistic missiles to attack us. Instead, a rusty old freighter could steam into New York Harbor or under the Golden Gate Bridge laden with a hydrogen bomb. Any foreign traveler could arrive with a small package of biological or chemical weaponry in his luggage, enough to kill everyone in San Francisco or Chicago. Maybe that is how this new war will be fought, if indeed we let it be a war.

We certainly cannot respond to the political and emotional conflicts of our times with advanced weapons. We need to bring terrorists to justice, of course, but visiting terror on other countries and their cities will only continue a cycle of terror. Our allies will abandon us and we will be alone in a world determined to destroy us.

Instead of increasing the budget for military power and undertaking retaliatory military excursions, let's spend our billions on efforts to create peaceful understanding in this suffering world.

Let us undertake an international Marshall Plan and a worldwide dialog to pursue all efforts to end our conflicts before our world dissolves into the dust that it may otherwise become.

------ Downing is an Ithaca-based architect and business owner.

Downing is an apparatchik whose work is banal and heavily "public sector" oriented.

He's just keeping his name well-postioned in front of potential clents.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.