Next Century Foundation Secretary General, William Morris LL.D., reflects on 9/11 and its implications twenty-five years on.
Twenty-five years since the absolute horror of 9/11. It was horrible at the time and horrible now in our remembrance. An act of human barbarity, incomprehensible in its cruelty.
Atrocity breeds atrocity, horror breeds horror, hate breeds hate. And the consequences? The Afghan and Iraq wars, with all their barbarity. And do we learn? When will we ever learn? Like his predecessors, culpable for Afghanistan and Iraq, the current leader of the free world, President Donald Trump, has now made his own misstep, one that will cost the whole world dear for the foreseeable future.
The politics of retribution are always evil. It takes a great man or woman to break that cycle of hate breeding hate. Sometimes some of us might even yearn to go back to the era of colonialism, when action meant consequent responsibility. Instead, today the great powers and their opponents act without measuring consequence, without taking responsibility for the outcomes of their acts of rampant hegemony.
For now, none of our leaders care. And the twenty-four hour news cycle pours petrol on the flames.
Did Premier Netanyahu care how he would meet his God when he called for slaughter in Gaza in response to the events of October 7th? An eye for an eye? Did David Cameron think of the consequences when he led the UK’s participation in the 2011 NATO-led intervention that helped overthrow Muammar Gaddafi?
And the private individuals. Are we any better when we, arguably understandably, hate and despise the migrants who fill ten thousand of the cells in our prisons in today’s Britain? But how were they driven here, these young men? By civil war in Sudan, perhaps? And whose weapons are in the hands of those fighting the many proxy wars, the Sudan war among them?
Where is the love? Amor vincit omnia? Or what? The lesson of 9/11, and its unmitigated horror, is that love is the answer. The only answer.
And it is so difficult. If you live in South Lebanon, are you expected to love Israel? It is easy for Jesus to say turn the other cheek, but would you?
Love is of course the best answer to hate. But it is so hard, so unbelievably hard, to love. Does the abused return love to the abuser? Of course not.
But one thing we can do, and must do, is be merciful. The quality of mercy is not strained. This applies to our personal lives, and to our lives, nation to nation.
That is the true lesson of 9/11. Love may not be the answer. But mercy, unqualified mercy, most definitely is.
Featured image by omar sahel from Pixabay
