Ordinary people

Reading about the men who hijacked the four planes in the terrorist attacks in the United States, what I found most chilling was how ordinary their lives seemed to have been in America. After reading those stories, you can’t blame people if they become paranoid about every Arab in the neighborhood, no matter how peaceful and respectable the Arab may be.

Even South Asians have not been spared from the paranoia, which must be especially painful for Indians since they’re predominantly Hindu and are still in conflict with the Pakistanis, allies of the Taliban.

How can religion lead to so much hatred and carnage? Genocide in the name of faith is not unique to Islam. Christians had their holy wars, and Adolf Hitler invoked the killing of Christ as an excuse for slaughtering Jews.

Even Buddhists are not above committing murder, although I still think Buddhism is the most non-violent of the major faiths. Buddhist teachings, however, will find few adherents among the me-first generation, people who are used to instant gratification and life in the fast lane. The middle way is a boring way for these people, a life too ordinary. Even movies about Buddhism are too slow. Consider the box-office performance of Kundun, that biopic about the Dalai Lama.

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Will moral suasion from the leaders of Islam work on extremists like Osama bin Laden? It will help, but I think zealots like Bin Laden consider themselves above the preachings of any of their religious leaders. It wasn’t the Vatican but military action that stopped Hitler and the Nazis from exterminating the Jews.

This time, however, military action won’t be enough to meet the terrorist threat. The Americans have the capability to nuke Afghanistan, but they won’t. They can send ground troops to Afghanistan and their planes can bomb Kabul. But even if the Taliban fundamentalists are wiped out and the opposition Northern Alliance installed in Kabul, and even if Bin Laden were "smoked out" and neutralized, would the terrorist threat subside?

The destruction of the World Trade Center showed the world, live on television, how vulnerable open societies can be, including the most powerful nation on earth. The rejoicing in parts of the Middle East, South and Central Asia when the twin towers collapsed should warn the world that there is deep dislike out there for America, and that there are people who will want to see that kind of rejoicing again.

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How do you fight religious zealotry? How do you smoke out people who lead ordinary, quiet lives, but plot mass murder even as they shop in the supermarket or take their children to school?

It has been pointed out that the world’s lone superpower, with all its cutting-edge technology, was grievously wounded by a handful of suicidal men armed with knives and box cutters, manipulated by a man who once fought a foreign enemy with the help of the United States.

How do you fight such enemies? The zealotry will outlive Bin Laden, although there might not be another rallying figure with his wealth, financial savvy, ruthlessness and religious fanaticism. 

The free world is trying to figure out how this borderless war is going to be fought. We can be certain only of a few things: It’s going to be protracted and more difficult than the cold war. It will claim more lives. And it will take extra effort to regard ordinary neighbors the same way again.

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ONLY IN RP: Las Piñas City is clean and green, but traffic can be horrible especially near SM Southmall. And the biggest cause of traffic are the traffic aides themselves. Where can you find nincompoops who treat a four-lane road like a one-way street, letting traffic flow in only one direction at a time while those going in the opposite direction have to wait several minutes, even when vehicular volume is light? You can get stuck for 15 minutes on a 500-meter stretch. The idea of traffic management is to keep traffic constantly flowing, not to keep motorists stuck for minutes on end. Maybe the traffic aides need to find some use for their two-way radios. In case Las Piñas officials haven’t heard, there’s a contraption called a traffic light that may serve the city better than traffic aides with toothless grins and low IQ.