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By Root 2248 0

in shadows and has no regard for human life. This is an enemy that [sic] preys on innocent and unsuspecting people and then runs for cover.”6 When we find them, we must kill them. This killing will not be easy on us. We must steel ourselves against the possibility—inevitability—that we may be forced to kill even those whose guilt we cannot finally establish. As former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger said, “There is only one way to begin to deal with people like this, and that is you have to kill some of them even if they are not immediately directly involved in this thing.”7 Many politicians and journalists have spoken yet more directly. “This is no time,” syndicated columnist (and bestselling author) Ann Coulter wrote, “to be precious about locating the exact individuals directly involved in this particular terrorist attack. . . . We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.”8

Here is another version of the same story : Last Tuesday nineteen young men made their mothers proud. They gave their lives to strike a blow against the United States, the greatest terrorist state ever to exist. This blow was struck in response to U.S. support for the dispossession and murder of Palestinians, to the forced installation of pro-Western governments in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and many other countries, to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed by U.S. bombs, to the nine thousand babies who die every month as a direct result of U.S. sanctions on Iraq, and to the irradiation of Iraq with depleted uranium. More broadly, it was a response to the CIA-backed murder of 650,000 people in Indonesia, and to the hundreds of thousands murdered by U.S.-backed death squads in Central and South America. To the four million civilians killed in North Korea. To the theft of American Indian land and the killings of millions of Indians. To the imposition of business-friendly dictators like Mobutu Sese Seko, Augusto Pinochet, the Shah, Suharto, or Ferdinand Marcos. (As Secretary of Defense William Cohen said to a group of Fortune 500 leaders, “Business follows the flag. . . . We provide the security. You provide the investment.”9) It was a response to an American foreign policy driven by the needs of industrial production—as manifested through the unnatural logic of the bottom line—not life. This was a blow delivered not only against the United States but against a murderous global economy—a half a million babies die each year as a direct result of so-called debt repayment10—that is a continuation of the same old colonialism under which those who exploit get rich and the rest get killed. The poor of the world would all be better off if the global economy—run by transnational corporations backed by the military power of the United States—disappeared tomorrow. When a country, an economy, and a culture are all based on the systematic violent exploitation of humans and nonhumans the world over, it should come as no surprise when at long last someone fights back. We can only hope and pray that the organizations behind this have the resources and stamina to keep at it until they bring down the global economy.

Here’s another version: Last Tuesday was a tragedy for the planet, and at least a temporary victory for rage and hatred. But let us not seek to pinpoint blame, nor meet negativity with negativity. The terrorists were wrong to act as they did, but to meet their violence with our own would be just as wrong. Violence never solves anything. As Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.” Even if you believe the United States and the global economy are fundamentally destructive, you cannot use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house. The most important thing any of us can do is eradicate the anger that lies within our own hearts, that wounds the world as surely as do all the hijackers in Arabia and all the bombs in the United States. If I wish to experience peace, I must provide peace for another. If I wish to heal another’s anger, I must first heal my own. I