COLUMN: :Actions still wrong after 9/11

Published: Tuesday, September 9, 2003

Planes are hijacked, buildings crumble, people die, and, as a military rebuttal, America invades two separate nations. What kind of a people are we?

Obviously, a vengeful people.

The two-year anniversary of September 11 is drawing near, and as it does, it's tragic to see that neither the American people nor their government have made any headway in deterring a repeat of terrorist activity.

America has too long focused on stopping terrorists in the act, but it's crucial to stop them before they act. We've successfully prevented terrorist networks from striking again through airport shoe inspections, but we seem to be altogether missing the point. Deterrence - not prevention - is our social prescription, because by the time we reach the stage of prevention we've already lost; corrosive opinions about America are concrete in the minds of those who are all too willing to harm us.

The gap between prevention and deterrence is infinite. Prevention involves actions such as increased military presence and rigorous airport security; deterrence involves improving our reputation with the rest of the world and eliminating the want to attack. When it comes to the latter, we have yet to put our best foot forward.

Many claim that the events of Sept. 11 were an awakening experience. I have yet to see good come from these "enlightening insights." September 11 should have shed light on America's image problem. Instead, it magnified our sense of vulnerability; now that our Achilles Heel has been revealed we've done all we can to maximize our defensive strategies. We try to minimize noticeable weaknesses by optimizing domestic confidence. This is absolutely the wrong approach, as actions in this vein make the United States very unlikable.

In light of recent events, we've begun to treat certain immigrants, whether suspected of illicit behavior or not, with a deplorable disregard for human concern.

We've proven to be self-absorbed lemmings, interested only in getting cheap gas at the expense of being deaf to the world's secret prayers that we should one day get stuck in the political crossfire we create for ourselves.

We've established the Department of Homeland Security, which has a budget of $26.7 billion and does little more than color code our fear.

And we've increased our military budget, dispatched hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and attacked Afghanistan and Iraq against the U.N.'s recommendation, proving we think ourselves sufficiently justified in bloodshed without international backing.

If Sept. 11 could not show us of the imperative need to work on improving international relations, we are hopelessly blind. If nothing else, Sept. 11 should have given us some lucid hindsight. Instead, we've not only repeated but also amplified our past mistakes and have adopted an attitude of reluctance toward any modicum of change.

America's number one priority should be improving foreign relations, point blank. Further obstinacy and aggression will only hurt us and perpetuate more revolt. As a world leader, we can no longer use Machiavellian scare tactics to throw our weight around. We have to be civil and conscientious. Only then will people see that we are not ethnocentric colonialists and only then will the malignance of terrorism come to a halt.

We've made a remote island out of America, and it's an island that many want to see struck by a tsunami. Until we stop our international officiousness, America will continue to inherit the enemies of our allies, and we can no longer afford to be on bad terms with any country or its leaders. September 11 should be looked upon as the day America woke up from its ignorant slumber, not the day it took another Quaalude and went back to sleep.

If the betterment of America means a raise in gas prices, so be it. Ten dollars a gallon is a more reasonable sacrifice than 3,000 lives and $87 billion to fund minatory revenge schemes.



Eric is an English-Philosophy and Psychology double major. He can be reached at erichow@unm.edu.