In this tragic moment where the words appear too poor to say the shock that one feels, the first thing which comes to mind is this one: we all are American! We all are New-Yorkers, as surely as John Kennedy declared himself a Berliner in 1963 in Berlin. How one is not to feel in effect, as in the most serious moments of our history, deeply in solidarity with these people and this country, the United States, to which we are so close and to which we owe freedom, and thus our solidarity. (I know it’s awkward, but that’s what it seems to say).
How not to be assailed at the same time at once by this report: the new century is advanced. The day of September 11, 2001 marks the beginning of a new era, which appears to us very far from the promises and the hopes of another historic day, that of November 9, 1989, and which the somewhat euphoric year 2000, that one believed had the capacity to conclude with peace in the Middle East, had given birth to.
One new century thus advances, technologically powerful, as shown by the sophistication of the operation of war which struck all the symbols of America: those of economic superpower at the heart of Manhattan, of the military " power " of the Pentagon, and finally of the (guardian power??? symbolismc?) of the Middle East very close to Camp David. The (approaches or encounters?) of this century are also unintelligible without buying promptly and without precautions into the stereotype already widespread, that of the release of a war of the south against north. But to say that is to credit the authors of this fatal madness of " good intentions " or an unspecified project according to which it would be necessary to avenge the oppressed people against their unique oppressor, America. It would be to enable them to claim " poverty ", thus insulting the poor! What monstrous hypocrisy. None of those which lent a hand in this operation can claim to want the good of humanity. These do not want a better or more just world. They want simply to stripe ours of the card (I think this is a colloquialism for ‘they just want to screw us’).
Reality is more surely that, indeed, of a world without counterweights, physically destabilized and dangerous, due to inequalities. And America, in the loneliness of its power, of its hyper-power, in the absence from now on of any Soviet countermodel, ceased attracting people with it; or more precisely, in certain parts of the world, it only seems to attract hatred. In the controlled world of the cold war where terrorism was more or less helped by Moscow, a form of control was always possible; and the dialogue between Moscow and Washington never stopped. In the monopolistic world of today it is a new cruelty, apparently without control, which appears to want to set up as a countervailing power. And perhaps we ourselves in Europe have, because of the war of the Gulf and the use of F16 by the Israeli army against the Palestinians, underestimated the intensity of the hatred which, from the suburbs of Djakarta to those of Durban, while passing through this delighted crowd of Naplouse (? Where the Palestinians were cheering? Beats me, sorry) and of Cairo, concentrates against the United States.
But the reality is perhaps also that of America caught up with by its cynicism: if Ben Laden is the director of the day of September 11, as the American authorities seem to think, how not to recall that it itself (i.e. Bin Laden’s power) was formed by the CIA, that it was one of the elements of a policy, used against the Soviets, that the Americans believed wise. Wouldn't it be then America which would have given birth to this devil?
In any event, America will change. Deeply. It is like a large steamer, slipping a long time on an unchanging trajectory. And when it is changed, it is changed durably. However even if the language is galvaudé (sorry, can’t find this, could be “galvanized”?), the United States has just undergone a shock without precedent. Without returning to the very first aggression on its territory, that of 1812 when the British army destroyed the first White House, the episode nearest this is that of Pearl Harbor. It was in 1941, far from the continent, with bombers against a military fleet: the horror of Pearl Harbor is nothing compared to what has just happened. It is literally without common measurement: then (Pearl Harbor) 2400 (drowned or submerged, literally “absorbed”) sailors, today many more innocent civilian ones.
Pearl Harbor had marked the end of an isolationism, strong enough to have resisted even the cruelty of Hitler. When in 1941, Charles Lindbergh made a lecture tour in Europe to plead against any American involvement, a broad part of the opinion on the other side of the Atlantic dreamed already of a closing of Latin-American space, leaving Europe with its ruins and its crimes. After Pearl Harbor all changed. And America accepted the Marshall plan like the sending of GI's to all the points of the globe. Came then the Vietnam War, which led to new doctrines, that of the rare large-scale use of force, accompanied by the dogma of "zero dead" American as was illustrated during the Gulf War. All that from now on is swept away: there is no doubt that all means will be used against adversaries who have been imperceptible to date. The news outlined in blood comprises at this stage at least two foreseeable consequences. Both deal with alliances: it finishes a very whole strategy conceived against Russia, then Soviet. Russia, at least in its not Islamized part, will become the principal ally of the United States. As shown by president Putin’s remarks on the evening of the drama. Perhaps also finished by it is the alliance which the United States had outlined as of the Thirties and firmly established in the 1950’s with the integration of the Sunni Moslems, such as defended in particular Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. In the eyes of American opinion and its leaders, Islamism, in all its forms, is likely to be designated as the new enemy. Admittedly, the anti-Islamic reflex had already taken place, at once after the attack in Oklahoma City against a federal building, with ridiculous, if not odious, declarations. But, this time, the inextinguishable hatred which nourishes these attacks just like the choice of the targets and the military character of the organization necessary limits the number of the possible authors.
Beyond their apparent fatal madness, the latter despite everything act with a logic. It is obviously a barbarian logic, of a new nihilism which is repugnant to a great majority of those which believe in Islam, whose religion does not authorize suicide more than Christianity; all the more suicide coupled with the massacre of the innocent. But it is about a political logic which by the rise to the extremes wants to oblige the Moslem opinions " to choose their camp ", against those which are usually indicated as " the great Satan ". By doing this, their objective could well be to extend and develop a crisis without precedent in the whole of the Arab world.
In the long run, this attitude is obviously suicidal. Because it attracts the lightning. And that it can attract it without understanding. This situation obliges our leaders to rise to the circumstances. To avoid the people that these warmongers covet (? i.e. “want to control”?) and on whom they hope to inculcate in their turn this suicidal logic. Because one can say it with fear: modern technology enables them to go even further. The madness, even with the pretext of despair, is never a force which can regenerate the world. For this reason, today, we are American.
El-Oh-El!