PBS ran an excellent documentary this week on the war photographers’ collective known as “Seven.” This is a smart, experienced group of people with diverse views. One of them, now focused on photographing the American social and political scene, offered his thoughts on Bush’s oft-repeated slogan that terrorists “hate us for our freedom.” I can’t pin down this person’s name at the moment and it’s not my intention to slag him, but rather to expand on what he said and push the discussion forward.
The man’s rejoinder to “they hate us for our freedom” was: “No, they hate us because we think like that” — i.e., we’re arrogant enough to think that we’re superior.
One does see a lot of distasteful American bragging. I cringe when I hear the U.S. called “the greatest country on the face of the earth” — something that has also escaped Bush’s lips, many times. It’s a bad way to look at the world, and usually uttered by people who’ve seen very little of it. Patriotism can be a noble thing: I saw it myself in New York in the hours and days and weeks after 9/11. If one comes honestly to the belief that the U.S. is indeed the greatest country, fair enough. But it’s a sentiment best kept to oneself. Aired publicly, especially at the bully pulpit, it’s politically corrosive.
However. While the average, decent Iraqi, say, has reason to resent American arrogance and entitlement, think for a moment about the people who first occasioned Bush’s remarks: the 19 Qaeda hijackers of 9/11. It is urgent to realize that the murderers of 9/11, and their famous paymasters, believe themselves to be superior. At their core, they are religious bigots. They seek to convert nonbelievers to Islam by force — and that is not Bush talking, that is Adam Gadahn, a.k.a. Azzam the American, talking.
The “martyr video” left behind by Mohammed Siddique Khan, one of the London tube bombers, is instructive. “Until we feel secure you will be our targets. Until you stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture . . . we will not stop this fight,” says the little big man, slaughterer of six entirely innocent people at Edgeware Station. The first thing to say about Khan is that he is a fraud. He thunders against the victimization of Muslims, but look at who he aligns with — not the defenders of Muslims, but the killers of Muslims. The Taliban are currently bombing markets in Afghanistan, cutting people down at random. We all know about the monstrosities of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Khan acted in solidarity with these people. He has no right whatever to claim the mantle of defense. He can deplore U.S./British arrogance and triumphalism all he wants, and so can we. But it’s time for Western liberals to subject Khan’s worldview to the same unsparing scrutiny.
That is what gets missed in the pointless debate between Tony Blair and his critics, over whether the 7/7 bombings were a response to Iraq or not. Of course, Khan and his colleagues were incensed by Iraq. But they were advancing an agenda, an ideology, that has itself led to thousands upon thousands of deaths in the very conflict they were ostensibly protesting. So Khan’s words in the video are as nothing. They are the opposite of what they proclaim. They speak not for the innocent of Iraq and Afghanistan — our “collateral damage” — but rather the tormentors and oppressors in those countries.
When people speak of the “root causes” of terrorism, too often they really mean “mitigating factors.” True, terrorism must be viewed in political context — about that the left is absolutely correct. But politics is not a mitigating factor. It is an aggravating factor.
To return to the photographer’s comment: We should critique Western arrogance, definitely. But we need to open up a space for critique of the Al Qaedaist worldview from that same liberal, worldly perspective. Right now that space is the most undernourished, underrepresented one in politics.
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