| by Stanko Cerovic Born in Podjorica in 1951, Stanko Cerovic is the 
      director of the Serbo-Croatian editorial department of Radio France 
      Internationale. Why Do We Hate Ourselves?  Somewhere a rift appeared when on September 11th, 
      2001, the towers of the World Trade Center collapsed. A terrible rift, 
      judging by the global shock to which it gave rise in every country of the 
      world and across all social strata. But it was a strange fissure, too, 
      impossible to place. Where was it? At the center of the global empire? At 
      the heart of modern history? In the foundation of human consciousness or 
      even its unconsciousness? Was it undermining the religion of the elites or 
      that of the masses? Eradicating the eternity of the market or the eternity 
      of entertainment? Indescribable and indefinable but, for a few days at 
      least, undeniable and more real than the world that surrounds us, calling 
      our personal perception of the world into question. 
 From this rift emanated an extraordinary force that was transforming 
      world, faces, and souls. The powerful were stunned by it, the weak 
      consoled. One did not notice, or rather did not want to notice, the new 
      light it threw on the division between winners and losers in the world. A 
      new world materialized, both more united and more divided than ever before 
      - never were the losers all across the planet so unified by sardonic joy, 
      never were the winners so unified by fear. Thus, some emotions, and 
      perhaps not the best ones, were becoming globalized.
 
 The events that most shock us are not surprises such as natural disasters 
      that are beyond the realm of human history. True shock is provoked when an 
      event occurs that we have been dreading, hoping all along that it will not 
      happen, or that we have been dreaming about without truly believing in it.
 
 On September 11th a visitor we had been awaiting for a long time, 
      convincing ourselves all the while that he would not come, came back to 
      our attention. He had been announced in Hiroshima. Since that day we knew 
      that the technological demon had escaped from human control, that man 
      could henceforth blow up the planet. Indeed, weapons exist only to be 
      used, the only uncertainty is the moment when. In addition, during the 
      Second World War the borders our conscience had set were crossed. In the 
      post-war years an omnipresent anxiety held sway; philosophers and writers 
      were wondering how mankind was going to be able to live in the awareness 
      of the imminence of the apocalypse. Since they were incapable of providing 
      an answer, and following a basic rule of human behavior, helpless 
      reflection made way for entertainment. Anxiety postponed the apocalypse 
      artificially and during the Cold War entertainment covered up the 
      technological horror. As for the void the Second World War left in human 
      consciousness, it was filled with the hope that behind the great 
      confrontation between capitalism and socialism must lie the promise of a 
      better society. Why else would such an unrelenting planetary battle be 
      taking place? Moreover, capitalism, terrified of revolution, had adopted 
      its most human, moderate, and tolerant mask, taking the social demands 
      within its frontiers into account and keeping its imperial tendencies 
      abroad in check.
 
 Thus we had become accustomed to believing that the dreadful visitor with 
      whom we had made an appointment at the end of the Second World War had 
      forgotten us. Then, one fine September morning, he knocked on the door in 
      the most anodyne possible manner, arriving by means of the most ordinary 
      transportation. But everyone grasped the message: whether nuclear, 
      biological or chemical, catastrophe can arrive at any moment, no matter 
      when, and the freedom to choose that moment is no longer ours. The 
      explosion of a single nuclear power station would make Europe 
      uninhabitable. It is as simple as that.
 
 Was there something surprising in this? The most reasonable predictions 
      had imagined such an attack. To tell the truth, it was a risk that the 
      policy of the United States and their European allies had taken into 
      account since the end of the Cold War. What we are concerned with here is 
      the political process known first as “the new world order”, then as 
      “globalization” because today imperialism is not the proper 
      classification. In any event, it pertains to an effort that has been 
      mobilizing the American elite for ten years as no other in its history has 
      done before, namely the building of a planetary empire, the first and 
      perhaps the last one in history, to the extent that one cannot see how the 
      power of American weapons could ever be contested.
 
 This is a rather strange moment: practically the entire planet is sinking 
      into helplessness, people are lacking in political and cultural plans, 
      their traditions and a sometimes thousand-year old order are falling 
      apart, and everywhere one sees a financial elite emerge that is linked to 
      the United States, drawing its legitimacy from their support and their 
      social model. In the everlasting New World the sun is shining and will 
      never set again.
 
 If we forget our preferences, our desires or our fears, we can admire 
      History’s mystery: who will ever know why so many great peoples are 
      brought down, why the most admirable civilizations are humbled to the 
      advantage of a single one, the one that best represents L'homme sans 
      qualité? [1] Why has the elite of countries with the most brilliant 
      cultures so enthusiastically embraced the transformation of humanity into 
      market value? Is that a coincidence? Is that a mirage?
 
 As the Greeks said with their love for the cruel beauty of truth, one 
      should not condemn those who wish to reign but rather those who accept 
      being subjugated.
 
 In the euphoria of triumph over the Soviet Union, Washington spent much 
      time groping for the definition of its imperial strategy, as all those 
      know who followed what was happening in the center of the world thus 
      invested with well-nigh divine powers. But today the great lines of its 
      action are clear. They had to act quickly to profit from the supremacy of 
      power and to prevent another power from emerging in the world. This was 
      aimed at Russia, the European Union, and China - it was a question of 
      destroying the first one, preventing political unification of the second, 
      and destabilizing and isolating the third. The destruction of Russia was 
      almost completed when Putin came to power and demonized in the West only 
      because he had taken it upon himself to save his country.
 
 Controlling the European Union was the easiest part thanks to the wars in 
      Yugoslavia and the expansion of NATO. Accepting the United States as a 
      kind of universal homeland of capital posed no problem whatsoever to the 
      European financial elite while the political elite had already been well 
      under control since the Cold War. China was isolated but it resisted and 
      therefore had the right to a kind of privileged status: it threw the West 
      a mighty challenge that was going to justify the mobilization of our 
      peoples in the decades to come while China stands no chance of catching up 
      with us in any way at all. This policy was accompanied by the dominance 
      over every strategic place in the world, whether it be of political 
      interest or have energy resources. This transformed the Caucasus, a key 
      point, into a battlefield. The rest of the world was treated both brutally 
      and indifferently: it was necessary to break the economic competition in 
      Asia, to keep the Arab world in a state of paralysis because of the 
      impossible choice between corrupt regimes under Washington’s control and 
      movements of desperate extremists, and finally to allow no openness in 
      South America, all the while maintaining small enemies here and there, the 
      famous “rogue states”, to justify our interventions. The world is of no 
      interest to America although the latter, nevertheless, considers itself as 
      the quasi-absolute master of this world. Hence this mixture of brutality 
      and indifference that characterizes its foreign policy.
 
 Success in all of these areas is the source of the immense economic boom 
      in America and, more generally, of the prosperity of financial 
      capitalism’s global elite, which during the last decade of the century 
      made any criticism of this policy impossible. Impossible, of course, in 
      the privileged sectors. But further down, in other parts of society, 
      bitterness, despair, and hatred were growing. Since success intoxicates 
      and attracts sycophants, one might have the impression that at the end of 
      the century American power was unfailing. It had swept away any serious 
      form of opposition in the Western countries in such a way that the 
      adjective “democratic” had become merely a synonym of propaganda.
 
 The ideology imposed by the propaganda everywhere in the world was 
      summarized in three ideas: democracy, human rights, and the market. 
      Washington was deciding who could enter this protective framework, because 
      remaining outside of it meant being exposed to sanctions, isolation, and 
      bombings. The status of countries changed depending on the degree of their 
      obedience to Washington: thus, the Ukraine was first a good student 
      needing support and then a rotten state to be punished, depending on 
      whether it was distancing itself from Russia or growing closer to it. 
      During the decade of its destruction, “the plundering of the century”, 
      Russia itself was flattered for being a good democracy, the greatest 
      swindlers were supported by the West as pillars of democracy, and when 
      Putin began to put an end to this horror he was accused of Stalinism.
 
 All this seemed to be impeccable and, according to the Greek maxim quoted 
      above, could inspire admiration. Never had such an immense empire been 
      built so quickly and so easily. Seeing with what sort of men and what 
      values this undertaking was brought to its completion, one might have been 
      engulfed in dark thoughts about the human species, but at whom should one 
      point the finger? At ourselves, at the stars, at God, at the Devil, at the 
      end of the millennium?
 
 From the point of view of political skill, Washington’s great success 
      consists of having accomplished the alliance between brute force and 
      all-powerful propaganda. On the one hand weapons and money, on the other 
      the media, Hollywood and the NGO’s, and all of it manipulated to 
      perfection.
 
 At the end of the Cold War there were very few serious conflicts in the 
      world. Hope was enormous. They spoke of the “springtime of peoples”, while 
      people were going to be facing threats against their very identity. They 
      were hoping for the end of the arms race, the ban on nuclear, biological, 
      and chemical weapons, the strengthening of the UN, the creation of an 
      international court of law, and the initiation of a policy that would 
      prevent the destruction of soil and climate. The USA opposed any 
      initiative in that direction, entered upon an arms race against themselves 
      at a more maddening speed than ever before in such a way that their 
      military budget is far greater than that of all the other large nations 
      together and continues to increase from year to year. And since the world 
      itself is not enough for an unrestricted power, they have moved on to the 
      militarization of outer space. The United Nations have been practically 
      eliminated from the international scene and Washington was able to provoke 
      or sustain a few small wars, always with disastrous results for entire 
      regions and without the slightest opposition or even objection, and with 
      the unfailing complicity of the major Western media. For ten years it has 
      been this way in Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Yugoslavia or Macedonia. Sometimes 
      the goal was not even a strategic one but rather just a tactic to frighten 
      people, to show who is boss and that the one with the power can do what it 
      wants, including making the most serious mistakes because, as the 
      Washington strategists put it, “it is important that people be afraid of 
      us, that they know we are unpredictable and sometimes act arbitrarily”. 
      The lessons that the empire’s strategists had drawn from history are 
      these: this is how one breaks the will to resist, this is how one becomes 
      a true master, how one educates slaves, for after decolonization and 
      during the Cold War, while benefiting from the balancing act between the 
      superpowers, the peoples of the world had forgotten that their freedom was 
      merely conditional.
 
 The brutality of the Realpolitik was accompanied by fantastic feats of 
      propaganda. In order to cover up the militaristic policy of the United 
      States - whether it was a question of unjustifiably arming itself, of 
      military interventions against irksome nations or the expansion of NATO 
      toward the Russian border - the major media were advancing one single 
      subject in all directions and with clearly racist highlights. This subject 
      stated that we, the United States and our allies (the G7, in fact), are 
      the best in the world in every domain, the richest, the strongest, the 
      most generous, the most free, the finest, and all our successes are made 
      legitimate by the quality of our work and our honesty, and if someone 
      somewhere happens to disagree it is only because he is envious, sick, 
      crazy, extremist, and so on. With the imperatives “zero dead” and “war 
      without risk” they were bombing civilians in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Sudan, just 
      as it was not so long ago that they were civilizing Negroes with cannons, 
      calling this “our humanitarian duty”. In Yugoslavia someone found a more 
      seemly expression: humanitarian racism.
 
 Sometimes it was a true defamation of the world but with the following 
      subliminal message: the world is calling us (we must control it, 
      generosité oblige), we must liberate the people, help them to become like 
      us in the name of democracy and human rights. It was the decade of the 
      worst cynicism, the triumph of arrogance and contempt on the part of the 
      United States and their allies, the decade of imperialism’s return in its 
      most brutal forms, the decade of disenchantment and despair of nations as 
      in the darkest moments of colonialism. Thus, it was the decade in which 
      the United States conquered the world and paid the price for that. 
      America, the name that was on the lips of generations of poor, oppressed, 
      and rejected people, America has become the curse of the poor and the 
      oppressed, the country that arouses universal hatred, the Evil Empire if 
      ever there was one.
 
 The New World has grown old, heavy, ugly, is synonymous with prison and 
      the enemy of mankind. Perhaps that is one of the historical lessons of 
      September 11th.
 
 It should be said that the American political strategists were expecting 
      it. From the early nineties on, Washington anticipated that the policy of 
      the conquest of the world would provoke a wave of anti-Americanism and 
      hate. The toughest among them stated openly that they should be feared and 
      detested like all conquerors, that people should be aware of their 
      powerlessness in the face of America, for one does not dominate the world 
      with goodness but with force.
 
 But by far the largest majority of the American people was not aware of 
      this.
 
 Thanks to the corruption of the major media, Americans to this day are not 
      familiar with the policy practiced in their name. It was a kind of plot of 
      the American elite (and, in some way even more obviously so, the European 
      one) against its own people. It only shows what is left of democracy in 
      the West today. Herein lies perhaps its implicit justification: these 
      folks want privileges and ever more wealth; the domination of the world 
      being the only way to be assured of this, in the final analysis they can 
      only agree with the most barbarous policy on the condition that they are 
      not openly told so. This is the foundation of the market society: greed 
      and fear. Give us money and lies. Its human ideal is the kleptomaniac.
 
 This model established itself as the norm for American behavior after 
      September 11th: 90% of the Americans supported all kinds of military 
      strikes (including nuclear strikes) against no matter whom and at the same 
      time in their own media they attacked all those who dared flirt with 
      reality and speak of “our” responsibility or “our” brutality. That is why 
      Orwellian descriptions are quoted more than ever with regard to the 
      present state of Western society. “War is peace. Liberty is slavery. 
      Ignorance is power”, and so on. Almost every Orwellian idea is topical.
 
 Let us now get back to the key question posed over and over again after 
      September 11th: “Why do they hate us?”
 
 What strikes us first of all is that the answer to this question is 
      obvious. We knew what hate America aroused in the world, including in the 
      West. We knew that one day this hate would find a way to express itself. 
      The problem lay rather in the embarrassment of choices - it could happen 
      anywhere, there was too much resentment and despair all across the world. 
      Some experts were expecting a blow from the direction of Asia, those who 
      turned out to be right were turning toward the Arab world and, as for me, 
      I thought that the true challenge would come from Europe or even the 
      United States, because I didn’t believe it would be possible to corrupt 
      such a large number of people in the West. Nor do I believe that the 
      Orwellian model is psychologically tolerable, for all the money in the 
      world cannot cure the ills of this society. Besides, the 
      anti-globalization movement and the events in Genoa have proven me right. 
      I think that the attention of the empire’s police has been partly captured 
      by the growing opposition of the West.
 
 Even the technique of the terrorists was not a surprise, since the 
      possible use of airplanes diverted to strike at civilian targets had been 
      mentioned many times. To tell the truth, the realistic fears and 
      predictions went well beyond this attack: nuclear, biological, and 
      chemical weapons seemed to be a natural choice for those who have lost all 
      hope, especially for the kamikazes. In one sense, then, this attack is a 
      relief to the extent that one should be pleased the worst was avoided.
 
 That is why I said earlier that the visitor with whom we had made an 
      appointment has merely indicated he had not forgotten us and now it is our 
      task to understand the consequences.
 
 Truth to tell, there was only one real surprise and that one was unfounded 
      - people were surprised at the ease with which the attacks were carried 
      out, defying the American Secret Service. This was an unfounded surprise 
      because we were well aware of the giant’s failings: too much technology, 
      too much oversimplification, weaknesses - when it is a question of human 
      beings - to which must be added a blind confidence in its invulnerability. 
      Then the debacle seems natural.
 
 Why then this nagging question “Why do they hate us?” Underlying it is 
      another question that was, in fact, soon formulated, “Should our policy be 
      implicated? Should we admit that it is that which is responsible for the 
      hate directed at us?” The answer to this inquiry would determine the 
      historical meaning of the attacks. Were they going to influence American 
      policy, the fate of the world and, therefore, our future?
 
 At first, right after the attacks, there was a kind of hesitation, the 
      hope that the shock would impel the Americans to reexamine their 
      relationship with the rest of the world, to look at themselves in the 
      mirror that history was holding up for them and to seriously try - since 
      it was a question of life and death - to understand why the face reflected 
      there had become the object of global hate. If they had taken that road 
      the attacks would have changed history. In no way would that have 
      prevented a radical assault on the terrorists. It would not even have 
      shaken American domination, because the large majority of nations has and 
      will need the support of the United States. But it would have set limits 
      for American political, economic, military, and moral power. In the 
      framework of these limits, American power could have continued growing - 
      because every single thing, individual, civilization, soul, and economy 
      needs clear boundaries within which it can truly develop - instead of 
      being dissipated in vanity, arrogance, and corruption for corruption’s 
      sake with the risk for the USA of becoming at one and the same time both 
      the most powerful and the most ephemeral empire in history.
 
 Obviously, this possibility was not even considered by the Washington 
      elite. The answer came quickly and, because it was absurd, it was 
      presented as a dogma that may not be discussed: whatever had been done, it 
      could have no connection to the attacks and those who think this way are 
      enemies of the nation! As the Los Angeles Times, one of the few media in 
      the USA that still permits itself the luxury of freedom, wrote very 
      shortly after the attacks, those who thought that unilateralism would be 
      abandoned were dreamers, that, on the contrary, it would be practiced more 
      radically than ever. Since then this analysis has been confirmed in many 
      ways.
 
 Nevertheless, thanks to the event, fears could be glimpsed of an elite 
      that knows itself to be responsible if not downright guilty. Washington’s 
      excessive reactions after the attacks (we are at war, whoever is not with 
      us is against us, the use of an atomic weapon is not excluded, etc.) are 
      signs of this. They were meant to forbid any criticism and even any 
      thinking: war is war no matter what the mistakes, and every citizen should 
      support the government in place. The vehemence of the words also aimed at 
      making people believe that this very patriotic elite was ready to 
      sacrifice itself to save its people.
 
 They were afraid that the Americans were going to ask them for 
      explanations: Why do they hate us? Why are they targeting us? What is this 
      policy you are carrying out in our name? What are we doing to the 
      Palestinians? What is this business about half a million Iraqi children 
      having died because of our policies? Why are we supporting terrorist 
      movements across the globe? Why are we bombing civilians? And so forth. 
      The risk was cut off at the root: there were no questions to be asked, we 
      have al the answers, we are the Good and they are the Evil, and all who 
      ask questions are accomplices of the terrorists and, besides, these are 
      serious times - think of the victims, let us unite for the love of these 
      people.
 
 Therein lay a possibility that the USA might catch a glimpse of reality, 
      but the breach was closed immediately. The fear was too great.
 
 If anyone dared to mention the evidence, that is to say the responsibility 
      of the American policy, which had “asked for it” as people with good sense 
      stated, then the official propaganda would instantly throw the following 
      dreadful reproach in their face: they are accusing the victims of being 
      guilty! That may resemble a very moral indignation but in reality it is 
      its refusal.
 
 I suppose that nobody, not even Bin Laden, could possibly think that the 
      victims of the WTC towers were responsible for anything at all and no one 
      can ever dream of denying their innocence and the horror of their death. 
      In spite of their anonymity, these victims carry a certain tragic grandeur 
      because of the circumstances that made their death into an historic and 
      fantastic phenomenon. Therefore, their dignity must be respected to the 
      end and the identity of those responsible for their tragedy must be 
      established even against our own interests, even if the truth leads us to 
      accusing the most powerful and most respectable of citizens. It seems to 
      me that seeking this truth is the only way of being faithful to the memory 
      of the victims. On the other hand, it is the most pure and cynical 
      betrayal to use them not only to hide the responsibilities of a part of 
      those who prepared the terrain for these attacks but also to aggrandize 
      the same policy that led to these attacks. And yet that is exactly what 
      happens when the victims of the WTC are used to advance the present policy 
      of George Bush and Ariel Sharon. There is something scandalous about 
      seeing Donald Rumsfeld, who represents the most aggressive face of the 
      imperialistic policy, symbolizing the victims’ revenge. He, more than 
      anyone, incarnates the policy that is responsible for their tragedy.
 
 One may justify telling lies in the name of the living by confirming that 
      it is in their own interests, but one owes the truth to the dead. 
      Otherwise what will happen is what has already happened: we are using 
      corpses to advance our interests, we stretch the laws of the market 
      society to the kingdom of the dead, and in some way we become cannibals. 
      And if I am not mistaken when observing the people around me, we are 
      excluding them from the range of our finest emotions - it is becoming 
      difficult to lament them. There are too many official lies surrounding 
      them, they serve to justify too base a policy. They have already been used 
      to attack the anti-globalization movement by asserting that this movement, 
      with its criticism of the “capitalism of thieves” (as official humanism is 
      now beginning called) opened the way for the attacks. The victims are 
      being invoked to justify waging war on some “forty or fifty countries” as 
      the vice-president of the USA has stated. It would seem that they are 
      fated to justify this policy for several decades. Their loss is without 
      reason and their tragedy complete, but henceforth there stand between them 
      and us the kleptomaniacs who took over as soon as they understood that 
      these dead souls could serve as profitable goods in order to increase 
      their fortune and power.
 
 The contemplation of the fate of those who died is not a gratuitous 
      digression, it sheds light on the way in which we are all changed into 
      merchandise almost every day with one exacerbating factor - we actively 
      participate in this.
 
 However, probably from a desire to allow those awakened by the legitimate 
      fear of a possible apocalypse to sleep again, the media were speaking 
      incessantly of Bush’s wisdom and skill and transforming him into a great 
      statesman watching over humanity. But Washington’s policy was more than 
      ever lacking any moderation and thoughtfulness. It continued to be what it 
      has been since the end of the Cold War, only with more inhumanity by 
      caring even less about the world outside of the USA. It is probably less 
      effective as well. In Afghanistan a “fine” operation so to speak was 
      carried out, a demonstration of the mightiest military power against the 
      poorest people on earth. But it has almost nothing to do with terrorism. 
      The Taliban regime, which never bothered Washington before, did fall and, 
      where the terrorists are concerned, nobody can say for sure whether this 
      operation has strengthened or weakened them. On the other hand, the 
      unconditional support for Israel - primary cause of the resentment of the 
      Muslim world against the USA - is more important than ever since the 
      offensive that Sharon has been authorized to conduct since September 11th. 
      As for anti-Americanism and hate, there is no doubt that even the greatest 
      friends of the USA are now having a hard time controlling them. The 
      friendships were more stable before and the hatred less intense than after 
      the war in Afghanistan, and the dangers today are the same or greater. 
      What to say about this policy?
 
 It is based on a blind faith in two words: power and lying. We have the 
      strongest army in the world and the most powerful media, we control bodies 
      and minds so why be burdened with nuances? Nuances are weaknesses.
 
 Why this great fear of the truth? Why is it impossible to state that 
      “they” hate us for what we do to them, that the world hates us for what we 
      are? In order for people to hate America, despite all the hopes it has 
      conveyed for so long, despite the supreme power of its popular culture and 
      its media, it must be bad and irritating, and it must represent a true and 
      great Evil to be reckoned with. The greatest good one can do for the USA 
      today is to endlessly repeat the truth it wants to avoid at all costs, 
      namely that through its policy the American government has sought this 
      hatred. Yes, the attacks are the answer to this policy, a logical and 
      predictable answer, and as dreadful as the policy itself. Official 
      propaganda speaks of madmen who don’t exist, who supposedly had been 
      planning suicidal operations for months out of pure insanity, while they 
      simply are the natural products of extreme despair in the face of an 
      untouchable enemy. In fact, what else could they have done? Go before the 
      United Nations? They are under Washington’s control. Seek the support of 
      the media? They are under Washington’s control. Revolt openly? Against a 
      country whose air force is able to bomb any country at all for months on 
      end?
 
 In a way, the most irrational answer is the only possible answer to 
      appraisals that are too rational. When the appraisal is so perfect that it 
      eliminates any possibility of dissent, one plays with rules other than 
      those of appraisal and reason.
 
 The imperialistic strategy of the USA rests on a flawless assessment: 
      force is law in the relationship between peoples; we are by far the 
      strongest country; no one has the slightest chance against us; therefore, 
      everyone must be aware of this relationship and keep it in mind. It is an 
      iron logic that pushes those who cannot tolerate subjugation toward the 
      most irrational forms of rebellion. When they cross over to the other side 
      of life, they discover freedom and the chains of logic and power no longer 
      carry any weight. In the absence of any choice the suicidal rebellions are 
      a perfect response to the situation. There is nothing peculiar about this 
      behavior - throughout all of history, those who rebelled against a great 
      power have always accepted death. From a logical and rational point of 
      view they did not have a chance. But everyone admires the courage of these 
      men and women, except for those in power who do not tolerate finding 
      themselves faced with people against whom their power cannot stand up. 
      Spartacus, Joan of Arc, Pugatchev, Jean Moulin, and innumerable legendary 
      figures who stood up against all odds, are people who have crossed over to 
      the other side. Without, of course, comparing them to Bin Laden, I mean to 
      say that death is part of the choices men make when they are driven by 
      despair. Is life to be lived at any price or should life granted on 
      conditions that are too humiliating be refused? Every person has to answer 
      for him- or herself, but to me it seems narrow-minded to see the “madmen” 
      of our history as heroes and the “madmen” of our adversaries’ history as 
      losers. If the powerful choose the weapons of the all-powerful, the 
      desperate choose the weapons of despair. And since modern technology is 
      accessible to all, there is a strong risk that everyone has the same 
      weapons.
 
 The official American propaganda declares that expressing these obvious 
      truths encourages the violence of the desperate. Perhaps. But silence 
      encourages the violence of the USA in the world. The choice is as always a 
      difficult one for a people that sets out to conquer the world. We are 
      going to plunder, kill, and subjugate at the other end of the world 
      through pure selfishness, it is terrible, but it is still “we”. We are 
      much stronger, the others do not stand a chance, and that is terrible as 
      well, but it is still “we”. And, of course, we share no values and no 
      experience with the savages before us. So, if we put ourselves in the 
      shoes of a white man in the United States during the period of the 
      extermination of the Indians, what choice is there?
 
 Because it is a difficult choice, people adamantly flee from the truth as 
      the Americans are doing today and admire all those - obviously huge 
      numbers - who tell them tall tales about their innocence, their goodness, 
      their generosity and humanism, their sense of justice, their vocation to 
      fight evil in the world, while in the wings they bring “business” to a 
      successful conclusion.
 
 One may retort that it has always been this way, that all of history is a 
      cycle of violence and telling lies. That is partly true, but it should not 
      be forgotten that if evil is eternal, the battle against evil is so as 
      well, in spite of history. This “in spite of”, against resignation, is 
      important, and is a sign of a higher hope - indeed, if we cannot change 
      history we can find a way out by fighting it. In fact, the true enigma of 
      history is not the existence of evil, but the persistence of good. The one 
      is logical and natural, it helps efficiency, but the other is absurd from 
      every point of view. Especially from the point of view of the market. And 
      yet.
 
 There is something new in the present situation: never until today has the 
      cycle of violence been guided by the Devil himself, never have the means 
      to destroy the planet been available. That changes the rules of the game. 
      That must change them.
 
 This imperative absolutely requires that in the hallway of death a window 
      be opened to allow the light of truth to filter in: one has to be firm 
      when facing the enemy, one has the right to be so, but only on the 
      condition that one publicly accepts the truth about oneself and that, to 
      the extent possible, our policy be adapted to the limits this truth 
      imposes.
 
 Without that, the answer to the question “Why do they hate us?” is awful: 
      they hate us precisely for what we are and we hate ourselves as much as 
      they do for what we are. Without which we would not try so hard to hide 
      the truth about ourselves, before our enemies, our friends, our children, 
      and ourselves. This behavior indicates, it seems to me, that there must be 
      something very hateful in our society.
 
 The fact remains that the power of this truth is very strange. It appears 
      that, if one were to let it out on a public square, the empire would 
      crumble instantly, the Stock Markets would crash and entire peoples would 
      be overtaken by violent convulsions. Fantastic means are used to hide it. 
      At the same time, everyone loves to pride himself on being always 
      truthful. By these same means, truth is sought in the past and, when we 
      contemplate it from very far away, we are overjoyed at the idea of having 
      discovered the essence of life. But perhaps the essence of life lies in 
      the present as well? Can it really introduce more danger into the world’s 
      present situation than the aggressive, militaristic, and perverse policy, 
      hiding beneath the loftiest moral concepts, the United States and their 
      allies have practiced since the end of the Cold War?
 
 In fact, it is believed to be such a lethal poison that we try hard to 
      state it to our enemies and require that they accept it: reexamine your 
      conscience, judge yourselves, and please speak the truth publicly! One can 
      be sure that it would all be over for them if they were to fall in the 
      trap of truth. Thus, something could have been learned about the United 
      States and about the terrorists in spite of their fantastic lies about 
      their respective missions. The description by Bush of the terrorists and 
      the one Bin Laden has given of the United States are not very far removed 
      from reality. It is possible that they each have precisely the enemies 
      they deserve.
 
 Who knows, if one could see reality in a disinterested way, without fear, 
      without hope, without interests, one might find it fair, equitable, 
      magnificent, full of the Greek logos, and it would appear to us that the 
      madmen of the empire and the madmen of God could do nothing other than 
      meet up. Those who think that the world is for sale really deserve 
      kamikazes for enemies, and those who think that it is God’s hand bringing 
      planes to crash over Wall Street really deserve a visit by B52 bombers. 
      They sought each other, they found each other, they loved each other, they 
      fought each other, they have become inseparable… The world refuses to 
      become the reflection of our lies, it is rather the perfect reflection of 
      what we are. This may disturb our ego, but it reassures us about the 
      world: it is in better hands than ours…
 _______________ Notes: 1. L'homme sans qualité, Robert Musil Translated from French by Marjolijn de Jager 
       
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