How to Respond to Terror : A Strategy to Win

Bush’s Path is Mistaken - and Kerry Needs To Hear a Different Approach

Rabbi Michael Lerner on the Way to Respond to Terror and What Bush and Kerry Both Need to Know

Now George Bush Wants Us To Believe that the Iraq War

Will Protect us From Terror - When It Actually Is
Creating Terror!

by Rabbi Michael Lerner

George Bush has managed to create the very Terror
International that he claims to be defending us
against. In fact, he is intent on convincing Americans
that they are in danger—and that the war in Iraq will
protect us.

Truth is that there is a danger. There are people who
hate the U.S. But the Iraq will only intensifies that
hatred and recruits more terrorists. That hatred,
however, is not genetic, but situational, and we could
change the situation and we would dramatically reduce
the impulse toward terror.

America is the richest nation in a world in which one
out of every three people lives on less than $2 a day,
and 1.3 billion live on less than $1 a day. Many of
these people are near starvation. The U.S. has
organized global trade agreements that work to enrich
the rich and to further impoverish the poor. Millions
of people around the world have demonstrated against
these global pacts, but they do not have the power to
effectively challenge the impact of American
corporations backed the army of the U.S.

Along with American corporate dominance has come a
globalization of the ethos of selfishness and
materialism that is massively reenforced by the
dynamics of the competitive marketplace. In my books
Surplus Powerlessness, The Politics of Meaning, and
Spirit Matters I present detailed accounts of how the
logic of the world of work in advanced capitalist
societies has produced a spiritual crisis in the
Western world—because as people daily learn in the
world of work to adjust their thinking to the bottom
line of money and power, they simultaneously learn to
see other human beings primarily as objects to be
manipualted for the sake of advancing their own
interests, and this dynamic contributes to the
fostering of a narciessitic individual incapable of
genuinely caring about others, and hence incapable of
sustaining loving relationships, friendships, and
incapable of experiencing the grandeur of the universe
in anything but insrumental terms. Yet simultaneously,
people hate this tendency within themselves and within
others, and so there is a massive resurgence of
interest in religions and spiritualities as people seek
a way to overcome these dynamics that increasingly are
shaping their cultural and emotional worlds. Hence, the
surge in right-wing religious communities in the U.S.
and world-wide.

For people in the U.S., the breakdown of caring
relationships and traditional communities is buffered
by the growing material well-being that is made
possible by the American domination of conditions of
world trade, and the growing gap between the rich and
poor nations. But no such buffer exists for many people
in the 3rd world, who see the capitalist modernization
offered to them by American and Western corporate
dominance as laced with the values of the marketplace,
values that tend to undermine traditional communities
and to generate an ethos of selfishness and
materialism. Of course, in every 3rd world country
there is an elite, often supported by the US or other
Western powers, that has decided to work along with the
interests of global capital, and to benefit by becoming
the local representatives of Western power and
influence. In exchange for military support to keep
themselves in power, those elites are willing to serve
Western interests and to do their best to convince
their own people that the impoverishment that they are
experiencing at both the material and cultural levels
are inevitable costs for the benefit of cooperation
with the West and its "progress."

These elites sit on international committees that
ratify the global trade arrangements, and they meet
with people like Tom Friedman and other Western pundits
and politicians to affirm that their own people really
want "modernization" and the "democratic values" of the
West.

Actually, to be more precise, the elites of the third
world are divided between older feudal groups (like
those who run Saudi Arabia) who hope to maintain
themselves in power by giving U.S. corporations carte
blanche to exploit their natural and human
resources,but who want no change intheir political
arrangements, and another "modernizing" elite that
wants to see the Western model of democratic elections
and individual rights brought to their countries,
envisioning that they would then have the people as a
whole ratify the econmic inequalities in a democratic
way (it’s always more stable to have inequality bought
into by the masses and ratified democractically, as in
the U.S., than to have it imposed by force, as in Saudi
Arabia or many other countries). So these elites sing
the praises of democracy and individual rights, and
hope that the capitalist values that have produced such
success in the U.S. will take root in their own
countries.

Yet for many others in these countries, the
globalization of capital becomes defacto the
globalization of selfishness. They can see that as the
me-firstism and narcissism-generating qualities of the
"bottom line" consciousness becomes more powerful, the
traditional tribal, communal and familial sources of
support begin to dissolve. Increasingly, people are
left to fend for themselves, and there is no "safety
net" funded by the third world, because they are the
third world. International trade arrangements destroy
the market for many locally produced agricultural goods
or handcrated products, international companies come in
and buy up or enclose land making it impossible to move
animals to traditional grazing and water lands, and
then international corporations start to privatize
essential natural resources like water and to sell it
back to the people of the country at rates that are
prohibitive for those who had been living at
subsistence levels—all of which contributes ot the
collapse of the subsistence farming and village life in
which people had been living for thousands of years. So
what happens is that villages and traditional societies
either get physically uprooted, or become economically
impossible to sustain, and people are forced off their
lands and into the huge slums surrounding major cities,
where they live in horrific conditions, often
witnessing their children choosing between starvation,
crime, and prostitution.

They witness a withering of caring relationships as
more and more the values of "looking out for number
one" are sold to their children as "progress" and the
"realism" of the future.

It is important to note that the resentment at what the
West is bringing is not only an economic resentment,
but a cultural and spiritual resentment. And for good
reason.

Western societies are rightly proud of having created
democratic institutions. And the institutionalization
of human rights is a contribution that will remain a
major advance in the history of humanity. We who live
in the West have good reason to rejoice in these
aspects of our society-and to want to do all we can to
preserve and extend these accomplishments, and to offer
them to the rest of the world as well, because they
rest upon universal values that are appropriate for the
entire human race.

Yet we should also notice that Western societies have
developed a particular kind of market society based on
competition, individualism, materialism and
selfishness, and that these values are not good for the
U.S. and not good for the rest of the world either.
Market economies have championed a narrow notion of
rationality-so that institutions are judged efficient,
rational and productive when they produce lots of money
and power for those at the top. Anyone working in these
institutions quickly learns that the most important
thing they can do is to focus on "the bottom line"
(that is, the amount of money or power being
generated). People quickly learn to see others
primarily thorugh the frame of whether these others are
"useful" in advancing our own individual goals, and
using others to maximize our own advantage, or what is
called "looking out for number one," becomes the frame
through which all human relationships get measured.
Keep such a society functioning for decades and you
begin to see the emergence of personality types that
are self-absorbed, narcissistic, unable to care about
others, and highly successful in manipulating others.
Such people have developed the skills to "succeed" in
the marketplace, but the very talents that are rewarded
in the marketplace make these people very dysfunctional
when it comes to building friendships, loving
relationships and families, and so we see a decline in
family stability and a rapid increase in divorce and in
alienation and loneliness (including loneliness within
relationships, because people who are reared in such a
society find it increasingly difficult to trust
anyone).

The psychodynamics of this kind of society leave many
people feeling unhappy, distrustful of others, scared
that no one will really care for them in moments of
need, and fearful that their world may collapse at any
moment. For some, a quiet and abiding depression
becomes a way of life (sometimes countered by
medications or drugs or alcohol). For others, a
frenetic life style can momentarily drown the pain or
the fear. For still others, the immersion into a
religious or spiritual community provides an
alternative. So we see the emergence of fundamentalist
religions and an openness to various visions of
apocalypse. Yet in the advanced industrial societies,
all of this individual suffering is buffered by the
reality that global economic arrangements allow for an
expanding wealth that gets divided, albeit unequally,
in ways that provide material satisfactions that can
momentarily distract from spiritual crisis.

There is no such buffer in much of the Third World. The
entrance of global capital into those societies
provides a set of opportunities for a small elite, who
are able to convince themselves that everyone in their
society will be better off if these elites can make
deals with international capital to bring the marvels
of Western corporate life to the underdeveloped. In
fact, small middle classes emerge that benefit mightily
from the infusin of capital, and this can produce a
rise in the income level or wealth of the society as a
whole-though it is a rise that is never seen and
doesnot work for the benefit of the majority in those
countries. For the majority of people in the society,
the impact is quite different: and it is not only in
the deepening divide between rich and poor, but also
and primarily in the destruction of the ethos of
solidarity that existed in village societies, and its
replacement by an ethos of "looking out for number one"
that is fostered by the common sense of global capital.

I don’t want to glorify life in village subsistence
societies-it was often harsh and oppressive. Yet there
was a pervasive sense of community that made almost
everyone feel that they could count on each other for
caring-that there really was a social safety net which
would allow people to be taken care of. People felt
that they knew their place, and that they were part of
a society whose values extended beyond materialism to
reach a sense of larger purpose and meaning. In such
societies, families were patriarchal, hierarchical, and
often experienced as oppressive, but they were also
places in which everyone felt cared for and felt that
they had a role and a purpose for their lives. And the
ethos of mutual responsibility and caring , articulated
in the religious and spiritual systems and lived out in
daily life, was so strong that it became part of the
ethos of life even for those who had left the villages
and were living in the big cities.

For such societies, the introduction of global capital
has not produced universal happiness, but rather has
often meant a huge increase in social breakdown, family
breakdown, and a breakdown in established systems of
meaning and community. The freedom of the West, while
for some meaning a welcome liberation from oppressive
sexist and patriarchal and coercive practices, has for
many others meant a pressure to succumb to the "modern"
way of caring only for oneself and fending for oneself
in the competitive marketplace. Selfishness and
materialism have marched into these societies as the
unstated but very real concomitants of Western-style
corporate globalization, and the results have often
been felt to be distorting and undermining of all that
was good in the past.

There was a time during the Cold War when people in
these societies who wanted to resist these dynamics
turned to communism. But communism was itself
insensitive to the spiritual needs of these people, so
when the Soviet Union collapsed the resistance to the
values of the marketplace increasingly found expression
in various forms of religious fundamentalism.

Let me be clear that I oppose these fundamentalisms. In
my book Spirit Matters I argue against the
fundamentalist response to global capital, and for what
I call and Emancipatory Spirituality. Among the
elements of fundamentalism I critique: 1. The tendency
to believe that there is only one path to God, and that
they have it and others do not. 2. The tendency to
demean some "other" (often a domestic minority) as the
source of evil or the impediment to salvation 3.
Patriarchy and homophobia 4. The tendency to oppose
privacy and desire to control every aspect of life 5.
The tendency to deny the importance of rational
thinking and scientific inquiry 6. The tendency to deny
the value of pleasure and the tendency to think of
bodily needs as less important than "higher" needs. 7.
The willingness to subordinate one’s own critical
thinking to that of a supposedly divinely-inspired
leader.

Yet the appeal of fundamentalisms cannot be dismissed
as simply and solely a rejection of democracy and a
fear of freedom. We must understand that at least part
of its appeal is based on the hunger that people have
for a framework of meaning and purpose that transcends
the thinking of the competitive marketplace, affirms
community and affirms love and caring for each other,
social solidarity, and a non-utilitarian orientation to
the universe. All of this comes together in the way
that fundamentalisms in the third world (and even, to a
lesser extent, in the advanced industrial societies)
becomes a form of resistance to the worst aspects of
the globalization of selfishness that has been the
public face of the international capitalist
marketplace.

All of these concerns are particularly obvious in the
way that Islamic fundamentalism has fought to protect
"its" women from the scourge of marketplace
exploitation. Of course, much of this concern is
motivated by the desire of many men to keep women
safely within the bounds of patriarchal relationships.
But that is not the whole picture. When I lived in
Israel in the late 1980s and early 1990s I remember
many instances in which fundamentalists would burn down
bus stop ads that featured scantily-clothed women in
sexually provocative poses attempting to sell a product
by associating it with that sexual allure. The
commodification of women’s bodies and the experience of
many women in being used by men for sexual pleasure
without commitment as an essential element in the
"freedom" that the marketplace provides led many women
(including a small but significant number of former
feminists) to be attracted to communities in which
women were embedded in large families less concerned
about immediate sexual pleasure than about long-term
caring and commitment. Though Islamic societies have
often imposed restrictive activities and dress on
women, it is also true that in the past thirty years
many women have voluntarily put on the veil and covered
their bodies in both Jewish and Islamic fundamentalist
communities as a way of saying: "No, I am not available
to be commodified or turned into an object for the
sexual pleasure or fantasies of random men."

If Islamic and other fundamentalist communities have
seemed excessively uptight about matters of sexuality,
it is in part a response to what they perceive to be
the exploitative nature of the sexual marketplace.
Westerners have often reduced this to a repressed
longing on the part of fundamentalist men for sexual
pleasure denied them by the society, longings that
constantly threaten to break through unless they are
rigidly imposed. This is undoubtedly a sufficient
explanation for some, but it allows us to hide from
ourselves the other dimension in which these men
genuinely resent the invitations to lascivious-ness
that they have rejected in order to be part of a
society with different values. The inability of
Westerners to respect that kind of value choice, our
insistence that it can only be a product of
irrationality and psychological distortion, is for many
fundamentalists a proof of the moral arrogance and
chauvinism of the secularism that parades itself as the
height of universal tolerance.

So when capitalist societies use the excuse that they
are invading another country, in this case, Iraq, to
bring higher values to the people, don’t expect that
this is going to be taken seriously by many (except by
those who have already decided that they would be
better off trying to make it as individuals into the
small middle class and hence eagerly seek to welcome
the advent of global capital and its most powerful
champion, the U.S.). And when it is revealed that the
invader, in this case the US in Iraq, is establishing
not a democratic government but instead appointing a
government held in place by 135,000 U.S. troops
occupying the country, and when its prisons are
revealed to be embodiments of the very sexual acting-
out and distortions that everyone suspected was the
inevitable concomitant of Western rule, then even
though people could reasonably rejoice in the overthrow
of Saddam Hussein, many may nevertheless feel equally
threatened at the invading forces and their
international sponsors.

If we understand this larger framework, we can
understand why at least some people would be attracted
to Al Queda or other violent forms of resistance to the
globalization of capital, and why, though at first
their anger would primarily be directed against
domestic elites who are local proxies and prostitutes
for international capital (as Al Queda did when it
focused against Arab elites), they will eventually turn
to the international sponsors (symbolized most
powerfully by the World Trade Center and the Pentagon).

Similarly if we understand this larger framework, we
can also understand why the nearest example of a
capitalist society, Israel, would generate so much
anger, and why the people of the region would
continually link their anger at the US with anger at
Israel. I don’t want to discount the lasting impact of
anti-Semitism, except to note that it was an enduring
legacy in Islamic societies, but one which rarely
undermined the counter-legacy of good will and good
relations that existed between most Jews and most
Muslims for hundreds of years. Even when feudal Arab
regimes sought to demean Israel and championed the fate
of Palestinians who were fleeing their homes in
1947-48, fewer than 10,000 Arabs from the entire
Islamic world responded to the call for volunteers to
fight against the newly emerging Zionist state and its
army. Popular anger and resentment only grew to be a
powerful reality after decades of the Occupation of the
West Band and Gaza, and the history of home
demolitions, arbitrary imprisonments without trial or
charges of tens of thousands of Palestinian men,
humiliating body searches at endless check points that
prevented freedom of movement, and other forms of
collective punishment by the Israeli government against
the entire Palestinian population There, being enacted
in miniature, was the whole story of Western
humiliation of the Arab and Islamic world, and done
with an arrogance and insensitivity that was
infuriating. Although that anti-Israel anger might have
been more reasonably directed against their own Arab
elites and the international corporations who had made
alliances with those elites, their deflection onto
Israel was not without some foundation beyond pure
irrational anti-Semitism (which played a role as well).
So as someone who wants Israel to remain strong, I know
that Israel’s best interests lie in disentangling
itself from the web of institutions and values that
make it tilt toward identification with the
globalization of capital so that it can insted tilt
toward what I describe in detail in Spirit Matters as
the globalization of spirit.

It is only when we understand these larger dynamics
that we can possibly develop an effective counter-
strategy to protect ourselves from the scourge of
terrorism and protect Israel from future wars generated
by the lingering anger from this historical moment.

To explain the anger at Western imperialism, globalized
capital, and Israeli occupation is not to suggest that
the actions of the terrorists are therefore
"understandable" or acceptable. They are not. I’m
writing to counter them, not to encourage sympathy for
them. But the only way to develop a strategy to counter
them is to understand the basis of their appeal, and
then find a more effective way to address the
legitimate part of their appeal and separate that from
its hateful manifestation in terrorist activities.

And yes, there is a way to do that.

So here is what would be a far more effective way to
combat terror:

1. Let the United States initiate and take the
leadership in getting all the advanced industrial
societies to participate in a Global Marshall Plan that
would dedicate hundreds of billions of dollars each
year for the next thirty years with the aim of
eliminating hunger, homelessness, inadequate education
and inadequate health care in under-developed
countries. Let the U.S. then set up an international
body of internationally recognized spiritual leaders,
academics, health care workers, educators, and
community organizers to supervise the expenditures and
guarantee that they are used in ways that are not
siphoned off by selfish national leaders but instead
are used in creative ways to achieve the goals cited.

2. Let the U.S. initiate a program of global ecological
repair to undo the damage done by 150 years of
environmental irresponsibility by the advanced
industrial societies (including both capitalist and
socialist societies).

3. Let the U.S. require that every citizen give at
least two years of national service to be spent in
delivering services, providing training, education or
otherwise assisting in the implementation of the Global
Marshall plan.

4. Let the U.S. use the full weight of its resources
and power to push Israel to end the Occupation of the
West Bank and Gaza (along lines described in my book
The Geneva Accord and Other Strategies for Middle East
Peace, North Atlantic Books, 2004), and to then fund
the development of a Palestinian state that is
economically and politically viable, while providing
leadership in the creation of an international cartel
committed to providing compensation to Palestinian
refugees for their years of refugee-hood (on a sliding
fee scale according to current need).

5. Let the U.S. demonstrate in word and deed that it is
not trying to "buy infuence" but to genuinely respond
to a new set of priorities, embodying a New Bottom Line
of generosity and kindness.

6. Let the U.S. develop a new set of guidelines for
international trade which promote and reward ecological
safety and sustainability, workers’ rights, respect for
indigenous peoples and for the world’s multicultural
realities, and a clear commitment to promote the
wellbeing of the least powerful people on the planet.

7. Let the U.S. adopt the Social Responsibiity
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which requires
every corporation with an income of over $30 million a
year to get a new corporate charter every ten years,
which would only be granted to those corporations that
could demonstrate to a jury of ordinary citizens chosen
at random a satisfactory history of social
responsibility not only in the U.S. but n any other
countries in which it operates, sells goods or
services, or otherwise impacts on the life and
environment.

None of this is enough unless all this is done with a
willingness to atone for past misdeeds, approach other
countries in a spirit of cooperation and repentance,
and a commitment to not only giving to third world
countries but also learning from their histories and
traditions lessons that might be valuable for us as we
attempt to build a society based on generosity and
open-heartedness.

Sounds visionary? Well, yes, it is meant to be that.
But it often turns out that the visionary approach is
far more practical than the approaches of the
pragmatists who led us into the world in which
terrorists struck on 9/11 and into the war in Iraq
where continued US insensitivity and irresponsibility
has generated far ore hatred toward the U.S. than had
ever existed there previously.

Going this route does not mean that we have to
unilaterally dismantle our armed services (though some
disarmament of a unilateral sort would be an important
step. Still, we can continue to have searches at
airports, and we can continue to have a strong army.
But lets get real: none of that is going to protect
us!!! The military approach is a dead end or worse-it
simply generates more and more terrorists. We could
have learned that from Israel’s failed strategy of
Occupation in the West Bank and Gaza. Instead, we
copied a failed strategy, and as a result have managed
to create alienation and anger at us from an Iraqi
population that might plausibly, had we acted with
sensitivity and nuance to the conerns of a stragegy
based on generosity, rejoiced in having been liberated
from Saddam Hussein by the United States.

This is not a matter of a few changes in tone or a few
overtures to the United Nations (though that is part of
the picture). What I’m talking about is a sea change in
our orientation to the world. That’s what we did when
we transcended the isolationism of the early 20th
century in order to fight the war against Hitler, and
that is what is needed if we are to effectively fight
the war on terror. This sea change is a change toward
taking seriously our highest values, and seeking to
embody them in our actual activities in the world.

It is toward that end that I created The Tikkun
Community as an interfaith organization dedicated to
this kind of worldview, and I hope that if you haven’t
already done so, you’ll read our Core Vision at
www.tikkun.org, or my book Spirit Matters: Global
Healing and the Wisdom of the Soul, and then actually
JOIN the Tikkun Community and help us build it in your
community (either on line or by calling Stephanie at
510 644 1200). The kinds of changes I’m talking about
are achievable even though visionary, and they are
absolutely necessary if we are to protect ourselves
effectively from terrorism.

This is the opposite of the direction charted by George
Bush. And unfortunately, it doesn’t have much in common
with those Democrats whose only critique of Bush is
that he is not being smart in implementing his strategy
to quash the terrorists, and that they could do it
better. I want to be respectful and compassionate
toward people in politics who disagree with me on these
issues, but I also want to challenge them to recognize
and engage with the kind of analysis Im putting forward
here. This is a different strategy-and one that is
rarely articulated in the public discourse
(unfortunately, not much by people on the Left either
who tend to confine their discourse to what they are
against rather than what they are for, and who often
tend to dismiss language about generosity and open-
heartedness as New Age mush rather than understanding
that it is in fact a serious alternative worldview . It
is my contention that I am presenting (albeit in
outline form) , a strategy that would work-and for that
reason, you have both idealistic and very pragmatic
reasons to want to do what you can to bring these ideas
to the attention of your friends and everyone else you
know. Please feel free to circulate this statement
widely, to bring it to the attention of the media and
your elected officials, and in any other way that you
can to help get this perspective discussed in the
public sphere.

In the meantime, let me bless you for having taken the
time to read this overly long statement. I hope to
reprint it in Tikkun, and to invite those who disagree
with it to argue against me (because it is in that kind
of free-wheeling exchange of ideas that the best ideas
eventually emerge, and I’ve learned and changed some of
my own ideas by having them challenged in Tikkun
magazine!). ’

I’m sending this out on the eve of Shavuot, the Jewish
Holiday commemorating the giving of the Torah on Mt.
Sinai some 3200 years ago. Since then, there have been
many developments in the way that that Torah has been
understood. So this little article I’ve just written is
my way of applying some of the principles of Torah to
the present moment-and as testimony to the fact that
the people dedicated to the original vision of a world
based on love, justice and peace continue to seek ways
to embody that vision in the world.

http://www.tikkun.org/index.cfm/action/current/article/242.html