FAITH, HOPE, AND CLARITY.(9-11-01 terrorist attacks: eight books)

The initial response of most cultural and political critics to the attacks of September 11th--a completely unanticipated atrocity carried out by an organization that few people in the West had ever heard of and whose intentions are still not entirely comprehensible--was: It just proves what I've always said. The attacks were treated as geopolitics for dummies, confirming conclusions that sensible observers had reached long before. September 11th showed that the United States is hated by many good people around the world because it is an imperial bully; the United States is hated by many bad people around the world because it is a beacon of freedom and opportunity; Islam is a civilization irredeemably hostile to Western values; Islam is a civilization assimilating Western values; globalization has gone too far; globalization has not gone far enough; Arafat is a terrorist; Zionism is racism; movies are too violent; and postmodernism is dead. The surprising thing about most of the published reflections on September 11th is how devoid of surprise they are. They are so devoid of surprise as to be almost devoid of thought.

If Germany invaded France without warning tomorrow, it is unlikely that the world would take it as the occasion for a referendum on the question Is France good or bad? Or, even more imponderable, La France, qu'est-ce que c'est? But many people did seize on September 11th as an opportunity to look into the American soul. This was true not only of people who believed that the United States "had it coming"; it was true of people who believed that the United States was "worth defending." Since no one thought that the attacks were justified, or that they should go unpunished, or that they were in any sense deserved by the people who were killed in them, this wasn't the most logical response. But it was natural. People who walk away from a car crash in which they might have died, or who narrowly escape drowning, sometimes react by reassessing their entire lives--as though the accident were a judgment. It wasn't; it was an accident. Even if they were driving a little too fast or swimming a little too far out, the meaning of their whole way of life was not at stake. But they often feel that it was, and September 11th produced this effect. For many Americans, it suddenly felt as though we weren't quite who we thought we were. And this is why it is so disappointing to be told, in the books published so far on the "meaning" of September 11th, what we have always been told about ourselves. Possibly there is consolation in this, but consolation is not one of the goals of critical thought.

Anti-Americanism is the view that the United States is basically a global bad guy, a nation that was founded on the impulses of materialism and expansionism, and that is getting more materialist and expansionist every decade. This school of thought needs to be distinguished from what might be called dissenting patriotism, which is the view that the United States is basically a virtuous republic that has recently been betrayed by runaway corporate capitalism and by the emergence of a national-security state contemptuous of individual liberties and international law. Noam Chomsky belongs to the first school.

The commercial success of Chomsky's "9-11" (Seven Stories; $8.95), which was sent to the printer less than five weeks after the attacks, and which became a best-seller, is more interesting than the book itself, which consists of transcripts of interviews Chomsky gave, mostly to foreign journalists, right after September 11th. Chomsky's comments follow from the view that, in his words, "the U.S. itself is a leading terrorist state," a position that he has maintained for many years, and in support of which he offers, in this book, a number of illustrations, including the American destruction of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, in 1998, and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children as a result of economic sanctions first imposed in 1990. Such actions, he believes, are only the latest chapter in the subjugation of the globe by the North Atlantic powers which has been under way since the fifteenth century.

Chomsky does not suggest that the September 11th attacks were a legitimate response ...