Open Letter to My American Friends

September 17, 2001

My dear friend,

1. Beyond the tragedy and the immense suffering brought about by the evil attack on America of September 11, 2001, this crisis should lead to a paradigm shift in the war against terrorism. Terrorism must be resisted now with unshakeable resolve—not one feckless act of this for that, not a series of half-measures that serves only to provoke further acts of destruction, but an implacable and unceasing campaign against terrorism until it is utterly and completely vanquished.

2. During the 20th century, the world has had a condescending attitude toward the use of violence to change public policies. In my country, Chile, there is a consensus now that it was a decade of political violence that led, on another Tuesday, September 11, to the breakdown of our democracy and social fabric. Suffice it to say that Lenin, the man who not only advocated terror as a legitimate weapon to obtain political ends but also practiced it with horrifying determination, still rests in a mausoleum in front of the Kremlin and gives its first name to people all over Europe and the Third World (including a specially shadowy character in nearby Peru).

3. I believe that this criminal attack, despite all its human and material damage, has not touched the foundations of your great nation. At Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln stated that America is a nation "conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." As then, what is now at stake is "whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure."

4. There is ground for a legitimate debate on whether the U.S. should intervene militarily, even with the best of intentions, in foreign internal conflicts or civil wars. It is plausible that a more selective and restrained policy in this area may diminish the threat of attacks on American territory. But this threat will not disappear. The mere existence of the U.S. is anathema to some fanatics around the world. The more so if their own policies impoverish them, while the U.S. not only prospers even more in the 21st century, but also has an increasingly pervasive presence abroad because of its freely accepted economic and cultural influence.

5. So, this crisis should give birth to a "Bush Doctrine," hopefully integrated into international law, according to which countries that harbor, train, support, or finance terrorist organizations that operate abroad have automatically resigned any sovereignty claim in regard to the necessary international action to find, punish, and hopefully destroy those criminals (and eventually promote a change of those governments). Since the most effective way to avoid these attacks is to deal with them at its source, maybe a main rationale for the proposed missile shield will then be to prevent retaliation against the U.S. by nuclear countries harboring these terrorist organizations and equipped with ICBMs.

6. From this September 11 onward, we are all citizens of a world bounded by the promise of the free flow of ideas, people, goods, and investment, but also by the terrible dangers of terrorism. As such, we look to America to lead a coalition of responsible nations in a systematic, persistent, and decisive action against these evil terrorist organizations, wherever they are and whatever their patronage. Those weak or demagogic governments, some of them in continental Europe, that have opposed these actions in the past, now will have to remain silent or join in this effort since world opinion has, finally, changed. This attack may have been a Pearl Harbor against the world.

7. I join Paul Johnson in saluting the people of America as "strong, outspoken, intense in their convictions, sometimes wrong-headed, but always generous and brave, with a passion for justice no nation has ever matched". At this difficult moment, America should be confident that it is admired, if not loved, by the vast majority of decent people around the world. This conviction, and the inherent resilience and morality of its people, should give the U.S. the strength to rise from this terrible test to, once again, prove to the world that a nation conceived in liberty can and will "long endure."

God bless America... and Chile.

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