At the 9/11 crossroads--Bush's actions caused more damage--Let us commit to nonviolence

The country could respond to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in an opportunistic manner defined by ignorance, raw emotion and political cowardice.

Or the country could respond with the seriousness that the incidents of Sept. 11, 2001, demanded.

George Bush chose the cavalier course. His refusal to stretch beyond his own weakness has cost the United States and the world dearly. Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenants remain at large. The al-Qaida network remains in place. Terrorist recruitment is, by all accounts, on the rise, and international anger over administration policies makes the United States and Americans traveling abroad ever more vulnerable.

Iraq is experiencing a chaotic civil war. Afghanistan is degenerating toward a similar circumstance. Thousands of American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians lie dead, and the prospect for more death and more destruction is virtually guaranteed by the refusal of the president, the vice president and the secretary of defense to admit their errors and change course.

It would be easy on this day of the anniversary to feel almost as frustrated and hopeless as so many Americans did five years ago.

But that it not fair to those good Americans who perished needlessly on 9/11, or to their country. Because while the Bush administration chose the cavalier course, millions of Americans refused to do so.

As this fifth anniversary of their personal tragedy approached, the hundreds of spouses, siblings and parents of victims of the terrorist attacks issued a statement that is far more appropriate in its sentiments and wise in its proposals than any of the president's self-serving election season pronouncements.

"On September 11th, 2001, members of our families became civilian casualties of terrorism," the statement begins. "And while we grieved their loss, we were seized by the urgent desire to spare other families, in any part of the world, the suffering that we were experiencing."

The message from the families then recounts the cruel realities of the past five years for "immigrants and other people perceived to be terrorists, targeted by hate crimes and hateful legislation; those who suffered in terrorist attacks from Bali to Beslan; those killed in the train bombings in Madrid and London; and those in Afghanistan and Iraq who continue to suffer under occupation and the terror of war."

"Today," the families continue, "five years after September 11th, 2001, we see clearly that civilian casualties overwhelmingly have been the common denominator in all that has taken place. We see that the path we have taken has created a world that is less safe, less humane, and less likely to survive. Where we saw children in mortal danger from unexploded cluster bombs in Afghanistan, we now see children in mortal danger from cluster bombs in Lebanon. Where we saw the brutality and inhumanity of Saddam Hussein, we now see the same brutality and inhumanity occurring under U.S. occupation, in Fallujah, in Haditha, in Abu Ghraib ...

"In the days immediately following September 11th, the United States could have asked the world to do anything for us. The U.S. government has instead generated danger, fear, death, and profound grief. On the fifth anniversary of September 11th, 2001, we believe it is time for America to end the cycle of violence. It is time for the United States to become a positive force in world affairs."

On this anniversary, we reject the opportunistic course of George Bush. In its place, we embrace the wiser course along with the promise of those who not only lost the most but learned the most five years ago today.

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It was five years ago this morning when I walked into the newsroom to see the staff gathered in front of the television set that hangs from a wall in clear view of the city and copy desks.

A few minutes before, a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center's twin towers in New York. Everyone was assuming that it was a little private plane that had strayed off course. Since it was less than two hours before deadline, we immediately began making plans to tear up our original plan for Page A1, figuring that the plane had caused at least some damage to the tower and probably killed a few people unfortunate enough to be on the floors hit by the plane.

It was then that we watched in disbelief as a second plane - no small private Piper Cub, but a big, powerful commercial jet - slammed into the second tower.

I remember getting butterflies in my stomach as a few seconds later a report came in that yet another jetliner had hit the Pentagon and there was concern that other planes were headed for the nation's Capitol and even the White House.

What's happening? we all wondered. Was this the beginning of a new world war that was going to threaten all of us? Would it be long before whoever it was targeted Madison?

We worked feverishly that morning to make sense of it all and by the final home-delivered edition we were able to assemble a much clearer picture of what had happened - a group of terrorists had hijacked four commercial jets and unbelievably had crashed three of them into U.S. targets, killing several thousand innocent people. The fourth plane had crashed before it reached its target, at the time presumably because the passengers had been alerted to the plot and stormed the cockpit to overtake the hijackers.

For the next several days we added pages to the paper to chronicle the hundreds of stories that were flowing from that terrible day. Virtually everyone, Democrats and Republicans and everyone in between, rallied behind President Bush to answer the heinous attack. Soon we were in Afghanistan, where the terrorists were being trained and Osama bin Laden had found refuge. We quickly drove the Taliban from power, but bin Laden was able to escape, presumably to Pakistan, one of our allies.

Today, it's nearly as unbelievable as the events of Sept. 11 that the president and his cohorts some five years later have managed to squander all that good will and unity. Instead of bringing everyone together to fight a so-called war on terror, to find bin Laden and bring him and his henchmen to justice and to make our borders and trade routes safer, he decided to start a war against an unscrupulous dictator who, it turns out, had nothing to do with terror and Sept. 11, 2001.

Worse, the president continues to insist that Iraq represents the "fight against the terrorists," when it is serving to do just the opposite breeding more and more terrorists to make the world less safe. Meanwhile, the real battle against terror gets short shrift because the resources are being squandered on Iraq.

On this, the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, I can't help but wonder who has done more damage to the United States - the terrorists of that day or George W. Bush.

Dave Zweifel is the editor of The Capital Times. E-mail: dzweifel@madison.com Published: September 11, 2006

Today marks two major anniversaries whose legacies have had a profound effect upon the course of human events.

We live in a more fearful world with fewer freedoms, crushing debt and tens of thousands of innocent dead. The terrorists and their evil acts are not solely culpable; our nation's actions prior to and since that awful day are also to blame.

It all could have been averted had we heeded the lessons of that other 9/11 100 years ago.

It was on Sept. 11, 1906, that a London-trained lawyer living in South Africa convened a meeting in Johannesburg that sparked a massive resistance movement that eventually won the independence of his home country from its colonizers and rewrote the rules of revolution.

Mohandas K. Gandhi inspired his countrymen not only to resist the brutal and degrading treatment they were subject to at the hands of the British and others, he convinced them to do it nonviolently.

The word coined to describe Gandhi's methods was Satyagraha (literally: truth force). Although Gandhi used nonviolent direct action on a scale never before seen, he was not the first to articulate or apply it as a political force.

As Walter Wink, professor emeritus of biblical interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary, has written, "nonviolence was elaborated by Jainism and Buddhism, given political bite by Jews like the prophets and Jesus, (and) articulated by Christians like Saint Francis."

Sadly, the fundamental nonviolence of Christianity was greatly eroded in the 4th century when church leaders allowed the emperor Constantine to turn the church into an almost wholly owned subsidiary of the state.

Then St. Augustine, drawing heavily on Paul's letter to the Romans but very little on Jesus' own words and actions, penned what came to be known as his "just war theory." Centuries later, the state-ordered King James Bible made things worse by having Jesus say, in Matthew's gospel, "Resist not evil."

All of this set up a false choice for believers when it came to enemies, national or otherwise: Fight and kill them or do nothing.

Despite more accurate translations of Jesus' injunction in Matthew's Gospel (Wink points to the Scholar's Bible, which relies on the ancient Greek: "Don't react violently to the one who is evil"), many churches and states still cling to Augustine's views and the larger myth of redemptive violence, dismissing the third way of nonviolence as impractical in today's world.

But creative nonviolence, as Wink insists, is about the only thing that's ever worked, not just 2,000 or 100 years ago, but also in our time:

"In 1989-90 alone, 14 nations involving 1.7 billion people underwent nonviolent revolutions, all but one successfully (China). During the 20th century, 3.4 billion people were thus involved."

The sharp increase in terrorist attacks around the world since Sept. 11, 2001, shows that counter-violence is increasing, not decreasing. The number and ferocity of terrorists prove the contention of historian and religious scholar Karen Armstrong that religious extremists become even more extreme when attacked because it confirms their fears of being threatened.

That there have been no more attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11 is due largely to increased domestic security and intelligence (and international cooperation) and not, as President Bush likes to assert, our military actions overseas.

War not only causes the conditions in which terrorists thrive, it spreads weapons that terrorists like Osama bin Laden can later use against us.

Native-led, strategic nonviolent resistance movements in places like Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan decades ago might have led to more just and stable governments in those countries and therefore far less terrorism around the world.

It is still within the realm of possibility that such movements could yet take root in and transform those countries. Just ask the people of South Africa, Serbia or Chile.

It is especially in the shadow of Sept. 11, 2001, that we need to remember the lessons of Sept. 11, 1906. Teaching our children about the man and the movement that rekindled the truth force expressed in all the great spiritual paths is a good start, but we must also, as the Mahatma taught, be the change we wish to see in the world.

This starts by confronting the fears and myths dwelling in our own hearts and minds that diminish our sense of peace, and by resolving to work through our own conflicts nonviolently.

Logical next steps would be to elect and support leaders who wage peace, not war, and to press for the creation of a Department of Peace.

We also might support groups that embody the spirit of Satyagraha like the Nonviolent Peaceforce (www.nonviolentpeaceforce.org), which is carrying out Gandhi's dream of an unarmed, international peace army.

Doing these things also will honor, in the most meaningful way, the memory of those who died on Sept. 11, 2001, and in the ensuing attacks and wars.

Sept. 11, 2001, and Sept. 11, 1906, left us two very different legacies. Each can teach us valuable lessons.

Embracing the legacy of 9/11/06 may very well ensure our survival. We must remember both.

Rick Chamberlin is a writer and peace activist from Prairie du Sac. He works in the circulation department of Capital Newspapers. Published: September 11, 2006

Rather odd how they are so convinced that Bush did the wrong thing...yet, they offer no course of action of their own.

Unless it is: to do nothing.

Certainly, nothing substantive. More foreign aid, I suppose. More money for the UN and its humanitarian agencies, for sure. More apologies to the rest of the world, no doubt.

Billions for tribute, but not one cent for defense...

It's from Madistan. You could be dealing with people who think Churchill was nothing but a war monger. If Old Joe hadn't switched sides, they'd have been pushing for the US to either remain neutral or join on the German side.

Thank you for posting, SJackson. You have gone into the Das Kapitol Times Zone, like Diana does so often, So We Don't Have To®.

Sheesh, though.

Five years ago today, America found itself at a crossroads....

....and President Bush (thank the Lord!) saw to it that these @$$holes could keep sitting on their fat Birkenstocks and continue with their "dissent." After all, it's not like they had real jobs to go to.

I was in Madistan at work on 9/11/2001. (BEFORE I started FReeping!) Talk about being shunned! For instance, I was told that having an American flag on my wall was too JINGOISTIC, fer cryin' out loud!

GGRRRR!
Rant off. Don't get me started....

I'll never work in Madison again, either. I felt like I needed a good scrubbing with a wire brush at the end of most days to get the socialist stink off of me. *Rolleyes*

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