Enough Self-Deprecation

In trying to come to terms with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, some academics have argued that we need to examine how U.S. policy prompted the anger that led to these horrendous acts. Most of these arguments have examined Osama bin Laden’s fatwa against America in great detail: Was U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia and its support for its royal family responsible? Or, did the continuing sanctions against Iraq cause bin Laden’s rage? Was it U.S. support for Israel?

Whether or not these professors are assigning moral blame to the U.S. for the terrorist acts, they are saying, essentially, that we are reaping what we have sown.

In a sense, they are correct. It is impossible to deny that aspects of U.S. foreign policy—in particular our support of fundamentalist guerilla fighters in Afghanistan during their war with the Soviet Union and tolerance of the extreme interpretation of Islam being taught by Wahhabism-based schools in Saudi Arabia—contributed to the development of radical Islamist sentiments throughout the Muslim world. It is clear that in encouraging pan-Islamism to exorcize the Soviet demon, we helped create the Islamist demon of today.

However, professors are deluding themselves and their audiences when they say that we are responsible for the conditions leading to the current violence while refusing to examine other influences. The relationships we are confronting are extraordinarily complex and multifaceted, whereas the intellectuals would have us believe that our policies are almost solely responsible for the widespread political and moral turmoil in the Muslim world today. Very few professors I have heard have asked the question, “What is unique about Islam that is creating this violence?” or, “Why are all but one Islamic country undemocratic?” There is a basic—and misguided—assumption that if something is wrong it must be America’s fault.

Indeed, there is a prevailing intellectual squeamishness toward condemning what is truly wrong in other societies. When an influential Westerner stands up for the plurality and diversity of modern Western civilization, as Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi did when he remarked, “We must be aware of the superiority of our civilization, a system that has guaranteed well-being, respect for human rights and—in contrast with Islamic countries—respect for religious and political rights,” the hand-wringers and head-shakers immediately start sermonizing about the dangers of universalism.

In the past, Islam was more tolerant than the West, and Westerners had much to learn from Muslims. As Europe stumbled through the Dark Ages, it was the Muslim world that was the bearer of classical learning. While European civil society was virtually non-existent, Muslims were making important discoveries in mathematics and medicine. But the present is what occupies us; today the least free and most potentially destabilizing states of the world are disproportionately Muslim. Berlusconi did not say that Christianity or the West is intrinsically better than Islam, but that the institutions created in modern Western countries are better than those of modern Islamic countries. Can we honestly disagree?

Are we too embarrassed by the West’s history of colonialism and overcome by guilt to realize that the freedom we enjoy in Western countries is our most valuable export to non-Western ones? Should we be deterred by those who seek to dilute the strength of our worldwide efforts at expanding freedom and democracy by saying that our values conflict with “Asian values” or “Islamic values”? The slaughtered demonstrators of Tiananmen Square and the young Internet-surfers in Teheran belie such generalizations. Iran and China will never look like America, nor should they, but anyone who says a little democracy and freedom of expression would not make these nations better places is sacrificing morality for political correctness.

To many a Harvard intellectual this idea is probably seems so unfathomable as not to be worthy of their “enlightened” discourse. To them, America’s failure to adequately defend Bosnia in the early 1990s demonstrates our religious bias against Muslims, while the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia to protect the Kosovar Muslims is a display of U.S. attempts at hegemony. The U.S.-imposed sanctions on Iraq are responsible for 1.5 million children’s deaths, while Saddam Hussein is absolved of responsibility for delaying the implementation of the oil-for-food program for more than two years and for accumulating $6 billion in personal wealth while his people starved. Some, such as Albertson Professor of Middle Eastern Studies and Chair of the Near Eastern language and civilizations department William A. Graham, have argued that even if Hussein is immediately responsible for the Iraqi people’s suffering, the U.S. is still to blame for letting itself be perceived as the cause. Even when it is clear that fault lies elsewhere, pundits still find a way to blame America.

If we truly want to improve the lives of poor and oppressed peoples throughout the Arab and wider Muslim world, it will require more engagement from the United States, not less. But before we can begin this process, it will take a realization in this country of the value of our ideals and an explicit rejection of the moral relativism pervasive at places like Harvard.

Andrew P. Winerman ’04 lives in Cabot House.