Two days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, I found myself terrified at what I saw as the fundamental conflict between a 'free society' and a 'safe society', and the potential ramifications of a blind focus on building the latter. With this in mind, and worried that I could already see the signs that we were heading down the wrong path, I wrote and submitted the following letter to the op-ed section of the New York Times:
Let’s Not Let Today’s Emotions Determine Tomorrow’s World
Make no mistake; I’m as furious as any American about what happened on Tuesday morning. From a porch 30 blocks north of the World Trade Center, I watched in stomach twisting horror as an unknown enemy laid siege to lower Manhattan. In less than two hours, I had seen through teary eyes the so-called center of the world learn that along with a global economy, comes a globalism of terror. Now, as America digs its way out of the rubble and Americans try to clear their mental ruins, our county is faced with perhaps its most important decision since the second World War. What is the right course of action?
This is a tricky question because, like so many others in life, it has multiple components. What is the right course of action to punish the organization(s) responsible for this act? What is the right course of action to assuage the families of the victims? What is the right course of action to ensure that this never happens again? And most importantly, what is the right course of action to help create the best possible world for the future?
As a country, we seem to be dangerously hung up on the first of these questions. While this is understandable because this is the one most fueled by emotion and we are still only beginning to realize the horrific specter of our losses, we need to be extremely careful not to let rage take the place of rational thought in determining our personal and national actions.
Over the last two days, I have seen and heard a number of frightening instances that lead me to believe that many of us are choosing the wrong path. After Friday’s Hour Of Prayer at the National Cathedral, Frederick Graham (who’s father Billy Graham, led one of the prayers) told a CNN reporter that until the day when Jesus Christ returned to walk on Earth again, we needed to be prepared to be in a long war, and that rather than place American soldiers in danger, we should not hesitate to use weapons of mass destruction to “eliminate our enemies”. Aside from the idiocy of using weapons of mass destruction against so scattered an enemy, this confusion of religion and warfare can only help to cloud the issues at hand and hinder the construction of an intelligent, calculated response.
On a personal level, many people seem to have now resorted to extreme nationalism as a way to deal with our “quiet anger”. I watched on Thursday as an SUV filled with four men and decorated with multiple American flags, drove up next to a cab driver of supposedly Arabic descent. Before the light turned green, all four men had screamed at this innocent man, called him a terrorist and yelled for him to go home. Is this American behavior or is this using patriotism as a mask for hatred?
America is undoubtedly a strong nation with an unparalleled military. However, what makes our country unique is our strength of mind. It always has been, and I pray it will continue to be. Beginning with the development of a system of government that stands as a model for countries worldwide nearly 200 years later, to leading the industrial revolution, to being the only nation to put a man on the moon, ours has always been a conquest of thought. Let’s make sure that we think before we set the tone of the new millennium.
Now, more than two years later, we can look back and judge whether those initial concerns were well founded, and more importantly, what is the best foreign policy to ensure the safest possible America without sacrificing 'America' the idea.
Let's establish something first: There will be other terrorist strikes in the US. As long as we live in a free country, it will be impossible to prevent all future attacks and naive to assume that we could. Considering the reaction to the first set of attacks on American soil, and the reverberations that are still being felt, how do we expect to react to the next set of attacks?
This is a very important question because without considering it ahead of time, we run the risk of losing control of our own destiny. Peter Senge wrote extensively on the idea of "scenario planning" in his book, Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership. In the book, he describes how the Dutch Royal Shell company employs scenario planning to determine all likely courses for the global economy, and then prepares for each.
If we apply this concept of scenario planning to possible reactions to future attacks on the US, what do we come up with? How would we (the American people) 'ideally' react? Are there things that can be done in the present to influence these future reactions and thereby nudge us towards the right path? How do we prepare, knowing full well that a 'free society' and a perfectly 'safe society' don't necessarily support each other.