Section
1 1. The Terrorist Attack
on America and Its Consequences Throughout most of the
twentieth century, citizens in the United States enjoyed a
unique orientation toward the rest of the world. Although
the country became a superpower in international politics,
its citizens stood largely isolated from direct conflict
with people of other nations. The eastern and western
borders of the United States were protected by great oceans.
Its northern and southern borders were safe thanks to
friendly neighbors: Canada to the north and Mexico to the
south. Although the U.S. had fought wars with both nations
in earlier times, each border was militarily undefended on
both sides throughout the twentieth century. In contrast to Europe, where
most nations had fought two world wars with neighboring
states--citizens and politicians in the United States were
blessed by splendid isolation from international aggression.
As a result, they could more clearly separate domestic
politics from international politics. Both Democrats and
Republicans in office separated politics and home from
politics abroad with the simple claim, "Politics stops at
the water's edge." Few countries elsewhere in the world
could segregate foreign policy from domestic life so
effectively. The attack:
Why? On September 11, 2001, the
United States became more like other nations by suffering a
foreign attack on its land. It was attacked, however, not by
a foreign state but by foreigners of various middle eastern
nationalities. They were assumed to be operating under the
direction of Al Qaeda, a terrorist organization of radical
muslim extremists based in Afghanistan and led by Osama bin
Laden, a Saudi. By crashing huge airplanes into the World
Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington,
D.C., the terrorists killed themselves and almost 3,000
innocent people, mostly Americans but also hundreds of other
nationals.[1] Many Americans were almost
as baffled as shocked by the attack. They could not
understand what caused the foreign terrorists to hate us
enough to sacrifice their lives to inflict such damage on
America. Prior to the attack, almost 75 percent of the
public thought that the U.S. was viewed "favorably" by the
rest of the world, and only 4 percent thought that it was
viewed "very unfavorably."[2]
Speaking to a joint session of Congress for the first time
after the attack and addressing the nation over television,
President George W. Bush asked the baffling question and
gave this answer: Of course that was a simple,
misleading explanation, but not entirely untrue. Clearly the
freedom of expression in our mass media allows for plenty of
material consumption, violence, and nudity. The American
lifestyle--which was widely advertised through the global
media--was resented and even hated in deeply religious
lands, where it was perceived many muslims in the Middle
East as impious, if not profane. But a more adequate
explanation of the terrorists' motive lies in the United
States' international reach and role: its foreign policies
and its global economic and military power. One American
reporter offered three reasons why many foreigners hate the
United States:[4] 2. On almost every
important conflict between the Palestinians and the
Israelis, the United States sides with Israel, which also
receives--on a per capital basis--the highest share of
U.S. foreign aid.[5] 3. American culture,
spread world-wide through mass media, tends to infect and
smother other cultures, and--especially for non-European
societies--it represents the worst form of cultural
"Westoxication." In truth, American foreign
policy had always affected American society in important
ways, but the linkage was generally unclear to the average
citizen, who grasped the connection only under war-like
conditions (hot or cold). Absent an identifiable foreign
enemy, most citizens drew few connections between foreign
affairs and their personal lives. Given that there were 15
Saudis among the 19 hijackers who commanded the airplanes in
the September 11 attack and that the al Qaeda network was
also headed by Saudi Osama bin Laden, many Americans began
re-examining the United States' relationship with Saudi
Arabia--a major source of oil for the U.S. Drunk on foreign oil:
With only about 5 percent of the world's population, the
United States, consumes about 25 percent (19 million
barrels) of the total daily consumption of 76
million.[6]
(Compare this to Russia, where 150 million people,
representing roughly 3 percent of the world's population,
use only about 2.4 million barrels percent of the world's
oil, just about 3 percent.)[7]
The United States is itself a major oil producer, accounting
for about 12 percent of the world's output in 2000 (about
the same as Saudi Arabia).[8]
However, the U.S. consumes virtually all of its production
and depends on foreign sources for more than what it
produces.[9] Astute observers of American
politics have long recognized the price paid for its
dependence on foreign oil. In addition to the cost of oil
itself, the U.S. pays dearly for the military defense of
oil-exporting Middle Eastern countries. A letter to the
Editor of the New York Times, notes additional costs
"in terms of America's international reputation and moral
credibility: our appetite for foreign fossil fuels has
created a long history of unsavory marriages of convenience
with petrodespots, generalissimos and fomenters of
terrorism."[10] If not the most unsavory of
its marriages for oil, the U.S.'s wedding with Saudi Arabia
was the grandest of its unsavory marriages. When oil was
discovered in the Arabian peninsula around 1930, the United
States began courting the desert kingdom. American companies
helped create the state oil company, Aramco, and American
influence returned after the 1973 Arab oil embargo. Indeed,
in 1991 when Iraq invaded Kuwait, the U.S. moved quickly
against Iraq in large part to protect Saudi Arabia--and its
marriage for oil. Prior to the September 11 attack, the U.S.
and Saudi governments had a cozy relationship: the Saudis
even sold oil to the United States below world prices to
retain diplomatic favor- despite the world economic downturn
and falling oil prices.[11]
Since the attack, angry young Saudis outside the ruling
family became more outspoken in blaming their country's
economic deterioration on the U.S., while fundamentalist
muslims (there are many among the Saudis) cursed the
presence of the infidel American troops based there during
the war with Iraq. An uneasy royal family, which has
maintained its autocratic rule despite the wave of democracy
across the world, began to speak of their separate
interests, particularly with regard to their opposing
positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Demanding more to
drink: Why do we Americans consume so much oil? We burn
it mostly for transportation, which consumes 65 percent of
all domestic usage--mostly in passenger vehicles. Indeed,
American cars and sport-utility vehicles alone consume about
10 percent of the global daily consumption of oil. In part,
because the United States has neglected the development of
efficient travel by rail, personal travel in American
society is mostly by automobiles, which are are notoriously
large and fuel-inefficient. Travel by personal automobiles
is encouraged by low taxes on gasoline, which makes fuel
quite cheap. In April 2001, Americans paid about $0.41 for a
liter of gasoline, which was about half the cost per liter
in European countries like France, Germany, Italy, Spain,
and Britain. Nevertheless, a survey in May 2001 found that
60 percent of the U.S. public thought the price of gasoline
was "a major problem" and 19 percent saw it as a "crisis"
for the country. When asked who is to blame for the high
price of oil, most Americans pinned a "great deal" of the
blame on those who produced the oil (52 percent cited U.S.
oil companies and 44 cited foreign countries), but only 22
percent blamed "American consumers"--those who guzzled the
oil in the first place. Fueling patriotism:
During the last decade, for instance, few knew that their
gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles were economically viable
largely because the United States reliably obtained nearly
twenty percent of its oil from Saudi Arabia, an undemocratic
monarchy and religiously intolerant state. A reporter for
the New York Times interviewed people filling their
SUVs at a small-town gas station in Wayne, New Jersey. When
informed that American dependence on oil might indirectly
promote terrorism, one woman said, "I never thought of it
that way--that we should be conserving more." Another said,
"I don't think it's unpatriotic to use so much gas. It's
very patriotic. It's our way of life." Fortunately,
political leaders are beginning to speak out on the linkage
between American dependence on foreign oil and our current
problem with international terrorism. Edward L. Morse,
former assistant secretary of state for international energy
policy in the 1980s under President Reagan, said, "The stark
truth is that we're dependent on this country [Saudi
Arabia] that directly or indirectly finances people who
are a direct threat to you and me as individuals." Since
September 11, some leading thinkers have proposed that the
U.S. should turn away from Saudi Arabia and toward Russia
for its major source of oil abroad. Linking policy abroad to
life at home: Although most Americans may still be only
dimly aware of linkage between our demand for Middle East
oil and our status as a target for Middle East terrorists,
the number of citizens who think about the consequences of
our foreign involvements has increased since September 11. A
unique pre-post comparison of public opinion comes from two
national surveys of citizens' views on international
affairs. The PEW Research Center had conducted a survey of
2,002 people from August 21 to September 5, 2001. After the
September 11 attack, PEW arranged for a call back during
October 15-21, and reinterviewed 1,281 of the same
respondents. Overall, the researchers found "a new
internationalist sentiment among the public." For example,
before September 11, only 48 percent of the respondents said
that the U.S. should take into account its allies' interests
in its foreign policies, but after September 11, 59 percent
(of the same respondents) favored taking into account the
views and interests of its allies. A later poll taken on
November 1-4, found that 81 percent of respondents favored
the U.S. taking "an active part" in world affairs, "the
highest level since the end of World War II." Moreover,
despite the United States' squabbles with the United
Nations, which led to the U.S. government's failure to pay
over $500 million in back dues to the U.N., 70 percent of
the respondents also agreed that "the United States should
cooperate fully with the United Nations." In fact, just two
weeks after the September 11 attack, the House of
Representatives quickly, and by a voice vote, passed a bill
(which had been stalled in Congress for months) to release
the money that the U.S. owed to the U.N. Suddenly, U.S.
lawmakers also became more supportive of international
cooperation.
1. Despite
upholding democracy as an ideal, Americans support
authoritarian governments when it serves their
interests--e.g., during the Cold War, when even dictators
were included in the "Free World" as long as they were
anti-communist; and even now, when nations possess
something that the United States wants, such as
oil.