L AST WEDNESDAY, author and public speaker Dinesh D'Souza spoke to a capacity crowd in Gilmer Hall Auditorium on the subject: "Why They Hate Us: America and Its Enemies." After completing his lecture, D'Souza took questions, and one audience member asked, "If this whole lecture is on why they hate us, then shouldn't we talk more about 'them'? Shouldn't we probe deeper into the issue and try to see things from their point of view?" D'Souza replied, "We are not trying to foster a dialogue with bin Laden. We need to foster an intelligent patriotism based on who we are." D'Souza is right that what is needed is "intelligent patriotism" - however, ignoring or over-simplifying the motivations of the terrorists who attacked on Sept. 11 is far from it.
Intelligent patriotism should include critical thinking, something which has been lacking in the media's, the government's and various experts' answers to that fundamental question: Why do they hate us so much? It requires looking into U.S. foreign policies and the problems - and resentments - they have caused abroad. It requires being brave enough, and secure enough in who we are, to confront our failings so that we can try to rectify them.
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When it comes to how the attacks happened, information abounds. There are time lines, video clips, analyses of the failure of airport security, and accounts of how the terrorists lived here for months - even years - while plotting the attack. When it comes to why, however, less has been said. The explanations revolve around the idea that anti-American terrorist groups simply hate American ideals, and it is often left at that. D'Souza's conclusion was that the "uniquely American" idea that people have "the right to script [their] own lives" is opposed by countries and peoples who hold fundamentalist values. In national news and media, explanations for why the terrorists attacked the United States revolve around the terrorists "hating freedom." President George W. Bush has said the terrorists attacked the United States because "they can't stand freedom." In his address to the nation on the evening of Sept. 11, he said, "America was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world."
While those sentiments may be true, they do not tell the whole story. The actions of the U.S. government in the Middle East cannot be left out of the discussion. Some foreign policy analysts have pointed specifically to the United States' involvement in the Israel-Palestine conflict, something which Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the attacks on the United States, is known to resent. Time magazine reports that anti-American sentiment abroad is centered around the United States's political support of Israel, and has grown due to "the fact that Israel has used U.S.-supplied F-16s and Apache helicopters against Palestinians" ("Attack Q&A," Sept. 20).
The United States' continued involvement in Iraqi affairs is another source of resentment, for bin Laden specifically but also for others who oppose the presence of American forces in the region. Considering what that presence has meant for people there, it is not hard to understand why they might be resentful. The Persian Gulf War resulted in the deaths of an estimated 113,000 Iraqi civilians in just the first few weeks of the official war. America's periodic aerial bombardment, conducted under the presidencies of George Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton, as well as the embargoes against Iraq placed by those two presidents, have caused suffering and death for many Iraqi civilians. Each month, it is estimated that the embargoes result in the death by starvation of 4,000 to 7,000 Iraqi civilians.
Other foreign policy analysts posit that people don't hate America because of its freedom, but because the U.S. government aids the suppression of the freedom of others around the world, in the Middle East in particular. Experts on the Middle East observe that the United States has repeatedly thrown its weight behind authoritarian regimes in Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, Algeria and Jordan, among other places ("The media's Islamic blind spot," Salon Magazine, Sept. 25). The United States supports these regimes in order to promote stability, but, experts argue, it is at the cost of democracy because these governments deprive their citizens of basic freedoms.
It may be easier not to confront problems in U.S. foreign policies because of the feeling that doing anything but asserting the greatness of America and American policies is somehow unpatriotic. It is not. Americans can celebrate the things that make America great, but we must also recognize our flaws and our failings. Loving your country with a critical eye - not blindly, but with the purpose of recognizing its faults and striving to make it better - may be the best kind of patriotism of all.
(Laura Sahramaa is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. She can be reached at lsahramaa@cavalierdaily.com.)
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