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Musing on Sydney's news
11 September 2003
The answer is fundamental, Watson
A lot of people died on this day, 11 September 2001, two years ago. Many more have died since, as both direct and indirect results of the attack on the WTC. Many more will die.
John Winston Churchill Howard has written a piece for The Australian today about "the enemies of open society". He quite correctly says that America is a far better mob to enjoy world dominance than those loony tunes Islamic fundamentalists.
He then says, "The fight against terrorism will be neither short nor simple. It requires close cooperation among intelligence and police agencies. It requires resolute action to outlaw terrorist organisations and their sources of funding".
Yes, intelligence and police. Not bombs and declarations of war. A quarter of a million of us simpering lefties (and righties and neutrals for that matter) gathered in Hyde Park in Sydney earlier this year to say "declaring war on Iraq will only make things worse". And it has. Of course we were ignored by one John Winston Churchill Howard.
I have no desire to see Islamic fundamentalists prosper. They are sick, misguided people who would benefit from intensive cognitive psychotherapy. Having said that, I have similar thoughts about Christian fundamentalists. Remember the Klu Klux Klan? Remember the IRA and Ireland? How about Jewish fundamentalists? Have the Israelis shown themselves to conduct themselves any differently, mowing down townships with tanks? We have got some Yiddish idiots in the Eastern Suburbs who want the state to spend our school and hospital money on changing traffic lights so they don't have to press the pedestrian buttons to cross the road (since operating electrical equipment on a Saturday is seen as "working" on the Sabbath). Oh, you want to accuse me of being anti-Semitic? My grandmother was Jewish and I had relatives gassed in WWII. So f*** off.
My point is that we've gotten this all so massively wrong.
If we're going to declare war on anyone, it should be on fundamentalists. Fanatics - of all stripes - are the ones who are turning our world into a bloody mosh pit.
A war on fundamentalism. Yeah!
It won't be fought in the trenches, or with smart bombs or using deleted uranium missiles. The moderates of the world will join together to say "look, you extremists are entitled to your opinion but don't expect us to buy into your idiocy". And then we'll set the example by behaving in sensible, moderate ways.
So, why do we single out Islamic fundamentalists, given that the whole sorry potpourri of fanatics are responsible for the world's problems and always have done? Perhaps because they're easy to recognise and they are arguably the most visibly screwed-up fanatics around. More likely, it because they're brown and we're white. And after all, some of our whiter-than-white leaders dangle perilously close to fundamentalism themselves.
Back in the days of WWII it was pretty easy to tell who the goodies and baddies were. Hitler and his brainwashed and intimidated masses were clearly out of order, invading neighbours faster than you can say "McDonald's franchise". We were the good guys and they were the bad guys.
It's not so easy now. It's clear that the Islamic fundamentalists are bad guys. They want the world to conform to crazy oppressive pseudo-Islamic regimes. But we don't look like good guys either with out preemptive strikes. Not as bad as the Muslim crew, but still on the nose. We indulge in our own forms of oppression - of indigenous people, of queers, of women (still), of the poor. We do this because we have some powerful fundamentalist movements ourselves.
Why people become fundamentalists?
Why did the Klu Klux Klan come about? Hitler's Nazis? Mao's Cultural Revolution? The Taliban? America's religious right?
Fundamentalists come in two stripes - the educated leaders and those who see themslves as oppressed. The educated readers are basically people with anti-social personality disorder who see fundamentalism as an easy way to gain power over others.
Their followers are generally born of hardship or, in the case of America's religious right, perceived hardship. When people think there's nothing to lose - when life sucks so much that they no longer care whether they live or die - normal attitudes and standards of behaviour go by the board.
The answer? To foster a caring and compassionate society that lovingly pulls those who have fallen up by their bootstraps. Easier said than done, given that you'll always find slackers who will exploit the system and just lie down as a dead weight, expecting everyone else to pull them back up, making no effort of their own.
Yes, it would be difficult. Damn difficult. But the question is: would it be any more difficult than the mess we're trying to wade through now with this hopeless War on Terrorism? It's not the same as the Cold War, where it ended up as an arms race. Terrorists don't need nukes, just a Kamakaze approach. You can't combat it.
Maybe we need to train up and indoctrinate our children to become committed troops of Extremist Moderatism to combat the fundamentalists? Hmmmm ...
It's probably too late to sort things out now, because our attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq have already set in train the familiar cycle of violence, revenge and recrimination. But let's imagine a wise American response to September 11. Far fetched, I know.
An alternative response to the WTC attack
Try this for size. After 11 September 2001 President Bush declares that the Islamic extremists have shown themselves to be devoid to true spiritual values and that we will not let them drag us down to their level. We will rise above the barbarism of violence and revenge they routinely indulge in and will instead show that we, as free, secular nations, will show them how to properly order a society.
The first action declared by Mr Bush is to take the billions of dollars that would have been devoted to military revenge/feelgood operations and put it towards development of alternative power - a phasing out of the use of oil in favour of environmentally sustainable technology. In one step, that would cut the funding to Al-queda, who are literally fuelled by oil. And it would do our ailing environment a favour as well.
The entire western world would galvanise in its determination towards environmentally sustainable technologies (with many hiccoughs as everyone tries to gain exemptions for the sake of self-interest, as per the Kyoto Treaty). The oil companies would be forced to release all the blueprints for these technologies that they bought out to keep their industry on top.
The USA had a huge reservoir of goodwill after the attacks on the World Trade Center [sic - is it my fault that the Yanks don't spell "centre" properly?]. To embark on an anti-oil policy instead of waging war would have had most of the world eating out of American hands, in raptures of admiration for America's wisdom and temperance. They would be be seen as saviours.
Instead Bush, no doubt with full support from the Texan oil companies with whom his life has always been inextricably entwined, bombed Afghanistan and then moved onto Iraq. It was good for votes too. But he isolated at least half of the world and helped fuel more Islamic loony tunes suicide bomber recruitment. He's made them feel even more vindicated in their hatred.
Of course, when you're in trouble, good advice from your friends can make all the difference. Did Johnny Winston Churchill Howard or Tony Show Pony Blair give him good advice? No, they just pandered to his primitivism. Bad friends.
It still amazes me that our leaders are not very advanced specimens. You'd imagine that in an ideal world our leaders would be the wisest, most intelligent, most admirable people in society. Instead we have politicians. Too often our politicians have their own fundamentalist sympathies.
We may well judge the loony Islamic fringe but we would do well to to look within for lasting answers to the current madness engulfing the planet. The question on everyone's lips is, will we do it before we commit global Hari Kuri?
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