Sept. 11 and the Cycle of Revenge - NYTimes.com
Simon Critchley, philospher at New School for Social Research:
In a scarily fascinating 2004 video, called “The Towers of Lebanon,” in which Bin Laden claimed direct responsibility for 9/11 for the first time, he says that the Sept. 11 attacks were justified as an act of revenge. If the United States violates the security of the Muslim world — especially by using his homeland of Saudi Arabia as a base during the first Gulf War — then Al Qaeda is justified in violating American security. If there had been no initial violation, he claims, there would be no need for revenge. …
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Opposites attract — the awful violence of 9/11 is justified by Al Qaeda as an act of revenge that in turn justifies the violence of America’s and Bush’s revenge. My point is that revenge is an inevitably destructive motive for action. When we act out of revenge, revenge is what we will receive in return. The wheel of violence and counterviolence spins without end and leads inevitably to destruction.
This is exactly what Bin Laden hoped to bring about. He admits that Al Qaeda spent $500,000 on the 9/11 attacks, while estimating that the United States lost, at the lowest estimate, $500 billion in the event and the aftermath. He even does the math, “That makes a million American dollars for every Al Qaeda dollar, by the grace of God Almighty.” He concludes, ominously, “This shows the success of our plan to bleed America to the point of bankruptcy, with God’s will.”
Like it or not (I don’t like it at all), Bin Laden had a point. The last 10 years of unending war on terror has also led, at least partly, to the utter financial precariousness that we see at every level of life in the United States: federal, state, city and individuals laden with debt. We are bankrupt.
