Sept. 11-A View from Canada

Published on Thursday, September 20, 2001 in the Toronto Star
Will U.S. Remember Global Goodwill?
by Rachel Giese

There are American flags waving all over the world and massive vigils almost
everywhere from Ottawa and London to Berlin and Rome.

Muslims, alongside Christians and Jews, are praying for dead and injured
Americans and their families. Palestinians have held candlelight vigils.
Taiwanese firefighters have honoured their fallen U.S. brethren. Kenyans
have gathered to pay their tearful respects. Swedes have observed a moment
of silence. The U.S. national anthem has been sung at events around the
globe. Canadian Blood Services has been deluged with donors hoping to assist
the rescue and medical efforts.

And at a service last Friday at Toronto's predominantly gay and left-leaning
Metropolitan Community Church, the choir belted out several heartfelt verses
of "God Bless America."

All in all, it's a remarkably generous global outpouring of support for a
country that up until nine days ago was almost uniformly considered a
worldwide bully, an increasingly isolationist nation unwilling to co-operate
in everything from environmental protocols and the Anti-Ballistic Missile
treaty to the enforcement of a ban on germ warfare. U.S. diplomacy has been
so deficient lately that what's surprising in the recent flood of news
coverage and commentary about the terrorist attacks is not that there's been
some dissenting opinion blaming antagonistic U.S. foreign policy, but that
there hasn't been more. Instead, the U.S. has been the recipient of
unprecedented global sympathy.

And the support isn't merely spiritual. For the first time in its history,
NATO used treaty language to proclaim the terrorist attacks on the U.S. an
attack on all of NATO and it appears that European leaders are willing to
offer military support to the U.S. in its fight against terrorism.

On Tuesday, Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister
c agreed to a ceasefire in the Middle East in the hope of
assisting U.S. efforts to establish an international coalition against
terrorism.

In Asia, the U.S. has rekindled its relationship with Pakistan, after siding
increasingly with India of late, Pakistan being one of the few nations with
ties to and influence with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Even China,
U.S. enemy Number 1 last March after it intercepted an American spy plane,
seems willing to co-operate. "The U.S. horror demonstrated that terrorism
knows no boundaries and evil won't be wiped out unless all nations join
together to fight it," the Shanghai Co-operation Organization said.

Still, much of America's jingoism (wrapped up in patriotism) remains hard
for the rest of the world to swallow, from the "Find 'em and nuke 'em"
T-shirts that appeared only hours after the terrorist attacks, to racist
assaults on Arab and Muslim Americans, to the football stadium spectacle of
a New York crowd greeting President George W. Bush with upraised fists and
chants of "U.S.A! U.S.A!" to Bush's cowboy rhetoric of wanting Osama bin
Laden "dead or alive."

So what happens next and afterward depends entirely on how much the American
people and their government are willing to tone down their bloodthirst and
recognize, respect and reflect the sympathy and assistance offered to them.

Will the U.S. exploit global goodwill or use it wisely? In future, will U.S.
citizens offer the same benevolence to others in Afghanistan or Iraq or
Colombia or China as the rest of the world has shown them? As the Bush
administration plans its response to the attack, will it take into account
other nations' interests or just its own? And afterward, when the U.S. is
asked for its co-operation, will it remember the support it received during
this crisis, or will Bush retreat to his isolationist stance?

Take Pakistan. In return for its co-operation, it's said to be seeking debt
forgiveness, an easing of sanctions and possibly some support against India
in the battle over Kashmir. The Pakistani government may well pay a price at
the hands of its own people who oppose the U.S. government. Is the U.S.
prepared to take responsibility for potentially destabilizing Pakistan, or
for escalating the conflict between it and India? Or will it abandon the
region once it has what it needs?

As the global bully emerges from its self-imposed quarantine, it must begin
to display some of the compassion and co-operation that it's received from
other nations and it must listen to their peaceful counsel. While it might
be the American way to face adversity with a swagger, in this case it would
be wiser and saner to be humbled by it.

Rachel Giese's column appears in The Star on Thursday.