Fighting the Forces of Invisibility

[Henk Elegeert]

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Fighting the Forces of Invisibility

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55876-2001Oct1.html

"
By Salman Rushdie

Tuesday, October 2, 2001; Page A25

NEW YORK -- In January 2000 I wrote in a newspaper column that "the
defining struggle of the new age would be between Terrorism and
Security," and fretted that to live by the security experts' worst-case
scenarios might be to surrender too many of our liberties to the
invisible shadow-warriors of the secret world. Democracy requires
visibility, I argued, and in the struggle between security and freedom
we must always err on the side of freedom. On Tuesday, Sept. 11,
however, the worst-case scenario came true.

They broke our city. I'm among the newest of New Yorkers, but even
people who have never set foot in Manhattan have felt its wounds deeply,
because New York is the beating heart of the visible world,
tough-talking, spirit-dazzling, Walt Whitman's "city of orgies, walks
and joys," his "proud and passionate city -- mettlesome, mad,
extravagant city!" To this bright capital of the visible, the forces of
invisibility have dealt a dreadful blow. No need to say how dreadful; we
all saw it, are all changed by it.
Now we must ensure that the wound is not mortal, that the world of what
is seen triumphs over what is cloaked, what is perceptible only through
the effects of its awful deeds.

In making free societies safe -- safer -- from terrorism, our civil
liberties will inevitably be compromised. But in return for freedom's
partial erosion, we have a right to expect that our cities, water,
planes and children really will be better protected than they have been.
The West's response to the Sept. 11 attacks will be judged in large
measure by whether people begin to feel safe once again in their homes,
their workplaces, their daily lives. This is the confidence we have
lost, and must regain.

Next: the question of the counterattack. Yes, we must send our
shadow-warriors against theirs, and hope that ours prevail. But this
secret war alone cannot bring victory. We will also need a public,
political and diplomatic offensive whose aim must be the early
resolution of some of the world's thorniest problems: above all the
battle between Israel and the Palestinian people for space, dignity,
recognition and survival. Better judgment will be required on all sides
in future. No more Sudanese aspirin factories to be bombed, please. And
now that wise American heads appear to have understood that it would be
wrong to bomb the impoverished, oppressed Afghan people in retaliation
for their tyrannous masters' misdeeds, they might apply that wisdom,
retrospectively, to what was done to the impoverished, oppressed people
of Iraq. It's time to stop making enemies and start making friends.

To say this is in no way to join in the savaging of America by sections
of the left that has been among the most unpleasant consequences of the
terrorists' attacks on the United States. "The problem with Americans is
. . . " -- "What America needs to understand . . . " There has been a
lot of sanctimonious moral relativism around lately, usually prefaced by
such phrases as these. A country which has just suffered the most
devastating terrorist attack in history, a country in a state of deep
mourning and horrible grief, is being told, heartlessly, that it is to
blame for its own citizens' deaths. ("Did we deserve this, sir?" a
bewildered worker at "ground zero" asked a visiting British journalist
recently. I find the grave courtesy of that "sir" quite astonishing.)

Let's be clear about why this bien-pensant anti-American onslaught is
such appalling rubbish. Terrorism is the murder of the innocent; this
time, it was mass murder. To excuse such an atrocity by blaming U.S.
government policies is to deny the basic idea of all morality: that
individuals are responsible for their actions. Furthermore, terrorism is
not the pursuit of legitimate complaints by illegitimate means. The
terrorist wraps himself in the world's grievances to cloak his true
motives. Whatever the killers were trying to achieve, it seems
improbable that building a better world was part of it.

The fundamentalist seeks to bring down a great deal more than buildings.
Such people are against, to offer just a brief list, freedom of speech,
a multi-party political system, universal adult suffrage, accountable
government, Jews, homosexuals, women's rights, pluralism, secularism,
short skirts, dancing, beardlessness, evolution theory, sex. These are
tyrants, not Muslims. (Islam is tough on suicides, who are doomed to
repeat their deaths through all eternity. However, there needs to be a
thorough examination, by Muslims everywhere, of why it is that the faith
they love breeds so many violent mutant strains. If the West needs to
understand its Unabombers and McVeighs, Islam needs to face up to its
bin Ladens.) United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has said that
we should now define ourselves not only by what we are for but by what
we are against. I
would reverse that proposition, because in the present instance what we
are against is a no-brainer. Suicidist assassins ram wide-bodied
aircraft into the World Trade Center and Pentagon and kill thousands of
people: um, I'm against that. But what are we for? What will we risk our
lives to defend? Can we unanimously concur that all the items in the
above list -- yes, even the short skirts and dancing -- are worth dying
for?

The fundamentalist believes that we believe in nothing. In his
world-view, he has his absolute certainties, while we are sunk in
sybaritic indulgences. To prove him wrong, we must first know that he is
wrong. We must agree on what matters: kissing in public places, bacon
sandwiches, disagreement, cutting-edge fashion, literature, generosity,
water, a more equitable distribution of the world's resources, movies,
music, freedom of thought, beauty, love. These will be our weapons. Not
by making war but by the unafraid way we choose to live shall we defeat
them.

How to defeat terrorism? Don't be terrorized. Don't let fear rule your
life. Even if you are scared.

Salman Rushdie is a British novelist and essayist.

Distributed by NYT Special Features

                             © 2001 The Washington Post Company
"

Henk Elegeert

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