[George Katsiaficas] September 11 and the American Conscience (1)
George Katsiaficas
A Fulbright Fellow, a student of Herbert Marcuse, a long-time activist and currently Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, Massachusetts
After spending nearly a year in Korea, I returned to the USA on Christmas day, 2001. In this land of plenty, I was struck by the enormity of goods available to the spending public and the easy credit terms and low sale prices being offered as I walked through the aisles of cluttered department stores with stacks of boxed items towering over my head. But even more striking are dozens of new American flags―on cars and trucks, in front of homes and offices, inside corporate and government buildings, on TV and in the newspapers―in short, everywhere. To accomplish the patriotic makeover of America, manufacturers designed a variety of new display devices: extensions for car antennae from which flags fly; car window magnets strong enough to support large flags visible for blocks; suction-cupped flag poles with enough strength to bend in highway winds without coming loose; and a whole array of house flags, bumper stickers, lapel pins, t-shirts and miscellaneous fashion items.
Less visible to the eye is a growing closed-mindedness, one could almost say a revaunchist nationalism. It seems as if the attacks of September 11, by killing innocent Americans by the thousands, has purged any moral hesitation about the preponderance of US wealth and power in a world where so many are hungry and marginalized. People increasingly talk of "us" versus "them" and seem to have little patience to probe the complicated question of how exactly to define "them."
The upside to this phenomenon is the new neighborliness so much praised among normally self-centered New Yorkers. "United We Stand," the slogan of t-shirts and bumper stickers, resonates widely. CNN reports that two out of three American households contributed an average of $134 to the 9-11 victims' fund. (While in Korea public donations as after the IMF crisis have precedents, there are few such expressions of public togetherness in the US.)
The most visible of all the flags adorn the trucks of working men?carpenters and plumbers, construction workers and contractors. Remembering the era of the Vietnam War, it was the same folks who were most vociferous in support of the war and most aggressive in attacking anti-war protestors. Then, anti-war activists had a large base in the universities. Today however, that base's size and, in some cases, its very existence, are in question. The International Herald Tribune quoted a centrist Democrat as saying it "astonishing how little anti-war agitation there has been on the left" in the US. [1] Although there have been dozens of small protests against war, within the normal circles of intellectuals who oppose aggressive foreign policy measures, support for the war in Afghanistan has been vociferously articulated.
During the Vietnam era, many Americans supported Ho Chi Minh and the National Liberation Front, but today nowhere in public discourse is there any sympathy for the enemy. Writing in The Nation on November 5, Katha Pollitt observed that unlike the Vietnam War, "This time, our own country has been attacked, and the enemies are deranged fanatics." On October 14, Nation editor and LA Weekly columnist Marc Cooper called them "atavistic, religious fascists whose world view is diametrically opposed to all humanitarian and progressive morality." Another respected commentator (whom I shall not name because her comments were circulated on a private list serve of "radical" professors) maintained that fundamentalism's "doctrine of intolerance simply cannot stand in contemporary society if we are to evolve towards peace and cooperation." Intolerance of intolerance?
Many progressives mirror the Bush administration's comparison of bin Laden and Hitler, of the Taliban and the Nazis, an analysis that makes any offensive action seem proper. Professor Richard Falk of Princeton University, widely respected for his condemnation of the Vietnam War based on principles of international law, called the war in Afghanistan "the first truly just war since World War II." Normally not a man to write in superlatives, Falk condemned the attacks of September 11 as the "greatest display of grotesque cunning in human history." (One cannot help but wonder what he excludes from his list of "grotesque cunning" if the murder of 3000 people is at the top of his list.) According to Falk, "The narrative of apocalyptic terrorism could be laid before the world as the crimes of Nazism were bared at Nuremberg." Falk even contemplates extending this war to "countries regarded as hostile to the United States, who are in possession of weapons of mass destruction but are not currently related to global terrorism in any significant fashion." Here his list includes Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran and Sudan. (As usual, Korea remains largely invisible to American progressives.)
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[1] Dan Balz, "War Dissent? Don't Look on the (Hawkish) Left," International Herald Tribune (November 27, 2001) p. 3.