Terrorism & the American Way
Finding Peace Between Poverty & Plenty

December 2001, Acres U.S.A.
by Michael W. Fox, D.V.M.

    Rage, hatred and fear, including distrust and the fear of being harmed, ridiculed or rejected, are major obstacles to peace and harmony in families and communities, between races, classes and cultures, and between people and nonhuman animals. Rage, hatred and fear can bind us together in violence and war, be it against others of our own kind, or against animals and other living beings whom we so often blindly link with pestilence, famines and plagues.
    Only when we act out of loving concern and understanding can we outgrow our weaponry, liberating ourselves from arrogance, hatred and fear, as we apply the appropriate science, ethics and technologies to help bring peace and harmony. This means radically different modes of trade, commerce, industry, medicine, agriculture, and diplomacy with respect to all our relationships and relations, human and nonhuman. Ultimately we hate and fear what we do not understand and cannot control. Anger can both divide and unify, as can hatred and fear. Love unifies and ultimately conquers all, because it is through love that we become connected to the Higher Power that moves through us and all that is.
    The indiscriminate slaughter of innocent people, as in the United States on September 11, 2001, will leave an indelible psychic wound on the collective unconscious of the West. Such a wound is extremely dangerous, since it can invoke the rage, hatred and fear that lead to irrational and ineffectual responses. The jihad martyrs who flew the passenger-filled jet planes that they had hijacked into the twin towers of New York City’s World Trade Center and Washington D.C.’s Pentagon, killing themselves and over 6,000 people in the process, rationalized this mass slaughter as a justified means to a desired end.
    But it was not terrorists who killed millions of farmed animals in the United Kingdom to first stamp out Mad Cow disease, and then Foot-and-Mouth disease (although some suspect that the latter disease epidemic could have been started by terrorists). The authorities rationalized the mass slaughter as a justified means to a desired end.
Until we move beyond all forms of rationalized violence and mass killing, we will live in regret and uncertainty. Do we not have the intelligence and the wisdom of history and hindsight to create a more peaceful future and a less violent tomorrow? To find nonviolent solutions is perhaps the greatest challenge the human species faces in addressing the dark side of ignorance and of human nature and its tragic consequences. This “rabies” of the soul must be eradicated. I have killed rabid dogs, but I prefer to vaccinate them. Some advocate the death sentence for rabid human souls; others find it morally wrong. But what vaccines are there to prevent outbreaks of evil from rabid human souls? What are caring people to do? I would say that our faith, hope and salvation are in simple acts of loving kindness, and in finding less harmful and less violent ways of satisfying our needs and wants.
    The vaccines that we give, metaphorically, to our children, do not yet fully protect them from the metaphysical forces of human hatred, arrogance, selfishness and fear. One indicator that concerns me deeply is the fact that the third most common cause of teenage death in the United States is suicide. Despair, in the nihilism of suicide bombers, even if they have been religiously anointed as glorified martyrs, resonates with the nihilism of America’s troubled and suffering teens, as witness the Columbine High School massacre, where students gunned down their peers. And for me, such nihilism — as total disregard for the sanctity of life — also resonates with the slaughter of elephants for their ivory, whales for their flesh, and with the annihilation of England’s “pastures green” by industrial agriculture, forever charred by the memories of burning mountains of healthy slaughtered cows and their calves, sows and their piglets, as well as bulls, boars, sheep and goats.
    The horrendous carnage following the attack on America on September 11 by alleged followers of a fanatical Islamic cult raised questions as to the state of mind of suicidal terrorists that could lead them to kill 5,000 or more innocent people, and possibly shed more light on the nature of evil.
    According to social philosopher Eric Hoffer, who wrote the book The True Believer half a century ago following his research into Adolph Hitler’s Nazi movement, the true believer who employs evil means for purportedly good ends is the individual whose inner sense of worthlessness, or alienation, or hatred and rage, finds refuge and purpose in a charismatic movement. Martyrdom for the “just cause” in the name of the Fatherland or God and retributive violence against others who are demonized by cult leaders give the believer an ultimate sense of purpose and exaltation by cult members.
    The spiritual emptiness in the modern world amongst the more affluent in the “free” world, and poverty and oppression amongst the underprivileged and oppressed — especially in the Third World — make many young individuals vulnerable and easily brainwashed by the messianic militancy of various cult movements. The aphorism that no good ends can come from evil means is subjected to a moral inversion by cult leaders. The antidote, therefore, is to address the unfulfilled needs of those primarily young and vulnerable adults who become the victims of such moral inversion under the erroneous belief that their needs will be met and their lives fulfilled through terrorist acts of violence and self-sacrifice.
    The Sybils and the prophets, who today are more numerous than in days of yore, see the “Big Picture” and identify the harmful causal and consequential elements of human nature that only reason, compassion and moral responsibility can rectify. These are the hallmarks of a civilized species and are what civil society is calling for to end the harmful consequences of global capitalism and imperialism that many see as including acts of terrorism so tragically directed at New York’s symbolic twin towers of world trade and the Capitol’s Pentagon. The twin towers of trade and commerce had different symbolic meaning to different people, including many who are not violent fanatics. After the horror and the carnage, we are urgently in need of new symbols that will foster a unity of spirit in a divided world. “Free” trade, the freedom (through power) to exploit others under the banner of progress and economic development, and a free world are not synonymous.
    When I have killed rabid animals for whom there is no cure — in order to end their suffering and to protect other animals and humans — I did so with compassion, sadness and precision. Is this how a civilized society should respond to those rabid souls whose beliefs — religious, political or whatever — lead them to justify the kind of terrorist violence that has shattered the Western world? I pray that this evil act of terrorism will awaken all citizens to the sickness of humankind and to the spiritual crisis that we all must face in these challenging and potentially transformative times, for better or for worse.
    If we collectively choose to respond to the evil consequences of such rabid souls without compassion and without an understanding of how we all may have contributed to the genesis of such insanity in the world community, we will short-change ourselves, for might does not make right, and violence always begets violence. “An eye for an eye” will leave the whole world blind.
    Americans were understandably stunned by the unimaginable, calculated inhumanity of the terrorist attack of September 11. They were as unprepared and as they were uncomprehending, because most Americans do not understand why other people in America and abroad see the United States as the “Evil Empire.” It is irrelevant whether such a perception is right or wrong. It is a fact, and if it had not been ignored for so long, the terrible tragedy of September 11 might have been averted. “Civilized” people have been jolted into realizing the human capacity for evil, such an event being something new to American shores. But now all of that has changed, and in spite of the tragedy, we may all be the better for it, provided we do not act out of rage, hatred or fear.
    With the freedom to choose between good and evil, coupled with free will, we need not become the prisoners of fatalism or the perpetrators and the victims of harmful consequences and circumstance, provided we put the will to love before the will to power. The power of love transcends the love of power. It is the will to love that makes us human and links us to the miraculous and the divine. We will what we will, and the will to love — not the desire to be loved, but the desire to care, to nurture, to protect and to revere — is what heals, hallows, and makes us whole.
    Of the many letters from concerned American citizens published in various newspapers across the country after the debacle of September 11, the following, published in the September 18, 2001, edition of the Minneapolis Star Tribune was especially poignant:

CONFRONT THE QUESTION
    In the midst of the horror of September 11 and its terrorist attacks against the symbols of American economic, political and military power comes a profound question from a little girl, the daughter of a friend. “Mommy,” she asked, “why don’t they like us?”
    President Bush has rallied the nation with ringing words of appropriate outrage, war, vengeance and retribution. His administration is gathering the powerful nations of the West and intimidating the weaker nations of the world into a coalition to carry out this war, but I have yet to hear one call for national self-reflection on that little girl’s question.
    If the president cannot — or will not — engage this nation, its people, its government, and its globalized economic and military power brokers in the attempt to answer that question, then he will be just one more petty demagogue, and not the great moral leader this country — and the world — desperately needs.

— Henry & Roberta French,
Roseville.

    This letter asks of us all to be reflective, to pause before we react. Many Americans, although horrified by this terrorist attack, were not surprised. Terrorism is a global problem. Are there some Americans who believe that some terrorist activity in the United States would further their political and economic interests — though surely not activity of the magnitude and tragic scope of September 11?
    History informs us that if we are not mindful that a common enemy can foster a false unity, then when the enemy is no more, things fall apart again. So America’s response to terrorism from now on calls for something much deeper than justice and retribution. What is called for is far more than war power, will power, and staying power, or turning the other cheek. We need the will to love — loving even our enemies — before we can answer that little girl’s question. There is no real understanding until there is concern, and there can be no concern until there is empathy and more compassionate action.
    As the Chinese ideogram for crisis also connotes opportunity, so the world crisis that America has now been forced to face following the attack on its citizens and economy by foreign nationals who are part of a global terrorist network is an opportunity. It is possibly our last opportunity, not to show that might makes right, but to put the world in order and restore some symmetry between rich and poor within and between all nations of our fragile, ravaged and sickened planet Earth. The integrity of Creation and the future of civilization are one and the same.
    Our collective violence against nature and against human nature, from the plight of endangered cultures, wildlife and the environment, to the sufferings of indigenous peoples and of domestic animals, especially in factory farms and commercial laboratories around the world, needs to be acknowledged. Until we find atonement with nature and all beings, human and nonhuman, how can human nature find peace and not annihilate all that our better natures embrace?
    Nature — biological reality — teaches us that every action is a reaction and that no single event exists in isolation, but instead arises form the larger unified field or matrix, and that our motivations, values and actions influence our environment in various ways. These influences affect other beings, human and nonhuman, for better or for worse, who are part of this same life-field. We should therefore consider what influence the American Way has had in helping turn some people into terrorists, and others into drug lords and serial killers, while sanctioning the rape of nature, wholesale industrial and agrichemical pollution, and the holocaust of the animal kingdom. Then we may find nonviolent ways of stopping crimes of violence against humanity and Creation to which no nation-state can ever be immune by itself and remain separate from the rest of the world.
    The social, psychological, and geopolitical consequences of the tragic day of September 11 will remain uncertain until this nation’s agenda and priorities are put in order in relation to a global crisis and collision of values, perceptions, means and ends. Few Americans know why many people in other countries see the United States as a bully, as a decadent, materialistic culture, and as the evil empire of unbridled capitalism and of corporate imperialism. Such perceptions fuel religious fanaticism and hatred among the poor, the ignorant and the oppressed, who are only too often exploited by their own leaders. Before September 11, the U.S. and world economies were showing increasing signs of instability.
    Now a new world order is in process, and it will mean even more disorder and chaos if it is formed in the same ethical vacuum that critics of the World Trade Organization sought to rectify. Rectification a decade ago could well have averted the present crisis and the tragedy of September 11.

POSTSCRIPT
    On the evening of September 11, I wrote:
    In their own innocence, which made them seem ignorant and indifferent to the human tragedy and inhumanity of this day, the birds sang and fed themselves in the garden of my in-laws, James and Doris Krantz, as the squirrels busied themselves collecting acorns for an early Minnesota winter. While running a few errands that day, busily helping my in-laws for their move to live in my home in Washington, D.C., and Jim recovering valiantly from the harmful consequences of coronary bypass surgery, I pulled over seven times to remove dead animals from the roads: five crushed squirrels, two still warm; a broken young crow; and one mangled Canada goose. I thought of those of my own kind lying beneath the steel and concrete mountain that was New York’s center for world trade, no less mutilated, some still warm, maybe miraculously still alive. The world can be a sad place wherever we live when there is so much haste and waste, carelessness and callous indifference that the innocent must suffer. I wondered why I saw no one pull over to see if any of these creatures were still alive.
    Perhaps other drivers were preoccupied, wondering why some of their own kind could act like those terrorists who gave up their lives for reasons alien to the American Way, and who could justify perpetrating such a crime against humanity. Indifference toward life and the living contrasts with the awakening of America to more than the dead and dying beneath the shattered towers of the World Trade Center and the broken symmetry of the Pentagon, and to the suffering of all the loved ones of these victims. This awakening is a call to listen to the world. It is a time to reflect, to listen, so that the symmetry of our lives can be restored in greater harmony at last with a world community in dire need of planetary CPR — conservation, protection and restoration. This community is inclusive of all of God’s, or Earth’s, creations, and to aim for less, in the name of justice and retribution, is to trivialize this terrible tragedy and not transform crisis into opportunity.

Michael W. Fox, author of Superpigs & Wondercorn; Eating With Conscience: The Bioethics of Food; and the newly published Bringing Life to Ethics: Global Bioethics for a Humane Society, is senior scholar, bioethics, the Humane Society of the United States, 2100 L Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20037. Superpigs & Wondercorn is available from Lyons & Burford, Publishers, 31 West 21 Street, New York, New York 10010, and Bringing Life to Ethics is published by SUNY Press, State University Plaza, Albany, New York 12246.