Nine years after The Day That Changed Everything, two controversies which have dominated recent political conversation in the United States are an unsettling reminder of how quickly, even in a mature and well-informed democracy, rational debate can be overwhelmed by provocative gestures and remarks. First, the proposal to build an Islamic community centre near Ground Zero produced more reflexive xenophobia than argument from prominent politicians, including the former leader of the House Republicans Newt Gingrich; then public comments (and private pressure) from the State and Defence Secretaries, senior members of the military and the President were needed to dissuade a pastor in Florida from burning Korans as an absurd form of vengeance for the September 11 attacks.
These teapot tempests have shown America at its worst and best. Certainly Gingrich’s observation that New York should ban the community centre “so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia” must have stirred the hearts of al Qaeda rank and file. For the idea that American citizens should be made to answer for the actions of a theocratic Middle Eastern regime just because they practise the same religion is exactly the kind of logic Osama bin Laden would appreciate. Conversely, more thoughtful responses have shown the better angels of America’s nature can still redeem the public discussion of emotional questions. The American chapter of the writers’ organization PEN International has spoken out against “all efforts to circumscribe” America’s freedom of religion, deplored “the rhetoric of suspicion that seeks to deny our common humanity and shared aspirations” and emphasized its rejection of “the tyranny of fear.” In another imaginative response, a group of soldiers who anticipated that Koran burning would indeed prove a “recruitment bonanza” for Islamic terrorists promised to donate, via General Petraeus, a new Koran to Afghanistan for each one burned in Florida. Both gestures restored a crucial measure of sanity to the debates and gave timely proof that Americans remain willing to show solidarity with the wider world and, despite the omnipresence of media images to the contrary, that public opinion within the United States is far more nuanced than the populist platitudes of the Tea Party rallies suggest.
The importance of second thoughts was evident elsewhere in the Americas. A few days after telling a Mexican newspaper that he regretted persecuting homosexuals in the 1960s and 1970s, Fidel Castro invited the Atlantic Monthly journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to Havana to discuss a recent hair-raising article about Israel’s preparations for a military strike against Iran. Not usually considered a friend to the state of Israel, Castro explicitly warned President Ahmadinejad to “stop slandering the Jews” and he recalled the casual anti-Semitism which was commonplace in the Cuba of his childhood years. “The Jews have lived an existence that is much harder than ours,” said Castro, “There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust.” Castro spoke of his fear that Tehran’s posturing could provoke a war in the region and he conceded that with hindsight his own efforts to threaten a Soviet nuclear strike against America during the 1962 missile crisis were a mistake. “After I’ve seen, and knowing what I know now, it wasn’t worth it all.” These remarks soon prompted Hugo Chávez, another iconic anti-American with a fondness for Tehran, to publicly declare that, contrary to earlier impressions, Venezuelans “respect and love the Jewish people.” Small gestures perhaps, but very important in the context of a possible escalation towards nuclear conflict in the Middle East.
In another moment of unexpected honesty, the 84-year-old Castro also admitted that the “Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore” – a remark that will almost certainly assist Raul Castro’s efforts to reform the Cuban economy. Stripped of the pressures of his overlong leadership, and recovering from a nearly fatal illness, Fidel now seems capable of recognizing his failings with unusual candour. If only his second thoughts could provoke similar humility within the US government, and among Cuba’s embittered exiles, real progress could be made towards ending the embargo.
Whether making decisions in Havana or Washington politicians always run the danger of being constrained by early, half-considered responses to political crises. Only with hindsight does it become clear how much they have misinterpreted or ignored points of view that might have led to a better resolution. It is deeply ironic then that one of the most stubborn and highhanded leaders of recent times should emerge as the wise man of this week’s political conversations while the far more flexible, dynamic and open-minded country he has stood against for so long struggles to find its bearings in relatively minor crises.
