That influence is visible in the 2017-18 issue of the annual Peacebuilder magazine, which highlights CJP’s programs: MA degree programs in conflict transformation and restorative justice, as well as , , , and the .

In his foreword, Executive Director highlights CJP’s growing role in healing justice work, “which melds together the biblical themes of truth, grace and restored relationships and systems.”

Healing justice in the United States

• Two graduates assisted in a to gather data about the nature and extent of current truth-telling, racial healing, memorialization and social transformation initiatives.
• The Zehr Institute was awarded a $104,000 grant to aimed at identifying the most strategic areas to invest in order to support the restorative justice movement.
• New included four courses that directly addressed how to manage and transform divisive rhetoric and communication; how to bring polarized communities together and organize for change; and how to recognize and analyze systems of oppression. Additionally Carl Stauffer’s truth-telling, reconciliation and restorative justice course – co-taught with Dr. Nicholas Rowe – drew 24 participants.

More articles

• Mennonite Central Committee representatives talk about how STAR (Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience) trainings have “” of Syrian and Lebanese staff, church leaders and other caregivers working with refugees.
• Graduates of the Women’s Peacebuilding Leadership Program in Kenya form a to influence middle-level civil society space.
• ’17 returns as a teaching fellow to 91¶ÌÊÓÆ”.
• Dr. Jayne Seminare Docherty outlines in the academic programs at CJP.

Peacebuilder magazine is housed at . The site also includes , who are encouraged to update their profiles regularly.

Short-Term Strategy: (Increased security in the next 2 years)

1. Dismantle terrorist networks. Arrest al Qaeda operatives and bring them to trial. Avoid a focus on bin Laden, as this sets up a personal hero for anyone who dislikes U.S. policy and incorrectly assumes that the organization will not survive without him. Dismantle the financial support system of terrorist networks. Allow the Taliban to turn al Qaeda operatives over to a third country. Use incentives rather than threats or military force to gain information and cooperation on a legal approach to the crimes of September 11. Reallocate the billions of dollars being spent on the military campaign to create economic incentives to turn in al Qaeda operatives. Use specialized military units to capture operatives and make sure these units are equipped with and trained to use non-lethal weapons. Support the development of a multi-national team to conduct arrests and raids on terrorist cells.
2. Use a defensive military strategy. The current use of a strong offense (e.g., eliminating governments we don’t like, encroaching further on the Muslim world with military troops, killing civilians in carpet bombing raids, targeting individuals for assassination) actually makes us much less secure. Americans around the world and at home are more at risk today than they were before the beginning of the bombing campaign on October 7, because many people see our offensive military strategy as “evil.” Rather than destroying terrorists, the current strategy is creating more potential terrorists. Within the limits of the Posse Comitatus law that limits the domestic use of the military, National Guard units should be deployed to guard against more attacks. Federal law enforcement units should be adequately equipped and trained to protect against terrorist attacks through intelligence gathering and arrest, while respecting civil liberties.
3. Start a civilian-based defense program in the United States. Train civilians to report possible terrorist acts. Train them to use nonviolent resistance to defend their own homes, communities, institutions and Arab-American neighbors, if they are attacked. Train civilians to resist terrorists if they do take over an airplane, train, or bus using the skills of noncooperation and appropriate force. Note: This does not mean vigilante-style law enforcement using lethal weapons.

Intermediate Strategies (Increased security in the next 10 years)

1. Acknowledge the interconnected nature of the conflicts in the Muslim world. Put major resources toward negotiating issues fueling the current support for terrorist actions — e.g., a removal of U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia, lifting of sanctions against Iraq, and a more even-handed approach to the Israel-Palestine problems including backing the Mitchell Commission recommendations to stop all new Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Support negotiations in Kashmir and other conflicted areas.
2. Craft long-term multilateral arrangements and organizations for addressing problems in the regions of the world that are home to large Muslim populations. Honor our commitment to work through multilateral bodies. Thereby indicating our willingness to be part of the “family of nations” and not the one nation exempt from the rules that govern everyone else
3. Plan for and support an authentically Afghan government after the removal of Al Qaeda.Rely on recognized international organizations for such activities as the nation-building process in Afghanistan. Whatever government is established in Afghanistan must be rooted in Afghan traditions and must be authentically Afghan in nature, goals, values, etc. Urge the U.N. to use indigenous Afghan processes of conflict resolution (such as the jirga) to help Afghani people design their government. Support and encourage any efforts at healing and reconciliation in Afghanistan.

Long-Term Strategies (Increased security in the next 50 years)

1. Help build a global environment that does not support terrorism. Massive funding for schools, universities, health care facilities, food and shelter programs, and democratic infrastructures around the world will help Americans live more secure lives. These initiatives will isolate terrorist groups from the support base of disenfranchised and marginalized people that turn to terrorism out of desperation. Provide peacebuilding assistance for countries dealing with inter-religious conflicts.
2. Create new relationships with Muslim countries. Commit funds, resources, and personnel to building better cultural understanding between the U.S. and the Muslim world. Stop the cultural and economic imposition of Western values and institutions onto Muslim countries.
3. Promote democratization in Muslim countries currently led by dictators. Support these societies in their efforts to discover and nurture indigenous democratic processes grounded in Islam.
4. Reduce our dependence on oil. The U.S. can lessen its dependence on foreign oil and its need for cooperation from Middle Eastern nations that produce oil by investing in proven renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power.

“Did I miss something? A few weeks ago, the administration line was that the Taliban’s chief sin against us was its failure to surrender Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden himself was the mastermind behind the catastrophe we’ve reduced to the shorthand of 9-1-1. The Taliban had a simple choice: “Cough him up,” in President Bush’s inelegant phrase, or risk our military fury.

The Taliban, the radical Islamic militia that rules most of Afghanistan, didn’t cough him up, and the bombing began.

That much I understand. Where I get lost is that, at some unremarked time after the commencement of the air assault, the Taliban itself became our focus. Oh, we still want bin Laden, of course, but we want the Taliban, too.

The shift happened so subtly that I have found myself thinking that the Taliban was always a major player in the terrorist arena — and that we’d always known it. But I’ve been looking at hundreds of newspaper articles going back before the August 1998 bombing of the American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, and I find virtually no mention of any suspicion of the Taliban as an exporter of terrorism.”

Each week of the war has involved the use of ever-larger and “dumber” bombs.

The anticipated shift to the use of elite troops capable of entering Afghanistan to capture and remove bin Laden and other Al Qaeda operatives, has not materialized.

Prior to the largest foray of Special Operations troops and the elite Delta Force into Afghanistan on October 19, Pentagon official declared the Taliban military capacity “eviscerated.”

Pentagon officials declared the covert raid a success, but evidence indicates otherwise.

• On October 24, the Pentagon declared that the Taliban had entrenched itself for a long, hard battle.
• Pentagon officials have said nothing more about raids into Afghanistan by elite troops, but they have increased the number of advisors on the ground working with Northern Alliance troops.
• The United States forces shifted their targeting focus to the Shomali Plain, the location of the front between Northern Alliance and Taliban forces, and introduced larger and more destructive weapons and tactics such as carpet bombing.

The U.S. is now deploying cluster bombs, each containing about 200 bomblets designed to scatter themselves over a large area in order to target concentrations of troops and vehicles. The U.S. has also used the 15,000-pound bomb known as the daisy-cutter, which was described as follows by CNN military expert Major General Don Shepperd.

“This is a standard, if large explosive bomb that disperses a GSX slurry and uses aluminum powder as an explosive. It then uses an ignition mechanism to ignite it all at once, providing a huge explosion. It’s much different than carpet bombing in that it kills people with concussion, as opposed to shrapnel.”

It is disingenuous at best to continue claiming that the United States is doing everything possible to prevent civilian casualties when it is deploying 500- and1,000-pound gravitational (i.e., dumb) bombs, cluster bombs, and the daisy-cutter.

It is also disingenuous to say that bin Laden and Al Qaeda are the targets of such an attack.

Using these weapons and tactics only makes sense if the Taliban is identified as the target of the war effort.

• It is impossible to use bombs – smart, dumb, cluster, or otherwise – on a terrorist organization that is dispersed throughout the world, in hiding, and aided by sympathizers.
• It is next to impossible to fight the “first war of the 21st Century” using 20th Century weapons, if the enemy is identified only as Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda.
• The American public wants results.
• The Pentagon wants to succeed.
• One solution to this dilemma is to redefine the enemy so that the military has a “front line,” clear targets, and the possibility of advancing and making the enemy retreat.

What are the long-term policy implications of the shift in military strategy for the overall objective of making the world safe from terrorism?

The administration is now:

• Using incredibly large and destructive bombs against poorly equipped, but highly determined troops – thereby looking like the bully against underdogs in the eyes of many in the Islamic world. This perception is further supported by the administration’s indication that Somalia (another weak, war torn, and impoverished nation) may be the next theater of operations.
• Following a military strategy that is strengthening the determination of the Afghan people to resist defeat and support the Taliban.
• Assuming the role of “king maker” or “regime creator” in Afghanistan, but doing so with a very short-term focus on establishing a government that is friendly to the U.S. and acceptable to Pakistan, Russia, Iran and other neighboring countries regardless of the level of internal support among the Afghan people. The military pressures to get this war won are artificially shortening the time-line for negotiating complex political problems.
• Entrapping itself in a highly escalated military operation from which it will be difficult, if not impossible, to back away without losing face.

For the past eight to ten years, military policy analysts have been urging the development of troop configurations, weapons systems, and law enforcement mechanisms capable of being used effectively against organizations such as Al Qaeda.

Resistance from Pentagon officials and congressional leaders has been fierce.

• “Until last month, the Pentagon spent most of its annual budget of more than $300 billion on training and equipping to fight two major conventional wars at a time.”
• Even the most recent Quadrennial Defense Review, released on October 1, short-changes the types of forces needed to engage in a fight against terrorism.
• The result of these policies includes a military force heavy in traditional hardware and a Federal Bureau of Investigation lacking basic computer equipment equivalent to that available to academics at even small colleges and universities.

So, how much of the administration’s shift in policy focus (not just military strategy) is being driven by the Pentagon’s available military hardware? And, should military hardware drive policy?

If this really is a new kind of war against a new kind of enemy, shouldn’t our leaders be taking the time to develop the necessary tools before “ramping up” a war effort to the point where the military hardware and tactical needs drive policy rather than the other way around?

, PhD, is the professor of Conflict Studies at 91¶ÌÊÓƔ’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.

I would also like to thank our President (Joe Lapp), our Provost (Beryl Brubaker), our Dean (Marie Morris), and my fellow faculty members for supporting this endeavor. The faculty decision to “relocate” classes and engage their “teaching energies” around issues in which they may or may not have substantive expertise — demonstrates the unique character of a community marked both by faith and by a commitment to a liberal arts education. Over the weekend, I was with colleagues from half-a-dozen colleges and universities, including George Mason University and the University of Virginia. They were all extremely impressed – and more than a little envious of me – when I described the ways this campus community has collectively grasped the opportunity presented by the September 11 crisis — to engage in a shared search for wisdom and understanding.

As the newest member of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding faculty and as a non-Mennonite, I am deeply honored by your invitation. I am also a bit humbled by your trust. Given the brain-power and the heart-passion for peace and social justice among my colleagues – not to mention their publication and practice credentials in the area of peacebuilding – I recognize that there were many others who could have been invited to kick off this ambitious project.

Marcus and I spoke about this session last Tuesday, just as I was preparing to leave for Toronto to attend the First Annual International Conference of the Association for Conflict Resolution. Don’t let the “first annual” fool you. The Association for Conflict Resolution (or ACR) was formed out of three long-standing organizations dedicated to the advancement of conflict resolution practices at all levels of society. So I was fortunate to spend the past weekend with colleagues who have dedicated years – and in many cases three or more decades – to developing, refining, using, and promoting the acceptance of alternative, nonviolent methods for responding to conflict in families, schools, neighborhoods, organizations, churches and other religious communities
 in short, wherever conflict occurs.

Naturally, the events of September 11 and the follow up responses from the United States and other nations were very much on our minds. And, the conference organizers convened two separate 3-hour sessions to discuss the current crisis. In each session, two of our bravest colleagues agreed to facilitate a discussion of this difficult topic for a room of 50-60 persons all trained in facilitation and conflict resolution – and, I might add, all perfectly willing to make process suggestions from the floor. It probably won’t surprise you to hear that these sessions were a bit like “herding cats” – trying to get 50-60 process experts to agree on a process is no easy task. Personally, I think my colleagues who volunteered to facilitate these sessions deserve hazardous duty pay.

What probably will surprise you
 is the fact that the participants did not limit their disagreements to issues of process. We were, in fact, coming from extraordinarily different places in our responses to the September 11 attacks, the subsequent actions of the United States, the appropriate response from the conflict resolution community, and the long-term implications of this crisis for our work and for our lives.

Some of the variety in our responses could be traced to differences in our proximity to the September 11 attacks. Many persons from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and the Washington D.C. area were clearly coping with trauma. Sadly, many of these persons had not had an opportunity to start processing their trauma, and they were looking to their community of conflict resolution colleagues to help with this. We did our best to assist them in starting what will be a long process.

But proximity to the attack was not our only difference. We also discovered the full range of action-responses coming from our gathering of conflict resolution professionals.

• Some individuals were ready to sign up with the nearest recruiting officer and head to Afghanistan — and they were fully supportive of our bombing campaign.
• Others were already actively organizing a peace movement response.
• Many had started working in their local communities on anti-bias work and outreach to their Muslim neighbors. This group included individuals supportive of the war on terrorism as well as those opposed to it, which points to the complexity of individual views and attitudes in this situation.
• Most were still sorting out the nature of the events and identifying useful, appropriate, or helpful responses. In this, they were often confused about where their talents and skills as conflict resolution practitioners fit into the current situation.

Fortunately, our profession has taught us the importance of listening to diverse voices around any conflict — and we were able to put our values into practice during our time together. We just listened to one another without judgment or argument, and in that listening process, three themes resonated with the group.

One colleague – arguing against splitting the group into a trauma-healing group and an action-planning group – said:

“We don’t need to split our hearts and our heads. We need to use our hearts to draw our circle bigger so that we can embrace all of the peoples involved in this crisis and our heads to figure out what to do in that circle.”

A second member of the group said:

“This whole event has just completely knocked me off center. I don’t fully know what I believe anymore. I don’t know how to act in response to this situation. And, I don’t know whether the conflict resolution tools I have relied on for twenty years have any relevance in this case.”

A third said:

“I feel like we have been given a wake-up call. We can either ignore it and go back to sleep, or we can take on the largest challenge we will ever face.”

I am going to take these themes in reverse order as a way of framing our conversation today – about the causes of September 11 – and also as a way of making some suggestions about how we can “be” together and learn together during the series of four teach-ins.

The Wake-Up Call

To say that September 11 was a wake-up call, is also to say that we have been asleep – we have somehow missed or failed to recognize profoundly important events and/or changes in our world. In some way, September 11 has directed our attention to those events or changes, but even now – one month after the initial attack – we are not completely sure what has changed, or how it has changed. We certainly are not clear about what we need to do in response to the wake-up call. Let me share a few snippets from my own “waking-up” since September 11 and from things I heard at the ACRÌ곊ŽÇČÔŽÚ±đ°ù±đČÔłŠ±đ.

• The “global system” is real; we live in a world that is profoundly different from the world as it existed even when I was an undergraduate. Which to many of you will seem like centuries ago, but it really was not in the Middle Ages.

You know all the protesters in Seattle, Milan, and Washington? They are not just making noise and they are not just trying to re-live the 1960’s. I knew this intellectually, even though my own response to the problems created by the globalizing system did not include street protests. But I really recognized it at a gut level when I looked at a map of the countries that suffered casualties in the World Trade Center. This map, along with a list of the countries that lost people in the September 11 attack is posted on the U.S. State Department web site, and I urge you to visit it some time to experience the full impact of a visual depiction of the global system. [unfortunately this link is no longer available]

Working on the hypothesis that any country that did not lose someone in the Trade Center may be excluded in some fashion from the global economy, the map is truly shocking. Only five countries on the African continent suffered casualties on September 11. They are South Africa, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Kenya, and Egypt. The Central Asian countries (Afghanistan, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan) are absent from the list of victims. Also absent from the roll call of casualties are Iraq, Syria, and Libya (countries the United States has punished through economic policies because of previous terrorist incidents) as well as most of the Islamic Middle East – Saudi Arabia, Oman, Yemen, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar.

In short, we were attacked by individuals from countries that have little stake in the world economic system, or from countries where the elites but not the masses are integrated into the global system. And, when our African friends tell us that they are not part of the global economy, they are speaking truth and not just using hyperbole to get our attention. It is no accident that earlier terrorist attacks on the United States occurred in Africa and in Yemen. If we really wake up to the reality of the global system, then we must grapple with and address the economic, social, cultural, and political inequities of that system. For in those inequities lie some of the root causes of September 11.

• The United States is not separate from the rest of the world. We cannot withdraw from the community of nations however much some of our political leaders would like to pursue separatist or isolationist policies.

In the months prior to September 11, President Bush withdrew from the Kyoto accord on global warming, removed the U.S. delegation from the World Conference on Racism, and indicated a willingness to set aside a long-standing arms control treaty with the Russians. Each of these multi-lateral efforts has strengths and weaknesses that can be debated. What was striking about the US withdrawal from these efforts, was that in each case the reason for backing out or not participating was couched in the pursuit of US interests, which it was argued cannot and should not be subject to global considerations. Even our friends chastised us for these decisions and for this “go it alone” approach. In the years prior to September 11, the United States failed to pay its dues to the United Nations – a problem that is being corrected since September 11. We also have a decades long record of exempting ourselves from prosecution in various international courts. This, of course, weakened our ability to turn to international justice systems, for assistance in responding to the attacks of September 11.

The famous sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset talks of “American exceptionalism” – the belief that America is different from all other countries and therefore not subject to the same rules of behavior or norms of conduct that apply to other nations. If you don’t think that American exceptionalism is real or you don’t understand how it impacts our assumptions and behaviors, I urge you to speak with some of our international students. Last week, one of the CJP students told me how surprised he was at the United States’ failure to turn to the United Nations as a venue for addressing the crisis created by September 11. In his country, the UN would have been the first institution to which the leaders would have turned for assistance. Only now, living here during these events, did he fully understand the depth of the American sense of self-reliance and exceptionalism.

• One of the wake-up calls on September 11 was caused by the death of American exceptionalism. We have not fully recognized the implications of this death, but the loss is real and profound.

We have now experienced in a deeply personal way the type of violence that has become commonplace in all too many parts of the world. We have, in this terrible experience, joined the family of nations. What we do not yet know is exactly how the death of American exceptionalism will impact our daily lives, our attitudes, our behaviors, and our expectations.

If you have lost a loved one, you know that it takes months or even years before you really, really come to grips with their absence. The first holiday season, for example, you discover that you were unconsciously expecting grandma to make her special stuffing, or you were assuming that your dad would put up his goofy decorations. And, in those moments, you experience your loss all over again, even as you re-knit your family and create new rituals and expectations about how you will “be” in the absence of your loved one. So it will be with the United States as we grapple with the fact that we will never again be able to assume that we are an exception to the experiences of violence that are sweeping the globe.

I was struck by the difficulty individuals are having grasping this idea while sitting on the plane coming home from Toronto. Our flight was late taking off and it took an hour-and-a-half longer than scheduled, because the military had closed down a vast expanse of air space over Washington. So, we had to fly west as far as Cleveland and then south before they let us head east and finally up to Baltimore-Washington International Airport from the southeast. In the midst of this, a man in the row behind mine asked his neighbor, “How long do you think it will be before things are back to normal?” To which his companion – reading my own mind, I think – replied, “What do you mean by normal? We will probably never approach flying the same way, again.”

Indeed, there are many, many things about our lives that will change as we integrate the experience of September 11 into our collective psyche, our daily routines, and our institutions. And, this points to the fact that in crisis, we also have opportunities to remake systems. The global system may be real and the United States may not be able to escape membership in that system, but it is not carved in stone. In some ways, it is the very fragility or vulnerability of the system that has shocked us. We are just starting to recognize that we live in an “emerging” system and we all have a role to play in deciding the shape of that system in the post-September 11 world. No wonder we feel “knocked off center.”

“Knocked off Center”

When experienced conflict resolution practitioners talked about being “knocked off center” by September 11, they meant a number of different things.

• “Being centered” is a term used by many mediators to describe the state of calm and dispassion that they attempt to achieve during a mediation session.

Many of the professional mediators at ACR were shocked by the waves of fury and passion that overtook them on September 11 and in the ensuing weeks. Their rage is leading them to question their professional identities. Were their professed belief in calm, careful problem solving – their claim that conflicts can be turned into problems to be solved – their argument that conflicts are opportunities for transforming personal lives and interpersonal relationships – just so much bunk? Are they hypocrites who see nonviolence and problem solving as tools for use with other persons, but not for incidents involving themselves, their loved ones, or their country? Some of you may be experiencing a similar sense of being unbalanced, particularly if you were raised in a Mennonite or other pacifist tradition. No matter how deeply you have integrated this identity, the shock of such a violent attack on U.S. soil against U.S. civilians may be causing you to question your beliefs.

• “Being centered” also implies that we understand how the world works and that there is a predictability to our reality.

On September 11, we all lost our sense that the world was a predictable place. Since September 11 – and most notably since the bombing began last Sunday – we don’t know what to expect. That unpredictability is, by the way, part of the experience of terror. Terrorists work in ways that deliberately keep their victims “off balance” and under stress. This profound sense of unpredictability has always been part of the experience of war for civilians. We are just not accustomed to having our wars come home to us in this manner. The “hot” battles of the so-called “Cold” War were fought in other peoples’ countries, usually using other peoples’ soldiers as our proxy warriors. The full-scale wars fought with our own troops – Korea and Vietnam – were not victories, but at least the violence did not show up in our daily lives on the home front. Our one big post-Cold War confrontation – the Persian Gulf War – came to us via CNN and it looked more like a Nintendo game than a deadly, violent confrontation. It certainly did not lead to massive destruction in the United States, and for most Americans the region and all of its problems faded into the background once the media moved its attention to President Clinton’s scandalous sex life and other pressing matters.

On a personal level, many of you may be reconsidering your career plans. A few among us may yet be called up for active duty and others may decide to enlist in the military. Many of you are waiting anxiously to hear whether the government will reinstate the draft. And if it is reinstated, you are anxious to know what types of provisions will be made for conscientious objectors. In short, many of you are probably feeling a bit knocked off center, too.

It is easy – under these circumstances – to draw narrower and narrower circles. If we do that, then: we talk only with those persons we know share our views; we define our enemies to include those persons on the home front who disagree with us; and we push the enemy/Other into the category of non-human or sub-human entity. In our time together during the teach-ins, I am going to suggest that we would do well to “use our hearts to draw our circle bigger and our heads to figure out how to talk with one another in that circle.”

Creating a Big Circle for a Difficult Discussion

If we draw a large circle when thinking about the causes of our current crisis, we will extend the time horizon for our analysis and we will make sure that we subject all parties – including our own country and our traditional allies – to an even-handed analysis and scrutiny. I have been trying to draw that larger circle, and in so doing I have recognized some unpleasant truths about U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and in Central Asia. I am not going to elaborate on those lessons, because I think some of our panel members can do that better than I.

[The following section was not included in the speech on October 15 due to time constraints.]

Instead, I want to focus on a question about which I have some expertise based on my research into apocalyptic religious movements that come into conflict with state authorities.

• What would make individuals hijack planes and fly them into buildings? In other words, “Why do they hate us so much?

To answer this question, we must think in decades and we must expand our circle of thinking outside of the psychological realm. The individuals who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon did not just wake up one morning and say, “Gosh, what a great day to attack those infidels in the United States.” °Őłó±đÌęmotivationsÌęČčČÔ»ćÌęactions of the persons who carried out the September 11 attacks, were shaped by the institutionsÌęČčČÔ»ćÌęcultural systems in which they grew up. Just as our motivations and our actions are shaped by our institutions and cultural systems. Such systems and institutions take decades – if not longer – to create. For example, the current U.S. response to the September 11 attack is rooted in a universal human urge for justice or perhaps revenge. But the inclination to revenge is manifested through institutions (e.g., the military) that have grown out of our decades-old decision to put massive resources into a war-making system. Had we put those same resources into developing a system for responding to international crime, we would have other options available to us during this crisis.

The motivations of the attackers were shaped by institutions in their own countries, but it is important that we understand how much the prior policies of the United States – and before us, the policies of European colonial powers – shaped those institutions. U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and in Central Asia has privileged the elites while marginalizing the masses within many Islamic countries. Even though we talk about spreading democracy to other countries, we have historically made alliances with and in many cases placed into power, persons whose methods of rule were authoritarian and repressive.

This has been particularly true in regions of the world that are rich in natural resources (the Middle East) or strategically located in relation to some enemy we want to contain (such as Central Asia in relation to the Soviet Union). In other words, all across the Islamic world, we have a decades-long tradition of choosing to pursue our own immediate strategic interests over the needs of the masses and the creation of longer-term stability.

One consequence in the Islamic world has been the creation of fundamentalist schools, which are often the only source of education for the poor. While learning to read, write, and do their math, poor children all over the region are being fed a steady diet of fundamentalist Islamic teachings that explain how the United States is the source of all evil and the architect of the poverty and inequity in the region.

If you want to understand what an equivalent situation would look like in this country, think about what would happen if the public schools in the poorest communities collapsed, and the government left education for poor white children in the hands of Christian Identity pastors. Poor White children would learn anti-Semitism, racism, and a mandatory return to traditional family values that includes no higher education for women, no work outside the home for women, and the subservience of women to their fathers, brothers, and husbands. Many of the women in this room would not be here. Jews in this country would live in fear, as would persons of color. If a similar collapse of the educational system occurred in primarily Black communities and the educational system were placed in the hands of militant black leaders preaching a hatred of White people and a revolutionary opposition to dominant cultural institutions, we would eventually have a race war.

The themes of fundamentalism and the potential for fanaticism are present in every religious tradition. It only takes the right set of contextual circumstances to bring those themes to the fore.

[That concludes the section that was not included in the speech on October 15, 2001.]

Finally, I want to direct our attention to the circle in which we are thinking about the current crisis. And, I want us to consider how we can modify that thinking in order to create a larger circle for dialogue, analysis, policy-making, and articulating our individual responses to September 11.

For this, I am going to give you a pop-quiz. I am going to read a series of statements. These are summaries of ideas from speeches or written texts prepared by President George W. Bush or Osama bin Laden. For each statement, you tell me who said it. Where I use the word God, I am also encompassing the concept of Allah, so you can mentally re-write the statement. This quiz is a little different; I want you to cheat. Work with three or four persons sitting around you and see if you can agree on your answer.

1. There are evil forces in the world.
2. Those forces of evil have invaded our space and threaten to overrun us.
3. We, the forces of good, must fight against the forces of evil until they are defeated.
4. They (the other side, the forces of evil) understand only force.
5. We, the forces of good, cannot reason with the forces of evil.
6. We ask God’s blessing to help us defeat the forces of evil.
7. We are committed to fighting this battle as long as necessary.
8. They, the forces of evil, hope that their evil acts will frighten us. They are wrong.
9. They, the forces of evil, hope that their evil acts will deter us from acting. They are wrong.
10. We call on all those who agree with us to commit to our cause.
11. This is the first war of the new era.
12. This war will not be like other wars.
13. We will fight this war by unconventional means.

How many of you reached perfect consensus on your answers? How many of you were confused or uncertain? Well, what is going on here? Why are our answers not obvious? Because each of these statements can be found in speeches and texts prepared by both President Bush and bin Laden.

At the national level of policy making we are trapping ourselves in a very small circle indeed as we plan our responses to the current crisis. We are already limiting our thinking to a war-system in which the parties become mirror images of each other. This narrowing of the circle is apparent in the media, too.

One of the side effects of this narrowing circle is that persons who do not agree with the war-response are demonized. We have already seen the publication – locally and in the national media – of editorials that equate a failure to support war as a manifestation of craziness or evil. This is, no doubt, of great concern to many of you.

On the other hand, sitting with us today, we probably have persons who feel that the campus community has gone the other direction – that anyone not supporting a nonviolent response to the current crisis is allying him or herself with evil.

It is up to us to use our time together to model another way of responding to crisis. We can do this by following the example of the conflict resolution experts in Toronto. We can sit with one another, listen to one another without judgment, and use our hearts to draw a big circle in which we can have a difficult discussion about critically important matters.

, PhD, is the professor of Conflict Studies at 91¶ÌÊÓƔ’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.

If this is the case, then crafting any kind of a preventive or cautionary message for individuals who might take similar actions is futile. ł§±đ±đ:Ìę.

It is more useful to begin with the assumption that the terrorists who acted on September 11 engaged in social action, that is to say, they were highly motivated, undertaking an activity that:

• Was meaningful to them.
• Was oriented to the past, present or expected future behavior of others.

All social actions are rational – which is to say they can be explained logically – but they are not all rational in exactly the same way. The sociologist Max Weber identified four types of rationality that explain social actions.

• Goal-rational social actions are chosen as a means to an end. This is the most commonly recognized form of rationality and is often equated with rationality as such.
• Value-rational social actions are oriented to an absolute value. The value commitment of the actor determines what is permissible and impermissible behavior and all actions must be congruent with the value commitments or “ultimate concerns” of the actor.
• Affectual rationality arises out of the actor’s emotional states, feelings, and attachments. Actions are selected in order to honor and preserve emotional and social commitments to others.
• Traditional rationality involves selecting actions based on the accepted norms of a community.

Western culture encourages individuals to value goal-rationality above the other forms of rationality, but every person operates out of mixed rationalities.

For example, in western culture we may make a value commitment to law and order or protecting United States interests abroad, and then we shift our focus to the means-end questions (goal-rationality) of how to accomplish this task in the most efficient and effective manner. Once this shift occurs, the value-rationality that supports our selected ends disappears into the background and we no longer consider it negotiable or subject to change.

The terrorists demonstrated a highly sophisticated capacity for goal-rational behavior when they selected efficient and highly effective means to achieve their end. So, in that sense, they were exceedingly rational in the way we normally think of rationality.

When we say the terrorists were deranged or irrational, we are really saying that we cannot answer the following questions

• What value-rational commitments motivated these men to fly passenger planes into buildings?
• What was their orientation to the past, present or expected future behavior of others (including Americans)?

We can start to answer these questions through a process of worldview analysis, which reveals that the terrorists’ motivation comes from:

• seeing U.S. cultural influence in the Islamic world as a threat to Islam and the US presence in Islamic countries (particularly Saudi Arabia) as a violation of sacred space. Thus, they consider themselves to be engaged in a defensivebattle against evil.
• seeing the current battle between good and evil, sacred and profane, as taking place on a cosmic plane and not just in the historical reality that we all recognize as real. In short, they hold an apocalyptic vision of reality in which faithfully defending Islam will lead to the establishment of an empire ruled by Islamic law.
• expecting retaliation from the United States, because only retaliation can legitimize their commitment to jihad, and only through the trial of jihad can the new Islamic order be ushered into being.

We must recognize that these apocalyptic themes and terrorist behaviors are not unique to Islam. Similar themes and behaviors have been associated with all of the major religions of the world at various times in history.

The important reality is that numerous sympathizers hold similar views, albeit in more moderate and less violent forms.

The moderation and nonviolence of the sympathizers can change, particularly if the claims listed above are validated by events in the international arena. Apocalyptic worldviews are validated by opposition from established authorities. Therefore, the United States response to the events of September 11 will:

• help determine how many followers move from sympathizing with those who use violence to active participation in terrorist cells.
• impact the political stability of governments in every nation-state with a significant Islamic population, by creating grassroots political unrest and violence in those countries that cooperate with the United States. This is particularly true for countries that host US military troops.

Why do policy makers ignore these realities?

U.S. policy makers operate from a goal-rational worldview. They ignore the existence and the motivational power of alternate worldviews.

• They make strategic alliances with top leaders in other countries in response to changes in the geopolitical system.
• They assume that managing dissident elements inside any given country is the responsibility of the political leaders of that country.
• Sometimes they make strategic alliances with dissident movements in countries with “unfriendly” regimes (e.g., the Kurds in Iraq).
• They do not analyze the symbolic motivations to action behind dissident movements inside other countries.
• They do not analyze the worldviews of people with whom they create strategic partnerships.

This is why it may be accurate to say that the United States created Bin Laden and the Taliban. Based on their fighting prowess, these men were trained and equipped by the CIA during the Afghan war against Soviet occupation. They were designated as “freedom fighters” because no one in the U.S. government paid any attention to their openly expressed intent to establish a conservative Islamic regime from which to spread a pan-Islamic movement, which is now destabilizing numerous other countries.

In light of this motivational understanding, what should we think about when planning a “communication strategy” for “sending a message” to terrorists or would-be terrorists?

The U.S. response to the current crisis is being carefully scrutinized by thousands of individuals who believe the September 11 attacks were defensive rather than offensive in nature. For these persons, the attacks on New York and Washington are part of an effort to defend a way of life against those who would destroy it and a sacred territory – against those who have already encroached upon it.

Any military attack mounted by the U.S. particularly if it results in civilian casualties or requires the sustained presence of U.S. military troops in Islamic countries – will simply confirm claims that the terrorists were acting defensively. Such an attack is more likely to create a steady stream of new recruits for terrorist cells than it is to deter individuals from engaging in acts of terror.

, PhD, is the professor of Conflict Studies at 91¶ÌÊÓƔ’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.

“Go back to work; it will send a message to the terrorists.”

“We need to send a message to the terrorists and all who support them and give them succor.”

These and similar ideas are circulating widely in the press. They deserve careful examination.

Clearly, we cannot communicate with the individuals who perpetrated the attacks of September 11. So, if we talk about communicating with the terrorists, we have a wider audience of “potential perpetrators” in mind.

But what do we want to say to them, and how can we say it so that they will be able to hear it?

Any act of communication involves:

• °Őłó±đÌęmessage we want to share.
• °Őłó±đÌęchannel through which the message is sent.
• °Őłó±đÌęrecipient who must decode the message.

To send a well-crafted message that can actually be heard as it was intended, we need to pay attention to all three elements: message, channel, and recipient.

Thus far, the attention of our officials seems to be focused only on the message and the channel of communication. Little or no critical or analytical attention has been given to the message or recipient. Consequently, we don’t know whether the message will actually be heard correctly, and we don’t know whether the message will have its intended effect.

°Őłó±đÌęmessage is usually framed as, “Do not attack the United States, or you will suffer dire consequences!”

°Őłó±đÌęchannel usually takes the form of something that most of us do not normally consider a means of communication: a military attack, assassinations of key individuals, or other uses of force.

°Őłó±đÌęrecipient remains a vague and shadowy figure, perhaps shaped more by our assumptions than by careful analysis of the actual persons.

What are the unspoken assumptions about the proposed recipients of our messages? There is no single answer to this question.

Option One: We Assume the Recipient is a Rational Actor

The reasoning here is that our intended audience will weigh the costs and benefits of attacking the United States, determine that the costs are too high, and refrain from taking the action.

The Problem: We probably cannot create a punishment adequate to deter an individual willing to commit suicide in order to attack an enemy.

Option Two: We Assume the Recipient is Blindly Following a Charismatic Leader

Some policy makers and security specialists are advocating the assassination of terrorist leaders or a surgical assault on the “terrorist headquarters.” They reason that the followers will collapse into confusion once we break down the relationship between the charismatic leaders and the individuals trained to carry out terrorist attacks.

The Problem: This is a thinly veiled modification of claims about brainwashed cult members. However, past experience tells us that individual members of groups that are motivated to actions by revolutionary religious beliefs are not brainwashed cult members. In many cases, the persecution or assassination of their leaders simply confirms their suspicion that their beliefs are justified, their enemies are evil, and they should continue their fight. New leaders emerge and the organization may splinter into groups that are even more unpredictable and more difficult to track.

Option Three: We are Making Incongruent Assumptions about the Recipient

We may be crafting a mixed message that is based on incongruent assumptions about the recipient of the message. In order to gather public support for military actions or assassinations, policy makers may present a portrait of the terrorist as a crazed lunatic. At the same time, the internal logic of their proposed message and channel for delivering the message works on the assumption that the recipient is a rational actor.

The Problem: Neither assumption is accurate. The terrorists or potential terrorists are not crazed lunatics; they are passionate revolutionaries motivated by deeply held beliefs. They are perfectly capable of making rational choices about how to accomplish their ends (e.g., using weaknesses in the security system, box cutters, and civilian aircraft to stage a military-style assault), but they are unwilling to apply a cost-benefit reasoning process to the establishment of their goals.

Before jumping to the conclusion that a violent attack will deliver our intended message to potential terrorists effectively, we need to clarify our understanding of the recipients of the message.

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, PhD, is the professor of Conflict Studies at 91¶ÌÊÓƔ’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.

Thus far, we have been impressed by the generally restrained and cautious responses we have heard from the media. However, we have not seen clearly articulated options outside of the model of “revenge” responses. While revenge is an understandable human response, we also know that long-term peace will require us to find other ways of responding to these attacks.

As we shape our public responses to these events, we thought it might be helpful to consider the following issues, which are raised by our work in conflict transformation.

First, this attack points to the extreme complexity of security issues and demonstrates that there is no technological mechanism — however simple or complex — that can create and maintain more than a modest amount of security against a determined attacker. Our real source of security will ultimately rest on our development of positive, collaborative relations with peoples and nations around the world and at home.

Second, there are numerous potential sources of threat to the United States — both foreign and domestic. In a moment of crisis it is incumbent upon all of us to refrain from jumping to conclusions about responsibility for these horrific events.

Third, moderation in discussing the identity of actual or potential responsible parties is critical in the context of a globally diverse community such as the Shenandoah Valley. After the Oklahoma City bombing, Arab-Americans and residents of the United States of Middle Eastern descent experienced harassment, intimidation, and fear. We need to ensure that all members of our community feel safe during this difficult time. Even when the perpetrators are identified, we urge journalists and public officials to remind the public that the vast majority of people who may resemble the attackers have no connection to these events and are as shocked as everyone else. People of good will in our community may want to take the initiative to reassure those who may be vulnerable to prejudice that we will not stand by idly if they are targeted by others in our community.

Fourth, violence is interactive and it is incumbent upon all Americans to ponder seriously the question, “What has the United States done, deliberately or inadvertently, in its role as the ‘one remaining superpower’ to inspire such hatred and anger?” This in no way implies that we excuse or condone the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001. It simply recognizes that we can understand the emergence of such fury and hatred only if we are willing and able to critique our own activities as well as those of others.

Finally, as the full magnitude of the horror of these events becomes apparent, the repercussions are going to be personal as well as political, social, and cultural. We will each experience this trauma in our own way and our responses will be shaped by our past experiences with war, violence, and terror. It is important that we each find places where we can process our personal horror. We also need to be particularly mindful of the impact of these events on our neighbors whose lives have already included violence and terror in the United States and around the world.

Please feel free to email one of us, if you have any questions.

September 11, 2001 has created a crisis for the United States.

Crises are marked by events that do not easily fit into existing organizational and conceptual categories. During a major crisis, we discover that:

• We cannot easily understand the meaning of the events.
• We struggle to define the problems exposed by the crisis.
• Even when we think we have some idea of the nature of the problem, we do not have the language for expressing our ideas.
• We have difficulty mobilizing resources to deal with the problems arising out of the crisis.
• We need to create new organizational structures and new organizational relationships in order to address the crisis effectively.
• In a complex crisis, short-term emergency management responses (search and rescue and disaster relief) are followed by uncertainty about appropriate long-term responses.

We must choose between two types of responses to our current crisis.

We can fall back on our existing systems and try to apply whatever tools we already have to the current problems. If, as is the case in most crises, the tools do not completely fit the new problems we are facing, we can persist in trying to make the situation fit our tools.

Or, we can take a creative problem solving approach. We can recognize that we need to rethink the ways we use our existing resources and tools. We can also acknowledge that we need to invent new tools or adapt existing resources to deal with the new reality that has been exposed by or created by the crisis.

Waco or Apollo 13: Examples of Responses

If we are overly reliant on our existing tools, we may try to force the new situation into old frameworks. The results are often disastrous.

This was the case during the 1993 standoff between federal law enforcement agents and a religious sect known as the Branch Davidians. After an initial deadly confrontation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) worked for 51 days using their existing model of crisis negotiation – using pressure by threatening force along with negotiation – in an effort to convince the Branch Davidians to surrender. Because their barricade management system had been remarkably successful when dealing with criminals and disturbed subjects, they assumed the model would work with a barricaded religious community. When the Branch Davidians did not respond in expected ways to the threat of force, the FBI commanders did not revisit their strategies. They simply escalated the pressure on the Branch Davidians. The final result was a tragedy that continues to reverberate through our social, political, and legal systems.

If we recognize that our reality has been changed by the crisis, we are more likely to redefine the problem, redesign and adapt our current resources and create new tools that fit the new reality. The results are not guaranteed, but our chances of success increase when we take this approach.

This was the approach taken by NASA during the Apollo 13 mission. The film Apollo 13 captures the decision-making processes used by the astronauts and NASA engineers as they struggled to manage a crisis created by the failure of critical systems on board the spacecraft. One crisis fed into another and the astronauts soon realized that, having moved to the landing module as a lifeboat, their air purifying system was not designed to support three people long enough to get them home. From the beginning of the crisis, NASA officials recognized that the goal of the mission had changed (from landing on the moon to survival), all problem definitions had to be reframed, and the use and limits of every single piece of equipment had to be rethought. At one point the NASA flight supervisor tells everyone, “I don’t care what anything was designed to do, I care what it can do.” In the end, NASA engineers and the Apollo 13 crew succeed in bringing the crew home safely.

Limits to the Apollo 13 Analogy

There are limits to the analogy between the Apollo 13 mission and our current situation. NASA and the astronauts faced a technical problem using a limited array of resources while we are facing a complex political, social, economic, and military problem with access to a much wider array of resources. Nevertheless, the analogy can help us focus on the following lessons:

We need to be clear about our goals before we can craft an effective response to the crisis.

• Is our goal revenge?
• Is our goal to eliminate a specific terrorist organization?
• Is our goal to increase security?
• Is our goal long-term peace and stability?
• Or, is our goal actually some complex mix of short- and long-term objectives? If so, how do the short-term and the long-term goals intersect with one another?

We must check our tendency to assume that the answer to our problem can be found only in the tools and resources we have already developed.

• The attacks on New York and Washington felt like a military assault, but does that mean this is a military problem?
• We have funneled massive resources into our military system for the past 50 years, but does that mean those are the best resources to use in this situation?
• What other resources can we bring to bear on this situation?
• How will we need to adapt existing resources to the new situation?

We must recognize that defining our current problem is a complex task of finding or creating new ways to understand our situation and that we should use language very carefully during the period of problem definition.

• As we use concrete language to describe our current crisis (e.g., it is a war, it is a natural disaster, it is a crime), we need to reflect on the action implications of each analogy or metaphor.
• As we invoke values and goals (peace, security, justice), we must recognize that we may need to reconsider our definitions of these values and goals.

, PhD, is the professor of Conflict Studies at 91¶ÌÊÓƔ’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.