MPR Marketplace: 9/11 and Lincoln Commentary

Benjamin R. Barber

For events as costly as those of a year ago, the only fitting memorial may be silence -- especially given our tendency to respond to tragedy with media excess. But radio is not the ideal medium for silent meditation and I have in any case already missed THAT opportunity.

In looking for words, the politicians have been drawn to Lincoln, specifically the Gettysburg Address. It is brief and focused on the consecration of ground which (like the Pentagon and Twin Tower sites) is hallowed by bloodshed.

But in seeking words for this solemn anniversary, I prefer Lincoln's Second Inaugural where in honoring the dead he addresses the living. Not so easily done. To honor and consecrate is not the same as to explain and to exhort. How easily an explanation of why terror happens becomes an excuse for terrorism. How quickly exhorting our leaders to fix the world that allows violence to flourish, as I want to do, begins to sound like exonerating violence.

Lincoln faced just this dilemma in 1864, still in the thick of America's costliest war. In the fateful battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, 6000 Americans died - twice the number lost on 9/11 - and by the time of his Second Inaugural, more than a half million had been slaughtered. Yet Lincoln dared to take some responsibility for the terrible war in which the Union was engaged. He indicted both sides for establishing and perpetuating slavery. Yet he did not for an instant suggest that Union complicity in this "offence against God" lessened the need to defeat the South.

Were President Bush to consult President Lincoln, he would learn that America's cause is strengthened not weakened in its righteous struggle against terrorism by acknowledging and addressing the circumstances that help bring terrorism into being. Evil as it is, (as the South's secession was evil), terrorism is nurtured by global circumstances which America (virtuous as it may be) has played some role in creating.

Inequalities in wealth and power, American military and cultural hegemony, are not responsible for terrorism; but they have contributed to a world in which in too many people see death with purpose as preferable to life without meaning or hope. Yes, there is an axis of evil but there is also an axis of inequality, and to defeat the first we have to find a way to break the second.

To address the economic and cultural causes of rage and violence is not to forgive terrorists their deeds. Lincoln acknowledged that "every drop of blood drawn by the sword" in his war was payment for blood drawn earlier by the slavemaster's lash. But still he implored the nation to prosecute the war against secession with all its heart and might. He sought victory and justice: triumph over the Confederacy but also "a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations."

In honoring the dead of 9/11, we could do far worse than heed Lincoln's deeply American formula for seeking both victory and justice. A year ago, President Bush called for retribution: the justice of the war-makers over terrorism. Today we need to call also for fair distribution, for economic and cultural equality. The justice of the peace-makers who, in Lincoln's forgiving phrase, "with malice toward none and charity for all," aspire to conquer war itself.

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