Every American remembers how the events of September 11 felt. We remember where we were when we heard the grim news and saw the towers crumble to the ground. We remember our shock at seeing such a violent scene in our own backyard. We remember the immediate pangs of visceral anxiety mixed with fear and hatred. And most vividly, we remember our seething desire for revenge – to receive our just wergild from those responsible in the form of carpet bombs and invasions.
And we received it. As bombs fell on Kandahar and Baghdad, it felt oddly good to know that the innocent lives lost that day would be avenged.
But where did this bloodletting instinct get us as a nation?
It got us mired in two intractable wars, alienated large segments of an entire faith and left thousands more Americans dead. Indeed, the very conflicts intended to make Americans safer from acts of terrorism only gave rise to a new generation of zealots.
So when Faisal Shahzad leaves a Nissan Pathfinder in New York’s Times Square loaded with a homemade explosive, it appears to be time for a gut check. We must consider the plausibility of another attack on American soil and how we as a nation will, and more importantly should, respond.
Today, a new more shadowy form of extremism stands in opposition to the United States. Known widely by the ominously vague term “The Narrative,” Muslim extremists from Yemen to Denver are being radicalized by a particularly simple and intoxicating recruiting tactic.
Playing on growing anti-American sentiments in the Muslim world, Al Qaeda and other organizations preach over the Internet and in coffee shops that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are just the two most salient examples of an American-led Western crusade against Islam. Based on this narrative, newly radicalized apostles are expected to fight back violently on behalf of their family and faith.
This civilizational duel pits Islam against America. And while the vast majority of all Muslims despise such irrationality and violence, it manages to enrage the socially marginal and the criminally insane.
Most notably today, for organizations like Al Qaeda, The Narrative allows them to virally reach out to previously unreachable locales such as Bridgeport, Conn., or Minneapolis. The Narrative creates terrorism from a process akin to spontaneous combustion. No longer capable of traditional recruiting due to increased global vigilance, The Narrative has taken on a more diffuse nature. Its decentralized nature allows terrorist groups licking their wounds to continue to operate.
Shahzad is simply the most recent example in a string of terrorist plots in the United States. US Army Maj. Nidal Hasan killed 13 people at Fort Hood last year after reaching out to a radical cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki. And let us not forget the Christmas Day bomber or the countless arrests made each month by the FBI in regards to terrorism.
Examples abound of attempted acts of terrorism; the consensus in the national security community seems to be that we must prepare for the worst.
While the concept of inevitability scares the daylights out of me, there is no way to prevent every potential individual terrorist plot. Even national security veterans such as Richard Clarke appear convinced that how we react to an act of terrorism is equally as important as how we prevent it.
Therefore, as a nation, we need to combat our chronic, but far too natural, desire to seek retaliation. We need a paradigm shift when it comes to national security: no longer should a terrorist attack mean conformity and a spike in groupthink. No more cartes blanches for needless wars simply because we hurt.
Instead, our reaction must be one of coming together to right the wrongs that underlie the act of terrorism. Bombs at times are tactically necessary, but they must always be overshadowed by development and diplomacy – even in the face of national catastrophe.
Investment and open-armed diplomacy are the only ways to remind the next generation of Muslims that they have a stake in the global community’s future, a community where the United States is a benevolent partner.
And what better time to prove one’s commitment to rapprochement with a nebulous enemy than at one’s weakest and most vulnerable moment? When a nation might be justified in lashing out violently but refrains, that is when there is the most potential for reconciliation.
In my view, one Peace Corps participant goes much further than one soldier in both symbolically and tangibly combating terrorism. Radicalism would drastically decrease if families from Egypt to Somalia could provide food, health care and education for their children thanks to increased American investment.
Going forward, we as citizens and leaders must honor the memory of the victims of 9/11 by not falling prey to the vicious cycle of inane violence which currently defines the war on terror.