Ed. Note:
Herbert Lehnert, an occasional contributor to these pages on various cultural and political topics, is professor emeritus of German studies at the University of California, Irvine. Traveling to Switzerland in the fall of 2003, he decided to return home the long way. Below are his thoughts as he wandered through some of the farther-flung outposts of empire.

1.
Irvine, California, December 2003
Back home I am thinking what travelling with an American passport meant in a world that is increasingly wary of American power. While I was visiting only countries friendly to us, the hate of all American humans and things by Muslim fundamentalists expressed on the11^th of September 2001 is ever-present – tangibly in the baggage checking systems on the airports. Your pocket knife and nail scissors must not be in your on-board bag. Because we Americans are hated and threatened, all air passengers in the entire world must go through these procedures.

The suicidal Muslim commandos, who slit the throats of the pilots of commercial airliners on the 11^th of September 2001, and forced the passengers of the commandeered planes to join them in their suicidal mission, hated all Americans. Their hate was stronger than their survival instinct. They sacrificed themselves with and for their hate. When we react to them as others, see them as criminals, perhaps even subhumans, they are like us: their hate is a fundamental human emotion, an emotion that can bind the haters together and us against them.

But who are "we"? And who are they, the others?

Americans do not have an ethnic "we." We are a nation of immigrants. Arabs live among us as citizens, and we need friendly Arabs because our oil comes from there, which keeps us going. Hatred of all Arabs cannot be a binding force for us, nor does a religion unify us. America was founded on the principle of free religion for all, and enlightened tolerance is shared by all Western democratic countries. Freedom and democracy define us.

But does it? President Bush calls the Al Qaeda fighters and the insurgents in Iraq enemies of freedom. When I was in Australia and New Zealand several papers made fun of such statements. One Australian commentator asked whether Bush’s language is aimed at children. Are we the children he meant?

Fundamental violations of human rights were among the first defensive reactions to the hatred of Muslim fundamentalists. The prisoners at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba are without rights, and thus demonstrate American contempt for the principle of individual human rights, the basis for "freedom." Moreover, can we really claim the mantle of freedom for ourselves when more people than in any other Western nation are incarcerated in our country, even before the 11^th of September 2001? And does democracy function among us when the representatives of the people have to buy their election from rich people and firms who expect to be served by the elected? The funds thus collected are used to deceive us to vote for the interests of the campaign contributors. A majority of Americans want the death penalty, cancelling the most fundamental human right, the right to live.

True, our rights are written in the constitution. The American constitution is a great document, limiting the power of the state by checks and balances. But, I submit, its foundation was severely dented, if not shaken, by the congressional vote of 2002 that allowed the President to attack Iraq. The constitution after all requires Congress to declare wars, after appropriate deliberation. The sad truth is that human rights, freedom of the individual, freedom of thought and speech, tolerance, and government by the people and for the people have been severely undermined. The fear of the Founding Fathers of too much executive power has been superseded by the addiction to American super power. What remains to hold us together in the United States is the power of our country. The veneration of power is deeply ingrained in our culture. The cult of violence dominates our cultural entertainment: power is in a gun. Our power is what is attacked, and we are our power.

The Arabs in the planes of September eleven thought of themselves as Muslim martyrs who served their god by destroying the symbols of American power. Their leader was an Egyptian, coming from a country that had been colonized in the 19^th century. Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula from which the other participants came had been a part of the Ottoman empire, the last empire that provided a home to the Muslim religion. These murderous martyrs attacked American power symbols: the World Trade towers, the Pentagon, and they tried to attack the Capitol. To them our power had replaced European colonialism which had conquered the Muslim homelands. The crusades, the European colonial advances in the 19^th century and the new American world power all fused together for them into suppression of Islam by the Western World. The rightful place of Islam was in a Muslim empire under a caliph, a successor of Mohammed, who would protect the concept that there was only one prophet and one truth in the world.

I wish we could find our common ground in loving our fellow humans, in freedom and tolerance of all thought that honors human life. But the desire to believe in one fundamental religious truth, the readiness to kill "evil" people together with the right to decide who is evil is very much among us. Its extension is the belief that there ought to be only one empire, namely the world under the protection of the American superpower. It is this belief and this power that is causing fear not only among fundamental Muslims, but also in other countries in the Western world. That fear creates nascent hate.