December 30, 2004
SHAHID ALAM, ECONOMICS PROFESSOR AT NORTHEASTERN, MAKES THE DREAM OF 911 TERRORISTS SHINE JUST A LITTLE BRIGHTER IN America and Islam
On September 11, 2001, nineteen Arab hijackers too demonstrated their willingness to die -- and to kill -- for their dream. They died so that their people might live, free and in dignity. The manner of their death -- and the destruction it wreaked -- is not merely a testament to the vulnerabilities that modern technology has created to clandestine attacks. After all, skyscrapers and airplanes have co-existed peacefully for many decades. The attacks of 9-11 were in many ways a work of daring and imagination too; if one can think objectively of such horrors. They were a cataclysmic summation of the history of Western depredations in the Middle East: the history of a unity dismembered, of societies manipulated by surrogates, of development derailed and disrupted, of a people dispossessed. The explosion of 9-11 was indeed a "shot heard round the world."
I'm sure we all agree that Professor Shahid Alam has, in this paragraph alone, mastered the art of 'objective thinking.'
Posted by Vanderleun at December 30, 2004 04:55 PM from American Digest