Thinking for Ourselves Rather Than Seeking Revenge
On the day after 11 September 2001 – 25 years ago – the Dalai Lama wrote a letter to the then US President George W. Bush, expressing his deep sorrow and sympathy and making a strong plea for a non-violent response.
Bin Laden was the main perpetrator of the terrorist attack in New York, which claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people. Just imagine for a moment what the world might look like today if the US President had understood the Dalai Lama’s plea for a ‘non-violent response’ and had opted for dialogue, diplomacy and negotiations rather than revenge and war.
How did the ‘civilised world’ react to 11 September?
George W. Bush planned the ‘War on Terror’. His motto and his goal: revenge, revenge, revenge; war, war, war. The then German Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, also said: ‘This is a declaration of war on the entire civilised world.’
When something as terrible as the events of 11 September 2001 happens, the terrorists expect the ‘enemy’ to respond with revenge. That is their actual calculation. And George W. Bush and Gerhard Schröder reacted exactly as such, thereby walking straight into the trap set by the terrorists and terrorism itself. History is full of acts of terrorism, which are almost always followed by further acts of terrorism.
The renowned US historian Timothy Snyder outlined a way out of this vicious circle on 10 September 2026 in the Süddeutsche Zeitung: “The obvious response to 11 September would have been to free ourselves from fossil fuels. After all, without our dependence on oil, we would never have been drawn into the maelstrom of the Middle East. Had we focused on clean energy sources, we could have curbed global warming, prevented further wars in the Middle East and thwarted the rise of Russian President Putin’s hydrocarbon-fuelled oligarchy.”
The new enemy: the Islamist terrorist
Yet – as we now know – things turned out quite differently – namely, exactly as the terrorists had planned: revenge, war and mass murder: the ‘war on terror’, against which the Dalai Lama had warned. And so a new enemy image emerged in the West: the Islamist terrorist. And for many, ‘the Muslims’ suddenly became the enemy.
According to a study, 940,000 people died in the subsequent ‘war on terror’ in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan and Syria. Many more died as a result of indirect consequences of the war, such as famine, epidemics and destruction (Die Zeit, 11 September 2026).
Thanks to the US policy of retaliation, the terrorists have once again achieved their goal. The mass murder has cost the US and its NATO allies more than two trillion (that is 2,000 million) dollars (Die Zeit, 10 September 2026). The terrorists’ plan has worked out perfectly.
11 September 2001 also marked the end of the phase of democratic renewal following the Cold War. The US wars were followed by Putin’s war of terror against Ukraine. Putin’s calculation: if the US does not abide by international law, then neither do I need to. Today, Putin and Trump use the same arguments against their ‘enemies’.
To escape the vicious circle of endless terror, Timothy Snyder suggests something very simple: “The best weapon against terrorism is to think for oneself… That is precisely what Americans must do today, on this terrible anniversary. Do not allow yourselves to be provoked; do not enter the mental world of terrorism, but think for yourselves. Only then is there hope that the next quarter of a century will be better than the last.”
