As more time goes by since the Sept. 11 bombings, the more I feel they were neither the work of cowards nor of brave warriors punishing – albeit misguidedly – America’s bad behavior around the world.
In the bad-behavior category, the United States has been pikers compared to most countries. Look how most Arab countries (with only a few exceptions) treat their women; in Egypt, more than 90 percent of them have had their clitoris cut off; in many other Islamic countries it’s just as bad. Several animist and a couple of partially Christian countries in Africa also practice female circumcision, but they use tradition to justify it, not the Koran.
Sudan and Mauritania still practice slavery. Yes, America once too had slaves. It was introduced by the British, just as the French introduced slavery in its colonies. In Haiti, slaves threw off their masters. In the United States, half the country fought the other half to end the atrocity.
Germany, France, Britain, Portugal, Spain, Holland, and Belgium brutally colonized virtually all of the Americas, Africa, the East Indies, the South Pacific, and Southeast Asia.
The Soviet Union, which emerged bloodied but victorious from World War II, took control of Eastern and Central Europe. Japan would have taken over almost all of Asia had it not been defeated. For all intents and purposes, the only colony the US ever held was the Philippines, and we freed it immediately after the war. We also rebuilt our former enemies, Germany and Japan, while helping our Western European allies get back on their feet.
Nor have tribal cultures behaved very well themselves. From Africa to New Guinea, from the Aztecs to the American Southwest, tribal warfare has been barbaric. Today, most of us feel the Sioux (as well as other Indian tribes) were treated horribly by the US military in the late 1800s; of course, the Crow (and other tribes) felt they had previously been treated horribly by the Sioux.
In short, if any group wants to right the wrongs of history, there’s far more than enough social injustice to go around, and the US looks fairly good in comparison with most countries.
Our Constitution, as it should, allows US citizens to say pretty much anything they want, and some of them have taken to blaming our multi-national corporations, along with our government, for the Sept. 11 attacks. If it weren’t for US corporations, they argue, foreigners wouldn’t hate us so much. That assumes most foreigners do, which – judging from my experiences working abroad – they don’t. As for foreign governments, most are doing everything they can to lure US business investments.
The real cause of social injustice in Third World countries is not US investment but the wealthy elite of those countries taking advantage of their own impoverished masses. That’s why Pakistan is politically unstable. As is Peru. As is Indonesia.
If multi-national corporations per se were the Great Satans they’re supposed to be, why haven’t Greenpeace or Earth First! blown up Japanese and Norwegian vessels for killing whales, or Taiwanese fishing boats for their driftnets that turn the ocean into deserts, or Japanese, Brazilian, and Malaysian loggers that destroy rainforests?
What distinguishes Greenpeace, Earth First!, and other righteously indignant groups from the Lebanese Hizballah, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the Palestine Islamic Jihad, Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda, HAMAS, and Japan’s Aum Shinrikyo (the Hindu-Buddhist cult that killed 12 people and injured 5,000 others in the 1995 sarin-gas attack on the Tokyo subway)?
As I see it, the terrorist groups’ attacks count far more on brainwashing than commitment. Terrorist documents now emerging show what lengths al Qaeda goes to in order to keep those destined for suicide missions from changing their minds. They receive constant reinforcement from other terrorists, who assure them they will long be remembered as martyrs, that their families will go to heaven, that they will too, and that once they get there, Allah will supply them with 72 (Why 72?) virgins.
These beliefs are held so strongly that three months ago a suicide bomber in the Gaza Strip was found to have wrapped his genitals with toilet paper so they would remain intact for an eternity of rolling in the hay.
On Sunday, Chronicle religion reporter Don Lattin compared the similarity of Jim Jones’ brainwashing of People’s Temple members before his Disciples of Christ cult committed mass suicide to al Qaeda’s brainwashing of its suicide bombers. Their messages was almost identical: a better world awaits you in heaven.
Likewise in Japan, Shoko Asahara, leader of the Aum cult (a mix of Buddhism and Hinduism), told his followers they too should prepare for the end of the world. So did Heaven’s Gate leader Marshall Applewhite before he and members of his science-fiction cult killed themselves back in 1997 in San Diego County. However, such comparisons can be overdrawn. Applewhite and five of his Heaven’s Gate followers had themselves castrated before dying. Any virgins they received were going to stay that way.