Author: Thomas L. Friedman
Publication: The New York Times
Date: October 5, 2001
Judging from the foreign press,
the most popular world reaction to the terrorist attacks on America has
not been outright condemnation, but rather: "Yes, but . . ." Yes, this
was terrible, but somehow America deserved it or is responsible for the
anger behind it.
One can only be amazed at the ease
with which some people abroad and at campus teach-ins now tell us what
motivated the terrorists. Guess what? The terrorists didn't leave an explanatory
note. Because their deed was their note: We want to destroy America, starting
with its military and financial centers. Which part of that sentence don't
people understand?
Have you ever seen Osama bin Laden
say "I just want to see a smaller Israel in its pre-1967 borders," or "I
have no problem with America, it just needs to have a lower cultural and
military profile in the Muslim world"? These terrorists aren't out for
a new kind of coexistence with us. They are out for our non-existence.
None of this seems to have seeped
into the "Yes, but . . ." crowd, whose most prominent "Yes, but" states:
This terrorist act would never have happened if America hadn't been so
supportive of Israel.
My response is, "Yes, but . . .
but . . ."
Yes, there is no question, America's
support of Israel - even when Israel builds greedy, provocative settlements
in the heart of the Gaza Strip - has produced understandable Muslim anger.
But the argument doesn't end there. America has also taken the lead role
in trying to reverse this situation. We know the Sept. 11 attack was being
planned a year ago - exactly when President Clinton was proposing to Yasir
Arafat a Palestinian state on roughly 95 percent of the West Bank and East
Jerusalem - with the Israeli settlers uprooted from all but 5 percent.
In other words, this terrorism was being planned because America was trying
to build Israeli-Palestinian coexistence, not because it wasn't.
Ah, say the "Yes, but" folks, but
Arab public opinion has been inflamed by the Arab TV images of Israel suppressing
the Palestinian uprising. Yes, at times Israel has used excessive force,
and one can understand how that looks to Arab eyes, but Israel has also
been responding to Palestinian suicide attacks on Israeli pizza parlors
and discos - which isn't highlighted on Arab TV.
Moreover, this uprising by the Palestinians
was not their only recourse. There was an active U.S.-sponsored diplomatic
track, with a deal on the table, which may not have been fully acceptable
to Palestinians but was certainly worth building upon and hardly justified
suicide-bombing Israeli civilians. The Arab media and leaders now talk
as though the Clinton proposal for a Palestinian state never happened.
But it did.
The second "Yes, but" is that the
terrorists reflect a protest over Muslim poverty. Yes, poverty can breed
desperate people. However, most of the hijackers were middle-class Saudis
or Egyptians.
Is it America's fault that the richest
ruling family in the world, the Saudis, have citizens who are poor and
frustrated? Is it America's fault that Korea had the same per capita income
in the 1950's as many Arab states, but Korea has managed its development
so much better since that it now dwarfs all Arab economies? Afghanistan
is run by a medieval Taliban theocracy that bans women from working or
going to school. How could such a place not be poor? And who was the biggest
protector of that backward Taliban society? Osama bin Laden and his men.
There is something wrong with Saudi
Arabia citing U.S. support for Israel as the root cause for this Islamist
terror - when many Saudi men were among the hijackers, when the Saudi regime
has tolerated the harsh Islamist movements that provided ideological guidance
for these young men, when Saudi Arabia was the biggest funder of the Taliban,
when the Saudi ruling family has alienated some of its most devout subjects
to a degree that produced Islamist militancy, and when the Saudi regime
- as The Economist just noted, in an article titled "Saudi Arabia: The
Double-Act Wears Thin" - winked at indirect fund-raising for Mr. bin Laden
in the Kingdom as a way of currying favor with its hard-line Islamist critics.
I don't want to see the Saudi regime
destabilized. I'm sure it wants to be part of the solution now. But how
about a little candor? YES, America should look deeper into its policies
and actions - BUT, BUT, BUT we're not the only ones who need to look in
the mirror.
