I am still in the shock phase of grief. Fear isn’t allowed in yet. Some people in Australia have hit out and are threatening fellow Australians. Others have used the tragedy to bolster their case against allowing any Muslims into Australia, including the Tampa boat people. A few of these people have written to the Webdiary. Some others have written making judgements about the United States and suggesting it is responsible for last night’s events. I’ve chosen not to publish any of these emails at this time. Many Australians are still waiting for news on family and friends in the United States.
Keith Conley wrote to me today: “In light of what happened last night, please put a halt to the web diary. It can serve no purpose now. Any argument over refugees will be inflamed by the raw tidal wave of emotion that is about to be unleashed. This is not the time.”
I’d already decided the same thing, but have changed my mind. Today, I publish contributions from John Avery, Brian Bahnisch, Andrew Cave, Polly Bush, Colin White, Marc Pengryffn, Merrill Pye and Beris de Vanharasz.
John Avery in Adelaide
It is a reasonable guess that the perpetrators of today’s terrorism in the US are an extreme faction identified with Islam and probably connected to the Taliban. Having said that, it vital that the actual culprits are identified and punished with narrow particularity, not just for sake of justice but to defeat the purposes of these outrages.
President Bush has said no distinction will be drawn between terrorists and the regimes who support them. But that is the exactly the response these shocking deeds seem calculated to elicit. A key object of extremist factions, such as those competing with more moderate groups among the Taliban, is to prevent moderate groups defecting, to shut the escape hatches.
We have seen this tactic in Afghanistan with the desecration of the Buddhist monuments, the arrest of aid workers for (allegedly) preaching Christianity and the outrageous repression of women in that country. The terrorists believe that more extreme and outrageous the actions, the more reliably will their targets extend revenge to anyone tainted by association with them.
Under common attack, more moderate factions are forced to commit to the extreme hard line, whether they like it or not.
If this is correct, the US response should be to drive a wedge between the perpetrators and to their close supporters, rebarbative as they definitely will turn out to be. This course is unlikely to be followed because the extremity of the terrorists’ outrage is designed to amplify their victims’ hostility and harden their feelings of revenge.
Thus the huge scale of losses inflicted on the US are calculated to induce feelings of revenge that will not be satisfied with the punishment of a mere handful of scruffy tribesmen, even if Bin Laden were among them (should his group turn out to be culpable).
The vividness and power of these events, underscored by presumed religiously inspired suicides, make it emotionally difficult for the Americans to resist the terrorists’ overt message that they are primarily engaged in war with the USA or the west.
The war with the diabolical west may turn out to be their platform, but the real purpose of their attacks and their extreme high stake tactics seem to be fame, self-preservation and advancement within a specific regional politics marked by labile factional and ideological commitments to forms of Islam ostensibly opposed to modernity with a western face.
The world will pay a high price if America succumbs to these forceful temptations. President Bush, contrary to what he has declared so far in the heat of the moment, should lend support to the more moderate factions to isolate the extremists, contrary to the extremists’ desire to draw a savage response from the USA, but this is unlikely to happen.
It seems a small point to make now, but the prospect that the world might have developed better ways of dealing with the increasing flow of refugees from Afghanistan and nearby countries seems to have evaporated.
I had hoped that, in that context, Australia would be able to review its responsibilities to take refugees on a more compassionate and responsive basis. That would have changed things for the better. At present, it seems that we can only hope things do not get far, far worse.
Brian Bahnisch in Brisbane
When I was young there was a fellow called Gandhi. I admired his pacifist philosophy but could not bring myself to adopt it entirely. I would always be ready to kill if it meant saving my sister’s life. But Gandhi made you think. We do have to be careful about extending the cycle of violence.
Later when doing a course on ethics I read that every society on earth has legitimated killing in some form in some circumstances. Exceptions are possible but they are rare. Last year I met a Kiwi, a Moriori, who told me that the Moriori were so gentle they would rather die than fight the invading Maori. There are not many Moriori about these days.
Last night was a bad night. After Lateline finished I checked out the end of the Channel 10 news. There was a World Trade Centre tower burning. By the time I got out of the shower it was clear that bad things were happening. I watched in fascination, as it became clear that the world had changed forever.
This morning we told my 14-year-old about what had happened. His response? Bad things are going to happen. You know how the Americans are when some of their people are killed.
There was lots of comment on the radio. American voices, experts in terrorism and defense, saying that Bush should be careful about overreacting. One pointed out that the terrorists were just toying with the US. There was no payload of anthrax and they could have taken out the White House.
They spoke about how hard it was to defend against such an attack. Weapons could be taken on board and put together later. I realised that the terrorists would not have needed any weapons at all if there were enough of them and they were skilled in unarmed combat. In fact the woman who phoned her husband from one of the planes mentioned only knives and cardboard cutters.
It was an elegant plan. Use the power of the products of capitalism against itself. I wondered about what violence had preceded these unspeakable acts and what violence would follow. After all the Brits and the Yanks have been bombing Iraq for the last 10 years.
Then came Beazley. He expressed concern for the victims and their families and then talked about retribution. Is this what I want my leader to be saying? Shouldn’t he be calming things down? And I thought, give up Kim. People will never vote to change the government now with the strong man in control.
Then came Howard. He had compassionate words too and then spoke of a lethal strike. I called into the newsagent and picked up the Bulletin. I had been sweating on the Bulletin Morgan poll. The last one had been taken just after the Minister, who could not remember where he had been or what he knew, had given out five different stories to cover himself. Labor was then 57 to 43 ahead. This one was taken on 12 September. The gap had narrowed 10 points in two weeks. Howard was in the hunt. Now he would surely romp it in.
Then came talkback on the ABC. I expected it and it came. We must keep these Muslims out! They want to destroy our Christian society. Then a guy came on and said the notable thing about this attack was that it came from inside the US. And here in Australia we have one man (Justice North) subverting the will of our elected leaders.
So is this the end of what Fukuyama claimed was the end of history, namely liberal democracy and free market capitalism? Perhaps not, but it must be getting closer. Eric Hobsbawm says borders are becoming more porous, crime is globalising and the technology of violence is increasing to the point where it is hard for the nation state to exert control within its borders and make the place safe for global capitalism. He thinks the nation state reached its zenith about 40 years ago.
And what do we do? Throw up our hands in despair? Well no, we keep pushing the rock up the hill like Sisyphus even if it is destined to keep rolling down again.
Andrew Cave in Kuraby, Queensland
My wife went to the local supermarket about half an hour ago. When she came back she told me of overhearing conversations. Two young men talking to a checkout operator saying “All Arabs are crazy”. Another checkout operator saying “Now you know why we turned those boat people away.” A beautiful young Arab woman working on checkout defending herself against three other checkout operators who were evidently focussing on her as a representative of Islam and so having some responsibility for the terrible crime in New York overnight.
This sort of reaction is commonplace now as the message to fear the Islamic people of the world becomes internalised, part of the very moral and decision making framework of our lives. Unquestioned like the notion that man is the most evolved creature on the planet.
It is this sort of fear that attacking the boat people works on. Those who pander to it may think, isolated in their sane and well-educated suburbs, that this can be used for political advantage and that it can be contained like a controlled burn-off. But like a fire that gets to the tree crowns, it will run away from their control.
Watching the American news coverage, I have been struck by how considered and calm their commentary has been. There has been overt efforts to ensure that it is not assumed that it was Islamic terrorists and that a distinction is drawn between the people who did it and the people who may have unwittingly shared a country.
I can only hope that our media will do the same – even the shock-jocks. And I sincerely hope that the first politician to try and make political mileage by linking New York with the Afghan refugees is so vilified by the press that he (or she) never participates in public life again.
Polly Bush in Melbourne
Madness. Complete and utter madness. Excuse my age (24) but this is the biggest thing I have ever seen. This is the scariest feeling I have ever had. This is beyond comprehension.
Work was a joke today. I couldn’t do anything except mindlessly click the refresh button on any news site I could find. People walked around, mouths open, eyes vacant, silent, stunned.
And this is just Australia. Crowds gathered around the office TVs, but still, silence, stunned faces.
A male colleague of mine told me on one of many unproductive smoko breaks today, “I don’t want to be called up for war”. I never thought I would hear that from someone my age and seriously contemplate it.
Idiot callers on talkback radio likened boat people to terrorists, without making the connection this is what boat people might be fleeing from. Emails went wild. I got sent this Nostradamus quote: “In the city of God there will be a great thunder, two brothers torn apart by chaos, while the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb. The third big war will begin when the big city is burning.” Ta for that, whoever.
Dubbya quoted the bible. Terrific. I recalled his father’s speech during the Gulf and the emphasis on the sons and daughters of the USA. I felt sick. I rang my Mum interstate for some vague reassurance that life is OK. She asked me to come home, so we can go bush and build a bunker. That didn’t help.
In light of the Tampa, I didn’t think news could get anymore depressing. It has. Unfortunately I think this will just enrage the racists in this country and around the world.
We live in dangerous times. I fear the future.
Colin White in Highgate, Western Australia
If reports are to be believed, this evil is the work of Islam. Why does Islam insist on hiding from the world the beauty inspired by Allah, presenting only the evil inspired by Satan?
I hope the American people have the fortitude to rebuild those beautifully elegant towers to their original design, as a living, working monument to all who perished there yesterday. A design in which, ironically, I have always seen the influence of Islamic architecture.
Marc Pengryffyn in Katoomba, NSW
Arbitrary slaughter of innocent people is the norm over most of the world, not the exception. The murder of thousands of Americans is a horrible tragedy. So were the deaths of the thousands in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Chile, Chechnya, Iraq, Iran, Indonesia, Palestine, the former Yugoslavia, China, Burma, etc, etc. There is no defence against terror, except to create a world without the depth of inequality and injustice that currently exists.
It disturbs me that the first thing I heard President Bush say was to promise revenge. Not justice. Revenge. This suggests that even more innocent civilians will be killed to ‘send a message’ to the terrorists. Why do the bodies of the innocent always have to be the medium of the message?
Likewise, the Australian government has been speaking in terms of retribution, rather than justice. Predictably, the noisy, hard-of-thinking bigots who patronise talk-back are threatening violent retribution against the Australian Muslim community. More innocent victims.
Tit-for-tat atrocities is not the way to end terror. Look at Palestine or Northern Ireland. The terrorists need to be brought to justice, and the conditions that foster fanaticism and terror need to be addressed at the roots. We need justice, not vengeance.
But few will listen. Few will even bother to think. They will only react, and the cycle of violence will continue. Sometimes it’s hard to be an optimist.
Merrill Pye
My worries for reverberations continue, but down the bottom of Pandora’s Box was hope. Just maybe some sort of common feeling might come out of this. New York and Washington DC now maybe can feel like Belgrade and Baghdad did. Those pretty pictures, like movies or computer games, missile-cam and night-vision, now connect with reality, with pain, grief, loss and destruction.
Beris de Vanharasz
I feel desperate for the world and all the decent people of all races and beliefs.