Thoughts of enemies can soothe the nerves

I suppose I began to realize that Sept. 11 had rattled me more deeply than I had thought when I felt slightly uneasy going into the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center to see South Pacific last month.

For a fleeting moment, I wondered whether terrorists would see the 2,300 closely packed people a handy target, whether halfway through Some Enchanted Evening a mild-mannered fellow might quietly open a packet of deadly bacteria or sarin gas and do away with all of us.

I soon lost myself in Rodgers and Hammerstein's wonderful music, but as I approached the parking garage after the show, the thought of car bombs and explosives skittered through my thoughts.

"Is this vague, uneasy feeling going to last forever?" I wondered. Will the sight of a Middle Eastern-looking person at the airline ticket counter always make me feel jumpy? After all, at that time we were still asking, "Why do "they' hate Americans so much?"

This week's photos of post-liberation Afghan men joyously shaving off their Taliban-ordered beards and dancing in the streets to Taliban-banned music has dispelled some of those fears. Not every Afghan hates us -- or music or laughter -- after all.

But can America and the Arab countries ever be close, trusting friends? Can Americans ever hope to visit those countries and feel at ease walking their city streets or poking around their little villages the way we do in other vacation destinations? Or is the enmity too old and too deep? Do too many Arabs see Americans as decadent infidels, worthy only of death, and have Americans seen too many movies and television shows where the swarthy Arab is always the villain?

Even in Rudolph Valentino's hallowed The Sheik, the heroine is considered hopelessly defiled until she learns the dastardly "desert chieftain" who abducted her actually is a nice, non-Arab fellow with a good tan.

And I won't even go into America's most monstrous professional wrestler who, just to show what a bad guy he is, has adopted the name "The Sheik of Araby."

Just when I think everything is hopeless, that this hatred and mutual distrust will go on forever, I remember history.

Who were our worst enemies 230 years ago? The British, of course, those loathsome people who taxed us without representation and sent over their nefarious second sons to lord it over us and confiscate our stuff. So we fought them and killed them and declared our independence.

Today, the Brits are our best, most reliable friends and probably will be forever.

Who were our worst enemies 60 years ago? Those nasty Germans, Italians and Japanese, that's who. We were so suspicious of the Japanese that we put them in "relocation" camps. As for me, I watched so many World War II bad-German movies that even today hearing someone speak German gives me the willies.

Still, today, Germany and Italy are among our favorite tourist destinations, and all three countries are among our most reliable friends. We're so far beyond those hatreds that a lot of high school kids I've talked with don't even realize that Italy was our mortal enemy back then.

Who were our worst enemies a decade ago? The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Today our troops are based in accommodating, if not exactly friendly, former Soviet republics, and the president of Russia is bouncing around in a pickup truck with our president in Crawford, Texas, giving talks to Crawford high schoolers and chatting with ordinary Americans on a National Public Radio call-in show.

And, lest we forget, who were our worst enemies 138 years ago?

Each other.

Yet, on a cool day in April 1865, Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant sat down together in a little courthouse in Appomattox, Va., and started the end of the bloodiest war ever fought on our soil.

If we wonder whether followers of the Taliban can ever reconcile with followers of the Northern Alliance, we need only look at each other. Our ancestors slaughtered each other at Manassas and Gettysburg, but, today, our fiercest battles are on the football field.

But are Middle Eastern and Western cultures just too far apart? Not a few Muslim societies are described as "being in the Stone Age," and we're sometimes described as hedonistically modern.

Remember, though, that a few hundred years ago, when Western Europe was mired in the Dark Ages, Islamic civilization stood at the top of the world politically and intellectually. Islam was deservedly known for its openness, and Arabs were leaders in science and culture. Today, some of the best physicians and best minds in the world are from Middle Eastern countries.

So there's no intellectual reason why those societies cannot achieve the same standard of living as the Western world -- that is, if they want to. Perhaps when the majority of people have something to lose if there is violence and chaos, then they'll be less likely to initiate it and more eager to keep it from happening. That seems to be the way it works.

It won't be overnight; peace and reconciliation are ongoing things. And there won't be an end to random acts of terrorism; there will always be cults, thugs and muggers who suddenly commit senseless, random acts of mayhem.

But as I hear people wondering whether they should bring children into the world or I find myself slipping into despondency over the world condition, I'm comforted by the lessons of history and time and hopeful that our world really is going to get better.

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright