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As
reflection begins to grasp the cooling
ruins left by the terrorist attacks on
the US of Sept. 11, many Americans are
finding particularly disturbing their realization
of how profoundly they are hated, at least
in some quarters. How they respond to that
realization will determine a lot in the
coming years. Americans hadn't really understood
the animus against them before September
11 them a target for the explosions of
jihad in far-off places. But the people
of the US remained insulated in their geographic
isolation and good fortune from the "fantastic
vehemence," as the writer Martin Amis
recently called it, ranged against their
country in the Muslim world and in other
developing regions.
Sheltered
by oceans, traditionally incurious about the
sufferings of people far away, amnesiac even
about their own tragic history, Americans have
not taken very seriously the envy and resentment
of the others for their wealth. They had not
really thought much about the ambivalence of
Islam toward their country's cosmopolitanism,
or about the resentment of the South for its
pluralism and its CDs and its videos. Granted,
they have feared the agitations of extremists.
But they had not realized the plain fact of
the extent to which their ubiquitous culture
and apparent indifference are loathed in some
places many Americans, this realization may
be the most unsettling of the insights gleaned
from the destruction of September 11.
How Americans respond to that anxious insight
matters hugely. Manifestly, if the United States
lashes out with its own rage, if its responses
remain unsophisticated about the Muslim world,
it will breed more hate. But if Americans respond
soberly (as for the most part they seem to
be) to the recognition that they are hated
the power to do good. Already the unsettling
realization of systematic hatred appears to
have undercut naive military ideas and channeled
the American administration toward counter-terrorist
planning sensitive to local complexities in
the Islamic world.
Looking farther
forward, Americans would also do well to
recognize that there is no defeat,
no weakness, in empathizing with the developing
world. Now is the time to engage, to close
gaps, rather than retreat into righteous unilateralism.
Responding to the explosions with a new sensitivity
to the struggles of the developing world is
not the same as "giving in" to terrorism.
Far from it: All it means is that attentiveness
and engagement may bridge a few of the gaps
within which suspicion hardens into hate.
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