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COMMENTARY
September 12, 2001
Envy in the soul
Our world has passed away In wantonness o'erthrown. There is nothing left today But steel and fire and stone! -- Rudyard Kipling The purpose of terrorism is to terrify so that the first response to it must be the Gospel response: "Be not afraid." No matter how horrible no matter how many casualties no matter how evil the enemy who exults in his lair we must not give him the satisfaction of our fear. The United States is uniquely among the nations of the modern West still a Christian nation. It has the instinct that matters are in the hands of God. "Be still and know that I am He." The immediate task is to sift through the rubble. To rebuild like Nehemiah in the Old Testament: one hand on the trowel and the other on the sword. The instinct to revenge is the first thing to tame. Revenge of some kind will certainly be taken in due course but we must not compound the evil by striking at the innocent. Even in war the first thing is a cool head for deliberate action. The object is not revenge but victory. For I think we can say that this is war. The plain truth is that the Americans and we their allies have been confronted by an act of war. The comparison has been made to Pearl Harbour; the attacks on New York and Washington go beyond the threshold of mere criminal act. For the first time since 1941 the United States itself is attacked on a formidable scale and not through proxies. Obviously the attack was organized on a large scale by an enemy who will strike again. No intelligence reports are required to confirm this only to trace the perpetrators. We wake this morning in a different world from the one we rose in yesterday morning a world that is now in some real sense at war and will remain at war for a long time. It is clear enough that the terrorists whoever they may be must be confronted in a new way; that the steps to be taken against them must now be active no longer preventative. War in its nature is extraterritorial. It will no longer be possible as a practical matter for any nation to shelter terrorists who threaten the interests of the U.S. or its allies. If for instance the Afghan government continues to shelter Osama bin Laden - fails to turn him over at American request whether or not it is demonstrated that his organization was behind the attack - the Americans are now morally justified in going in physically to seize him. It will be the same for Iraq for Iran the Sudan Libya North Korea: the terms for survival of these governments must be complete co-operation with the U.S. -- the prompt capture and extradition of suspected terrorists. For these or any other governments to do otherwise under the present circumstances is to declare themselves in a state of war with the U.S. and its allies. We can be in no doubt about the precedents that apply under international law. A nation associating itself with terrorist attacks is itself making war. The government of such a nation must take the consequences including its own extinction. But again the object is not revenge; the object is the destruction of an enemy who has become too powerful to be ignored. * * * * * When I first heard the news yesterday I thought: "Here is the result of envy." One looks at it from many points of view; one tries to put oneself into the mindset of the men who organized and who did this thing to understand what they hoped to accomplish. And no matter what path the mind goes down it comes to envy. For all its huge flaws the United States continues to be expressed by that Statue of Liberty it retains the torch of freedom. The Americans have everything: freedom; prosperity; a system of government under law; the might of magnificent military power. But all of it founded upon the liberty that made a very great commercial nation; a nation of "traders not raiders". The World Trade Centre was a suitable symbol for everything the envious detest; the Pentagon another apt symbol of another aspect of American power -- of the power that is founded on a vast commerce. Human failure is reflected in the mirror of the American success; resentment takes its shape in that mirror. And there is no cure for that envy; it will never go away so long as the world is filled with failures. America did not create the poverty of the world but raised itself out of that condition. America did not seek to humiliate the poor and downtrodden of the world. But simply by rising above that station America became the external target for the failures of the world -- the mirror that reveals the truth of their condition the mirror that they seek to smash. Those who cannot raise themselves seek to bring others down. It is the means by which they contrive their own destruction. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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