Gray Areas

So the man shot dead in the London underground turns out to have been a frightened Brazilian on his way to work. Terrorism works. When we begin shooting our own, even in moments that appear desperate, we have become the sort of society terrorists hope to make us. It may be that it was inevitable and could not have been avoided; the man was wearing an overcoat seemingly too heavy for summer, he panicked when challenged, fled and jumped the turnstile before jumping onto a car where he stumbled and his pursuers fired eight bullets into him while he lay on the ground. Remember when we all marveled that British Bobbies carried only night sticks, no guns? How civilized, we thought.

This is not meant to be a judgment on us; merely the observation that terrorism works. It requires us to adopt ways of functioning that we would once have thought irrational and inappropriate for a free and open society.

The debate among us now is not really about how to protect ourselves from terrorist attacks. We will surrender virtually all our freedoms if we believe we must. And we are beginning to understand all we really can do is lower the odds and make it more difficult for terrorists, because they mingle among us as we do with each other and if they are willing, as they clearly are, to sacrifice themselves, they will succeed in doing us grave harm.

And in frightening us into turning ourselves into a fascist state.

The real debate is what is feeding this terrorism. Is it as Bush and Blair have said, an ideology that will not be satisfied with anything short of bringing down the west and secular culture? If so, logic would have it, we must kill every single person who holds such a view. Both because that is estimated to be in the millions, and because every time we launch an attack we seem to make more fertile ground for recruiting terrorists, that is impossible.

If terrorism is fed by frustration and anger at western, especially American hegemony and the sort of hedonism we export in our movies and clothing, then there is at least some room for discussion about the role we play in the world. Is it possible for us to adopt a less agressive and unilateral posture without knuckling under to the Osama bib Ladens?

We hear both positions, from within our own governement. For me, the first view, since it can lead only to more war and killing, should be tempered by a more serious consideration of the second view.

Would I be willing to risk our country being diminished, or more personally, my being blown up, for a shot at a world in which mutual respect and justice make us more peaceful? I hope so.