Condoleezza Rice alludes that 9/11 was due to 50 year
old US foreign policy mistake.
Due to the USA "[seeking] stability at the expense of democracy
in supporting authoritarian regimes"
"If people have no way to hold their governments accountable
through peaceful change, they will do so violently. "
====
Why democracy prevails
For 60 years the United States sought stability at the expense
of democracy in supporting authoritarian regimes, but we should have known
better
by Condoleezza Rice 04:45 AM Sep 06, 2011
"My God! This is a terrorist attack!" I had just received word that
a second plane had plunged into the World Trade Center in New York.
Thirty minutes later I would learn that another plane had hit the
Pentagon.
"You have to go to the bunker, now!" the Secret Service agent
yelled at me. "There are planes flying into buildings all over
Washington. The White House has got to be next."
As I was almost lifted off my feet and pushed toward the safety of
the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, I stopped to call
President George Bush.
"You can't come back here," I said.
"I'm coming back," he replied.
"Stay where you are," I answered, raising my voice in a way that I
had never done and would never do again to the President of the
United States. "We, I mean, the United States is under
attack."
For those of us in office on that day, it is as if time was
suspended. For us and for the victims' families, every day since
then has been Sept 12.
Our sense of what constituted security and what it takes to protect
the country had been irrevocably altered. The United States, the
most militarily and economically powerful country on Earth, had
experienced a devastating attack. And it had been carried out by a
stateless band of extremists, operating from the territory of what
was at the time a failed state, Afghanistan.
In the months after the attack, we reflected again and again on the
deeper causes. What could provoke the hatred that led people to fly
air planes into buildings on that bright September day?
Ten years later, it is clear that 9/11 made encouraging democracy
and supporting political institutions a global necessity.
In 2002, a group of Arab scholars at the United Nations issued the
Arab Human Development Report, identifying three gaps - respect for
human freedom, women's empowerment and access to knowledge - that
are holding back the progress of millions of people. And these gaps
do even more harm: They cause the hopelessness that in turn creates
a vacuum into which extremism and hatred flow.
This is the link between what happened on 9/11 and the urgency of
democratic reform throughout the Middle East. For 60 years, the US sought stability at the expense
of democracy in supporting authoritarian regimes. But we should
have known better.
If people have no way to hold their governments accountable through
peaceful change, they will do so violently.
There is a reason that extremists are the most organised political
forces in the Middle East today. Authoritarians did not permit
politics in the public square and thus "politics" went instead into
the radical mosques and madrassas.
Now decent political forces - those that will defend women's rights
and religious and ethnic tolerance - will need the time to organise
themselves to fill the void. Authoritarianism is simply
unsustainable. As difficult as the journey to democracy may be, it
is the only pathway to true stability.
FREEDOM CANNOT BE DENIED
The killing of Osama bin Laden just a few months before the 10th
anniversary of 9/11 and the eruption of the Arab Spring in the same
year bring together the lessons of that devastating day. Extremism
will wither as people gain legitimate means to control their
future. I do not believe that extremism will win when the public
square allows the open debate of ideas.
Political institutions will come into being - weak at first but
ultimately necessary to define the relationship between the
authority of the state and the rights of the individual.
In Baghdad and Kabul, citizens are trying to use their new
democratic institutions to secure better lives as free men and
women. That road is long but at least they are on their way with
constitutions that define the relationships between those who
govern and those who consent to be governed.
The people who are experiencing glimpses of freedom in Egypt,
Libya, Syria, Tunisia and across the Middle East have just begun to
build the institutions that will secure their liberties. And in
some places, dictators are fighting to hold back the day when they
will fall. Freedom can be delayed but not denied.
Since 9/11, we have come to understand that no country can secure
itself in isolation and that helping failed states heal is no
longer simply a matter of largesse - it is now a necessity.
Consequently the US has pursued a foreign policy that is as
practical as it is compassionate and transformative: We encourage
economic and social development, we promote the empowerment and
protection of the vulnerable, and we strive for a civilised and
ultimately more peaceful world.
These ideals transcend political parties and form the basic core
values for which American democracy stands and those that we, as
American citizens, represent.
In the days to come, those who perished on 9/11 will be honoured by
family and friends and fellow citizens and sympathetic people
around the world. The lives lost can never be regained - leaving
grieving parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and
sisters who will never quite be whole again.
But perhaps there is some comfort for them - for all of us - in
knowing that there was far greater meaning in the horrors of that
day. Because of the fortitude of the United States, 9/11 is not a
day that reminds us of defeat or vulnerability or a global power's
supposed decline.
It is a day that rallies us, in tragedy and in victory, to declare
that freedom will prevail. Many of us have been blessed with God's
gift of freedom. It is our responsibility and our work never to
tire until it is universally enjoyed. @Condoleeza Rice (Distributed
by The New York Times)
Condoleezza Rice was Secretary
of State from 2005 to 2008. She was national security adviser from
2001 to 2005. She is a professor of political economy at the
graduate school of business at Stanford University, in Palo Alto,
California; a senior fellow on public policy at the Hoover
Institution there; and a professor of political science at the
university. Her book, to be published on Nov 1, is No Higher Honor.
On Sept 11, 2001, Ms Rice was in her West Wing office at the White
House when she learned from one of her aides about the attack on
the World Trade Center.
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