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Senior Sara Brin was
moved to write the following commentary after listening to
President Bush's address to the nation following the September
11 terrorist attacks. It was broadcast twice on WFCR, public
radio for the Pioneer Valley, during Morning Edition on September
19; the broadcast generated numerous requests for copies
of the essay.
At 8:48 a.m. September 11, the United States became a victim
of an extraordinarily effective affront to its political,
psychological and national sense of security. President Bush,
en route from
Florida, was quickly moved to address the nation, telling
citizens that we would "unite in our resolve for justice and peace." America,
he assured us, "has stood down enemies before, and we
will do so this time." He gave us his prayers in the form
of Psalm 23. And then he cemented the responsibility for the
attack not only on the individual terrorists but also on states
that would "harbor" them. He did not place immediate
blame but neither did he allow governments to rescind all
responsibility. President Bush gave me, as an American, the
words I needed
to remember how strong our country is, what we stand for,
our history of standing united. He gave me, as a student
of American
politics, faith that the U.S. government's search for justice
would be unstinting.
It wasn't until the next morning,
as the morning news shows replayed sound bites from Bush's
press
conference, that the
terrible ambiguity of the president's remarks became clear
to me. Bush explained to the American public that the events
of September 11 were "more than acts of terror, they
were acts of war" -- in my view, a serious misinterpretation
of the facts. While I can appreciate, emotionally, his attempt
to convey the gravity of the attacks, and while, intellectually,
I can see that the executive branch was paving the way toward
a response, nonetheless I have found myself taking deep offense.
When considered literally, Bush's reference to acts of war
subtracts dramatically from the indecency of what has taken
place.
A war denotes a situation in
which two states are involved and in which rules of engagement
generally prevail. Civilians
are not legitimate targets. Strategies are created to avoid
harming the innocent. Targets are generally chosen for their
military or strategic significance rather than for their
symbolic impact. Surprise attacks are, indeed, common but
there are
no situations of war where a country is unaware of its enemy's
identity.
That the United States experienced
a serious and inconceivable attack is undeniable. No anti-missile
system,
government
intelligence or domestic security measure could have predicted
or prevented
this breach of sanity. There were no wartime measures in
place because the U.S. was not at war. This is the point
of terrorism.
It goes beyond a nation's scope of the possible and, in the
United State's case, actually used our own liberties against
us.
It could be argued that the
World Trade Center, home to major financial enterprises,
was a strategic economic target;
obviously,
the Pentagon is a key military target. Perhaps, then, these
attacks could be justified in a time of war by an offending
nation as militarily viable. Yet even when trying desperately
to put these attacks into a wartime scenario there can be
no rationalization for the deaths of hundreds of civilian
airline
passengers. These were men, women and children on vacation,
visiting loved ones and returning to universities and jobs
in neither New York nor Washington, D.C.
The events of September
11 were not acts of war. They were terrorist proceedings
of the most vile and unimaginable type.
The victims at the World Trade Center, Pentagon and on the
airliners were not enlisted in a conflict. These men and
women did not consciously perceive a threat and were not
engaged
as citizens of our country in a military conflict outside
or within the United States. To call the terrorist attacks "acts
of war" does not allow the families of the victims to
experience and express the true indignation, the pure outpouring
of rage and sorrow, that their losses must engender. By its
very nature, an act of terrorism is far more violating than
an act of war. By invoking the simple phrase "acts of
war," President
Bush has, perhaps unintentionally but certainly ironically,
denied Americans their right to fully mourn. In attempting
to find words to portray the seriousness of the attacks,
he has chosen a phrase that, when taken literally, sanitizes
the
attacks of their most violating dimensions. The losses Americans
suffered and will continue to suffer are not casualties of
war but instead something far more evil -- perhaps more evil
than words could ever convey. |
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