How Progressives Might Have Responded to 9/11

In answer to a question about how Progressives might have responded to a terrorist incident like 9/11:

My immediate answer to your question is that Progressives would have left no stone unturned at home or abroad to capture those responsible for 9/11 and our top priority would have been to bring the perpetrators to justice.  Our strategy would have minimized collateral damage, because rather than mounting major invasions of foreign countries, we would have captured suspects and brought them before a court of law.  We would not have held people incommunicado, caged as animals, indefinitely subject to inhumane treatment and torture. 

Mr. Bush found it more convenient (for reasons I will discuss below) to wage wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  He has yet to bring anyone connected to 9/11 to justice and at the same time his military response has caused the deaths of tens of thousands of Afghanis and Iraqis who had nothing to do with 9/11.

My second answer is more complex.  "If you drain the swamp of injustice, the mosquitoes of terrorism will die out”  (quoting a minister whose name I forget).  Progressives would resist the tendency “to get some payback” and instead try to look into the legitimate grievances people may have about American policies.

Mr. Bush told America “they hate us because of our freedoms.”  This is patently absurd.  The freedom Bin Laden specifically objects to is our freedom to station American troops in Saudi Arabia to prop up the Saudi monarchy.  How would we feel if foreign troops were needed to protect our head of state?  American influence around the globe is largely anti-democratic because it’s easier to cut business deals with kings and dictators than it is with elected governments (fewer people to bribe).

Like most people in the Arab world, Bin Laden also objects to the many billions of tax dollars per year sent to fund Israeli ethnic cleansing in Palestine.  There is no more glaring example of America trampling on justice and holding ourselves above international law than our military and financial support for Israel – Israel which refuses to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Israel which possesses Nuclear Weapons, Israel which illegally occupies the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and Israel that has violated more U.N. resolutions than any other country on the planet.

Bin Laden is a rabid religious fanatic waging a holy war that nobody on the American Left agrees with, but he wouldn’t be able to recruit supporters if there wasn’t massive injustice in the Middle East, and if America wasn’t widely seen as supporting a ruthless few against a voiceless majority.

Although I can hardly speak for all Progressives, my prescription for dealing with terrorism is to use American Foreign Policy as a vehicle for nurturing democracy throughout the world instead of as a vehicle for advancing corporate profits.  America should export trade unions and voting machines instead of being the world’s number one weapons exporter.  We should apply selective trade embargoes on any country that violates human rights. 

Instead of overthrowing Aristide in Haiti so Wal-Mart can profit from even cheaper labor, we should be working toward greater Haitian democracy.  Things might cost a little more at Wal-Mart if Haitian sweatshops had to pay $10 a day instead of a dollar a day, but if workers in Haiti made enough from their labor to buy American products then we would all be better off. 

Since America's gluttonous over-consumption fuels resentment in a world beset by poverty, we should also live more simply so that others may simply live.  We need disincentives for large SUVs and incentives for the technologies of greater fuel economy.  We need to rethink planning decisions that result in half our population driving to work from increasingly distant Suburbs.  We need to find ways to shift people out of their cars and onto safer bicycle routes and into cheaper and more convenient busses and trains. 

Waging a war over our right to drive Hummers is insane.