IP: Do read -- Fighting the Forces of Invisibility .. By Salman Rushdie

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2001 15:33:38 -0400 (EDT)
> From: "Mike O'Dell" <mo () ccr org>
> To: dave () farber net
> Subject: post article by Rushdie...
>
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55876-2001Oct1?language=printer

Fighting the Forces of Invisibility
By Salman Rushdie

Tuesday, October 2, 2001; Page A25

NEW YORK -- In January 2000 I wrote in a newspaper column that "the 
defining struggle of the new age would be between Terrorism and Security," 
and fretted that to live by the security experts' worst-case scenarios 
might be to surrender too many of our liberties to the invisible 
shadow-warriors of the secret world. Democracy requires visibility, I 
argued, and in the struggle between security and freedom we must always err 
on the side of freedom. On Tuesday, Sept. 11, however, the worst-case 
scenario came true.

They broke our city. I'm among the newest of New Yorkers, but even people 
who have never set foot in Manhattan have felt its wounds deeply, because 
New York is the beating heart of the visible world, tough-talking, 
spirit-dazzling, Walt Whitman's "city of orgies, walks and joys," his 
"proud and passionate city -- mettlesome, mad, extravagant city!" To this 
bright capital of the visible, the forces of invisibility have dealt a 
dreadful blow. No need to say how dreadful; we all saw it, are all changed 
by it. Now we must ensure that the wound is not mortal, that the world of 
what is seen triumphs over what is cloaked, what is perceptible only 
through the effects of its awful deeds.

In making free societies safe -- safer -- from terrorism, our civil 
liberties will inevitably be compromised. But in return for freedom's 
partial erosion, we have a right to expect that our cities, water, planes 
and children really will be better protected than they have been. The 
West's response to the Sept. 11 attacks will be judged in large measure by 
whether people begin to feel safe once again in their homes, their 
workplaces, their daily lives. This is the confidence we have lost, and 
must regain.

Next: the question of the counterattack. Yes, we must send our 
shadow-warriors against theirs, and hope that ours prevail. But this secret 
war alone cannot bring victory. We will also need a public, political and 
diplomatic offensive whose aim must be the early resolution of some of the 
world's thorniest problems: above all the battle between Israel and the 
Palestinian people for space, dignity, recognition and survival. Better 
judgment will be required on all sides in future. No more Sudanese aspirin 
factories to be bombed, please. And now that wise American heads appear to 
have understood that it would be wrong to bomb the impoverished, oppressed 
Afghan people in retaliation for their tyrannous masters' misdeeds, they 
might apply that wisdom, retrospectively, to what was done to the 
impoverished, oppressed people of Iraq. It's time to stop making enemies 
and start making friends.

To say this is in no way to join in the savaging of America by sections of 
the left that has been among the most unpleasant consequences of the 
terrorists'

<snip>



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