Date: 24/09/2001
Even the old 1960s protesters think that Lee, and those few people waving "Give Peace a Chance" placards, are naive. In a Wall Street Journal article last week, former activists against the Vietnam War admitted sheepishly hanging out the American flag and concluding, however painfully, that the strikes against civilians were so overwhelming that they necessitated an honest, complete, response.
But dissent about President George Bush's "war on terrorism" is trickling through, almost entirely from the Left. (Critics on the Right, as ever, worry that any economic aid package will distort their beloved "market".)
The critics try to frame the attacks in a historical and political context, and they despair at the lack of analysis behind America's determination for revenge. "Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a 'cowardly' attack on 'civilisation' or 'liberty' or 'humanity' or 'the free world' but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions?" asked writer Susan Sontag in The New Yorker magazine. "How many citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing of Iraq? And if the word 'cowardly' is to be used, it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those willing to die themselves in order to kill others." Noam Chomsky, a leading left-wing thinker, believes an appropriate response would be to treat the attacks as a crime, not as a pretext for war. "Determine who the perpetrators are, present some minimally credible evidence, and then follow the rule of law," he said.
That view is rare in the United States, because even most serious critics of US foreign policy see the terrorist strikes as more than just retaliation for American actions. Yes, America's favouring of the Israelis over the Palestinians has bred Arab resentment. Yes, its sanctions against Iraq have contributed to thousands of deaths. But the mass grave that is the World Trade Centre building is viewed as an attack on the West itself, not just against its policies.
Bush has perfectly captured the public mood that this is a defining moment. His address to Congress on Friday was proclaimed as his best ever and compared with the great war speeches of Churchill and Roosevelt.
It is obvious that Bush sees the struggle against terrorism as the mission of his Administration, even the mission of his life. Bush is a religious man, and there is a sense about him now, an easygoing man suddenly serious, an accidental president now with a purpose, that he sees the defeat of terrorism as God's cause. This was a battle between "freedom and fear", he said, "and God is not neutral between them".
Everything that was irritating about the US before September 11 continues to be irritating, not least the assertion that God is on America's side, an inflammatory position given the religious fanaticism of Osama bin Laden's network and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
The US needs its sceptics, now more than ever. To criticise is to risk the charge of anti-Americanism, a shocking insult in these flag-waving days. Yet the dissenters' arguments can come awfully close to justifying the terrorist attacks as the inevitable consequence of American policy - the "chickens are coming home to roost" scenario.
Many of the arguments are a kind of self-flagellation that largely concur with bin Laden's critique of the US as arrogant, imperial and exploitative of the Third World for its own material gain.
Another old lefty, Christopher Hitchens, wrote in The Nation that the dissenters attack American foreign policy but fail to mention what they actually like about the US and what surely must be defended: its emancipated women, its dedication to science, its separation of church and state. Hitchens surely is right when he says these things are non-negotiable and that they are opposed by the terrorists.
"The bombers of Manhattan represent fascism with an Islamic face, and there's no point in any euphemism about it," he says. "[They] are the same people who threw acid in the faces of unveiled women in Kabul and Karachi, who maimed and eviscerated two of the translators of The Satanic Verses. Even as we worry what they may intend for our society, we can see very plainly what they have in mind for their own: a bleak and sterile theocracy." Bush is wanting more than just states that sponsor terrorism to choose whether they're with America or against it. He implicitly wants all nations, all people, to decide. American foreign policy is flawed, often deeply so. The US is as annoying as it ever was. But the dissenters have to move beyond the usual bashing of America. Because, this time, there is something at stake.
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