A Time to Learn

Activists and educators hope the events of the past year will inspire more Americans to seek a greater awareness of the rest of the world

By Travis Durfee

Activist Yunus Fiske. Photo by Joe Putrock.

What, if anything, has the United States learned from the events of the past year? Have we merely gained another national anniversary? Have we taken a critical look at the events that led up to Sept. 11 and begun piecing together an answer to the question: "Why?"

According to linguist, activist and author Noam Chomsky, the United States must answer that very question. He says that refusal to answer "Why?" is to "choose to increase significantly the probability of further crimes of this kind."

Many other Americans, especially those who oppose the Bush administration’s latest plans for an attack on Iraq, agree. "Nobody has addressed the root problem as to why this happened and until we do we’re never going to be secure," says Yunus Fiske, a local activist and organizer of the 17-day Interfaith Peace Walk that began in Schenectady and will end in New York City on Sept. 11. "The root hasn’t been addressed because that implies criticizing ourselves, and we don’t want to criticize ourselves. It’s a person’s normal reaction to blame everyone else, but we really have to take a good look at ourselves and ask, ‘What role did we have to play in this?’ Until we do, there will never be security in America."

Fiske argues that our nation has an ugly international reputation for intervening in countries only when our economic interests are at stake. His view of U.S. foreign policy is similar to that of pundits like Chomsky and English journalist Robert Fisk, who both regularly state the unpleasant fact that throughout much of the world, the United States is regarded as a leading terrorist state. The list of examples such dissidents often cite includes past U.S. support for brutal dictators in Chile, Iran, the Philippines, El Salvador and others, the training and financing of rebels throughout the’80s in Nicaragua, where the resulting civil war cost hundreds of thousands of civilians their lives, and the Gulf War, after which Pentagon officials estimated the "collateral damage" of civilian deaths at 200,000.

"America needs to change its foreign policy," says Fiske. "Instead of looking for what we can get and what’s good for us and what’s going to benefit us, we need to realize that the people in these nations are human beings. They’re not there just for our exploitation."

Former Naval Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll maintains a similar view from a different vantage point: U.S. military experience dating back to the Korean War.

"The fundamental dynamics are that the U.S. is the most powerful nation in the world," says Carroll. "We are wielding hegemony around the world in many forms. We impose in economic, cultural, social ways, with our music and our clothes. Many people feel that their values and their mores are being threatened by this dominant American influence."

Carroll, who will be one of four speakers at a Sept. 11 Teach-in Memoriam at the University at Albany, believes that the Sept. 11 attackers’ rationale was driven by fear of the pervasiveness of American culture and values. That sentiment, he says, was the driving thought behind the forces that crashed into our symbolic landmarks one year ago. Due to our nation’s dominance, says Carroll, the individuals who carried out the attacks had to communicate through acts of terror: "the weapons of the weak against the powerful."

"That is the situation that came to focus on the 11th of September," says Carroll. "[The attackers said,] ‘Here’s your weakness and here’s how we’ll exploit it. Now will you leave us alone? Quit occupying our countries. Quit making war on Muslims.’"

And the threat of more war in the Middle East is of the highest concern to Carroll, who fears a spreading and possibly unifying resentment of the United States throughout the region should the United States preemptively attack Iraq.

"The U.S. has turned weapons against the Middle East for too long, and they ascribe the worst motives to us," says Carroll. "If we charge into Iraq under present circumstances, we will severely suffer in the long run."

Siena College Professor Karl Barbir holds a doctorate in Middle Eastern Studies. An American of Lebanese decent, Barbir also will speak at the 9/11 Teach-In Memoriam on the conflicting interpretations of why Sept. 11 happened. He says that Middle Eastern animosity spawned from inept American foreign-policy decisions and U.S. military interventions driven by oil interests is a widely accepted answer to why Middle Eastern countries resent our nation.

But Barbir doesn’t entirely blame American policymakers for the collective ill feelings toward the United States in the Middle East or elsewhere, saying that the virtual cultural isolation in which U.S. citizens live accounts for some of the resentment.

"A lot of Americans were bewildered by the attacks," said Barbir. "People were asking, ‘Who would hate us so much that they would do something like this?’ But in the ordinary course of their lives, most Americans don’t see the Middle East as something urgent or worth knowing about."

The end of ignorance is Barbir’s hope for what can be salvaged from the intellectual and emotional wreckage created by last year’s attacks. As for Americans not being educated about the Middle East, Barbir hopes the events of Sept. 11 will continue to bring a greater awareness of the region. Barbir says that the complexity and diversity of the Middle East (and the rest of the world, for that matter) coming to the forefront of American consciousness could be a seen as one of the few positives to emerge from the tragedy’s shadow.

"If you go to the chain bookstores, not to mention the independents, you’ll find tables just groaning with books on the Middle East," says Barbir. "I’ve never seen anything like that, and I’ve been teaching Middle Eastern history here for 25 years. Did it have to take two buildings coming down and the Pentagon being smashed? Well, I wish it weren’t that. I just wish that hadn’t happened and that people would learn that anyway."