The ALL NEW Don't Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate (15 page)

We should not be like
them
. We should not take innocent lives in bringing the perpetrators to justice. Massive bombing of Afghanistan and Iraq—with the killing of innocents—will show that we are no better.

But the Bush administration’s conservative message dominated the media. The event was framed in their terms. As Newt Gingrich put it on the Fox network, “Retribution is justice.”

It is vital to understand the history of this framing now, because it is coming up again, with the conservative attack on Obama’s call for the use of “soft power”—diplomacy and economic leverage—and the conservatives’ call for a military buildup and intervention in the world’s trouble spots.

I have been reminded, over and over, of Gandhi’s words: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” The words apply to governments as well as to individuals.

Causes

There are (at least) three kinds of causes of radical Islamic terrorism:

• Worldview: the religious rationale

• Social and political conditions: cultures of despair

• Means: the enabling conditions

The Bush administration discussed only the third: the means that enable attacks to be carried out. These include leadership (for example, bin Laden), host countries, training facilities and bases, financial backing, cell organization, information networks, and so on. These do not include the first and second on the list.

Worldview: The Religious Rationale

After the bombing occurred, the question that kept being asked in the media was, “Why do they hate us so much?”

It is important at the outset to separate moderate-to-liberal Islam from radical Islamic fundamentalists, who do not represent most Muslims.

Radical Islamic fundamentalists hate our culture. They have a worldview that is incompatible with the way that Americans—and other Westerners—live their lives.

One part of this worldview concerns women, who are to hide their bodies, should have no right to property, and so on. Western sexuality, mores, music, and women’s equality all violate their values, and the ubiquity of American cultural products, like movies and music, throughout the world offends them.

A second part concerns theocracy: They believe that governments should be run by clerics according to strict Islamic law.

A third concerns holy sites, like those in Jerusalem, which they believe should be under Islamic political and military control.

A fourth concerns the commercial and military incursions by Westerners on Islamic soil, which they liken to the invasion of the hated crusaders. The way they see it, our culture spits in the face of theirs.

A fifth concerns jihad—a holy war to protect and defend the faith.

A sixth is the idea of a martyr, a man willing to sacrifice himself for the cause. His reward is eternal glory—an eternity in heaven surrounded by willing young virgins. In some cases there is a promise that his family will be taken care of by the community.

Social and Political Conditions: Cultures of Despair

Most Islamic would-be martyrs not only share these beliefs but also have grown up in a culture of despair; they have nothing to lose. Eliminate such poverty and you eliminate the breeding ground for most terrorists—though the September 11 terrorists were relatively well-to-do. When the Bush administration spoke of eliminating terror, it did not appear to be talking about eliminating cultures of despair and the social conditions that lead one to want to give up life to martyrdom.

Princeton Lyman of the Aspen Institute made an important proposal—that the worldwide antiterrorist coalition being formed should address the causal real-world conditions. Country by country, the conditions (both material and political) leading to despair need to be addressed, with a worldwide commitment to ending them. It should be done because it is a necessary part of addressing the causes of terrorism—and because it is right! It never happened.

What about the first cause—the radical Islamic worldview itself? Military action won’t change it. Social action won’t change it. Worldviews live in the minds of people. How can one change those minds—and if not present minds, then future minds? The West cannot! Those minds can only be changed by moderate and liberal Muslims—clerics, teachers, elders, respected community members. There is no shortage of them. I doubt that they are well organized, but the world needs them to be well organized and effective. It is vital that moderate and liberal Muslims form a unified voice against hate and, with it, terror. Remember that
Taliban
means “student.” Those who teach hate in Islamic schools must be replaced—and we in the West cannot replace them. This can only be done by an organized moderate, nonviolent Islam. The West can make the suggestion and offer extensive resources, but we alone are powerless to carry it out. We depend on the goodwill and courage of moderate Islamic leaders. To gain it, we must show our goodwill by beginning in a serious way to address the social and political conditions that lead to despair.

Thinking of the enemy as evil means not taking the primary causes seriously.

Public Discourse

The Honorable Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), who I am proud to acknowledge as my representative in Congress, in casting the lone vote against giving President Bush full Congressional approval for carrying out his War on Terrorism as he saw fit, said the following:

I am convinced that military action will not prevent further acts of international terrorism against the United States. This is a very complex and complicated matter.

. . . However difficult this vote may be, some of us must urge the use of restraint. Our country is in a state of mourning. Some of us must say, let us step back for a moment. Let us just pause for a minute and think through the implications of our actions today so that this does not spiral out of control.

I have agonized over this vote, but I came to grips with it today and I came to grips with opposing this resolution during the very painful yet very beautiful memorial service. As a member of the clergy so eloquently said, “As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore.”

I agree. But what is striking to me as a linguist is the use of negatives in the statement: “not prevent,” “restraint” (inherently negative), “not spiral out of control,” “not become the evil that we deplore.” A petition was circulated calling for “justice
without
vengeance.”
Without
has another implicit negative. It is not that these negative statements are wrong (three negatives!). What is needed is a
positive
form of discourse.

There is one.

The central concept is that of responsibility, which is at the heart of progressive/liberal morality. (See
Moral Politics
.) Progressive/liberal morality begins with empathy, the ability to understand others and feel what they feel. That is presupposed in responsibility—responsibility for oneself, for protection, for the care of those who need care, and for the community. Those were the values that we saw in action among the rescue workers in New York right after the September 11 attack.

Responsibility requires competence and effectiveness. If you are to deal responsibly with terrorism, you must deal effectively with all its causes: religious, social, and enabling. The enabling causes must be dealt with effectively. Bombing innocent civilians and harming them by destroying their country’s domestic infrastructure will be counterproductive—as well as immoral. Responsibility requires care in the place of blundering, overwhelming force.

Massive bombing would be irresponsible. Failure to address the religious and social causes would be irresponsible. The responsible response begins with joint international action to address all three: the social and political conditions and the religious worldview and the means, with all due care.

Foreign Policy

At a time when terrorist threats come from groups of individuals rather than states, when wars occur within nations, when “free markets” exist without freedom, when overpopulation threatens stability and disastrous global warming, when intolerant cultures limit freedom and promote violence, when transnational corporations act like oppressive governments, and when the oil economy threatens the planet’s future, the central problems in today’s world cannot be solved by state-level approaches.

The state-level part of the answer is to recognize global interdependence and focus foreign policy on diplomacy, alliances, international institutions, and strong defensive and peacekeeping forces, with war as a last resort.

But what is needed even more is a moral foreign policy, one that realizes that America can only be a better America if the world is a better world. America must become a moral leader using fundamental human values: caring and responsibility carried out with strength to respond to the world’s problems.

In a values-based foreign policy, issues that were not previously seen as part of foreign policy become central. Women’s education is the best way to alleviate overpopulation and promote development. Renewable energy could make the world oil-independent. Food, water, health, ecology, and corporate reform are foreign policy issues, as are rights: rights of women, children, workers, prisoners, refugees, and political minorities.

These issues were previously left to international advocacy groups, and many have done excellent work. But these issues need an integrated approach that requires a foreign policy that is serious about addressing them.

The Obama administration is making moves in this direction, with the understanding that these are foreign policy issues. The president is being attacked for it. And the media has not yet recognized them as foreign policy issues. Why?

The metaphors that foreign policy experts have traditionally used to define what foreign policy is have ruled out these important concerns. The metaphors involve self-interest (for example, the rational actor model), stability (a physics metaphor), industrialization (unindustrialized nations are “underdeveloped”), growth (our current economics depends on growth—of markets and access to cheap labor and abundant cheap resources) and trade (freedom is free trade).

There is an alternative way of thinking about foreign policy under which all these humanistic issues would become a natural part of what foreign policy is about. The premise is that when international relations work smoothly, it is because certain moral norms of the international community are being followed. This mostly goes unnoticed, since those norms are commonly followed. We notice problems when those norms are breached. Given this, it makes sense that foreign policy should be centered around those norms.

The moral norms I suggest come out of what in
Moral Politics
I called nurturant morality. It is a view of ethical behavior that centers on empathy and responsibility (for yourself and others needing your help). Many things follow from these central principles: fairness, minimal violence (for example, justice without vengeance), an ethic of care, protection of those needing it, a recognition of interdependence, cooperation for the common good, the building of community, mutual respect, and so on. When applied to foreign policy, nurturant moral norms would lead the American government to uphold the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, sign and uphold international environmental accords, engage in a form of globalization governed by an ethics of care—and it would automatically make all the concerns listed above (such as the environment and women’s rights) part of our foreign policy.

This, of course, implies (1) multilateralism, (2) interdependence, and (3) international cooperation. But these three principles, without nurturant norms, could equally well apply to a radically conservative foreign policy. Bush’s foreign policy was one of self-interest (“what’s in the best interest of the United States”)—if not outright hegemony (the Cheney/Rumsfeld position). The Democratic leaders incorrectly criticized Bush for being isolationist and unilateralist on issues like the Kyoto accords and the ABM Treaty. He was neither isolationist nor unilateralist. He was just following his stated policy of self-interest, using strict father morality as his guide.

Imagine if Bush had happened to receive the full support of France, Germany, and the United Nations when he announced his policy. Then he would have been called an internationalist and multilateralist. When it was in America’s interest (as he saw it), he would work with those nations willing to go along, “the coalition of the willing.” Whether Bush looked like a multilateralist depended on who was willing. Self-interest crosses the boundaries between unilateralism and multilateralism. The Bush foreign policy was one of unyielding self-interest.

There is, interestingly, an apparent overlap between the nurturant norms policy and an idealistic vision of the war started by the Bush administration. The overlap is, simply, that it is a moral norm to refuse to engage in or support terrorism. From this perspective, it looked, at the onset, like left and right were united. It was an illusion.

In nurturant norms policy, antiterrorism arises from another moral norm:
Violence against innocent parties is immoral.

Within a year of the end of the Gulf War, the CIA reported that about a million Iraqi civilians had died from the effects of the war and the embargo—many from disease and malnutrition due to the US destruction of water treatment plants, hospitals, electric generation plants, and so on, together with the inability to get food and medical supplies. Many more innocents have since died from the effects of the war.

In conservative morality, there is a fight between good and evil, in which “lesser evils” are tolerated and even seen as necessary and expected.