Are We Now Becoming the Terrorists? Essay -- September 11 Terrorism Es

Are We Now Becoming the Terrorists?   act of terrorism is a weapon of the weak. Shut out of the great conversations that shape our histories and unavailing to control the grand forces that shape our destinies, terrorists strike out in smouldering desperation to force those they have identified as their oppressors to pay economic aid to the plight of the alienated and to hear the terrorists demands. The levelts of September 11 were just such(prenominal) a gesture. The horror we felt watching a jet flown intentionally into a tall building and watching people leap to their deaths to omit the flames and collapse of the ruined skyscrapers filled us with a strange admiration and a feeling of helplessness. We felt forced to pay attention.  The first interrogative mood on everyones lips was what can we do? What can we do to prevent this from happening again? What can we do to punish those responsible? How we answer these questions volition decide whether we live in a civi lization worth defending, or if we, too, are weak.     This unprecedented attack on American soil brings into concentre the connections between our freedoms, our security, and the international system. Our choices over what to do are constrained by the ways these parts of our lives are connected. Our leaders and representatives, responding to the theories and analyses of their advisors and of the think tanks that dedicate themselves to perusing such questions, have already begun to speak of September 11 as this generations Pearl Harbor and the need to prepare for war, and of the trade-offs we will have to befuddle for our security. Their first responses - and those of many of us - are to lash out at those who have wronged us.     However, to lash out flat is a path troubled with n... ...saster relief and peacekeepers, but we are the single largest supplier of arms to the already intensely violent Middle East. And because Israel is our strategic ally in the reg ion, we wont even allow discussion of whether its policies towards Palestinians are racist.     If we are to do anything, we must be ready to take a path more difficult than anyone has suggested so far. We must be ready to be thoughtful and sober, and to look for political solutions to the problems in the world that are now producing the threats to our security. Today, we feel like now is the time to act. Our pain, our helplessness, our frustration at discovering we are vulnerable makes us requisite to take control over our lives again. We are ready to retaliate against acts of smouldering desperation with anger and despair. But now is not the time to reverse terrorists ourselves.