September11/Jay Ambrose

JAY AMBROSE: All talk, no action

Scripps Howard News Service

September 12, 2001

On the radio Wednesday morning, a professor of conflict resolution was bemoaning the emphasis of President Bush and others on getting revenge for the terrorist acts committed against the United States.

Instead, he said, we should begin a "national conversation" about why some people of other lands do not care for us, and he showed where he was coming from by proffering one possible answer - the fact that this country supplies so many weapons that are used for unjust purposes.

This professor has it wrong. While the United States has certainly made its share of mistakes in its conduct of international affairs, and while it can and should be faulted for them, the ways to make our enemies love us are far different from what this professor has in mind. First of all, we would have to give up our wealth. Then we would have to abandon the cultural values that have come our way through western civilization. Finally, we would have to disengage from the world. We would have to become isolationist.

It is the economic success of the United States as much as anything that causes some of those in poorer lands to envy and even to despise us. Many of them face daily hunger while, by comparison, we live in opulence. But contrary to the Marxist myth, our wealth does not come from exploitation; it emerges from a system of free exchange and rewards for initiative and from social discipline and rule of law.

And contrary to what even some of this country's liberal politicians say, that wealth does not harm the rest of the world. If America were impoverished, the rest of the world would be worse off materially, not better off. Any economist worth the academic degree he brandishes can tell you that our wealth makes others wealthier, just as our economic system would serve them much better than charity if they would adopt it.

This country's culture - our openness, our embrace of individualism and disdain for self-important authority, our pluralism, our relatively high degree of tolerance for all sorts of differences, our secularism in civic affairs, our pragmatism, our joy in liberty - is anathema to many whose own understandings are more monolithic and less yielding.

There is a cultural divide in this world, one far exceeding any large divisions within our own society. Some of those from a more traditionalist background will never forgive us our modernity. They will never grasp our democracy. The only thing that would make them happy would be for us to give up such values.

Americans could be less noticed in this world, of course. That would entail taking on fewer responsibilities for securing peace and stability. Perhaps those Palestinians who cheered the awful deaths in the United States on Tuesday would have restrained themselves if we had been less involved in trying to broker a resolution of their struggle with the Israelis. Ours has been a humane effort there, however - one aimed at serving the welfare of both Palestinians and Israelis. If the United States retreated from international involvement, downtrodden peoples would suffer more, not less. Owing to circumstances we cannot possibly control, downtrodden people will not always see it that way.

This professor who was on the radio - and who was sounding very, very superior to those of us whose comprehension of conflict is not as "professional" as his - appears to have a few lessons himself to learn about his subject area. The terrorists who plowed their planes into buildings were not acting rationally in response to legitimate grievances. They were irrational fanatics. Correcting any mistakes in U.S. policy will not dissolve their hatred, as important as it obviously is to correct any policies that truly are mistaken, for the very existence of this great nation of ours is what in the final analysis offends them.

Although it may not work to try punishing suicidal terrorists into respect for ordinary human decency, aggressive steps can stop them before they act - infiltration of their organizations, for instance. And the government can take military action that will end the support crucial to their operations. It would be little short of imbecilic and simply invite more terrorism if this country were to run around trying to find how it was that specific practices of ours caused their evil.

Jay Ambrose is director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard News Service. Contact him at mailto:ambrosej@shns.com.