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A moment of truth for U.S. foreign policy
 By
Cassandra Cavanaugh, department of history
Our country's tragedy provokes different responses, stemming
from my different personal and professional identities, past
and present. As an adopted New Yorker, the news of the catastrophe
at the Trade Center-such a familiar landscape where I'd regularly
strolled, shopped and taken out-of-town visitors-set off
a torrent of grief for my fellow city-dwellers. Mayor Giuliani
said it best: the toll was indeed more than anyone could
bear.
As a new member of the Holy Cross community, I felt the
sorrow and horror of the students affected by the tragedy
in one way or another. It meant searching with other faculty
for ways to comfort or reassure students, at a time when
we ourselves could find little that was reassuring. In the
weeks following Sept. 11, however, it was our students, especially
those from the greater New York area, who, in effect, comforted
me with their sincerity, patriotism, and quiet fortitude
in honoring the bonds of community in areas most directly
wounded by the attack. Our students' instinctive understanding
that the people of Afghanistan were not the enemy in this
war, and their desire to find ways to aid and protect innocent
civilians, deeply impressed me.
The events of Sept. 11 brought new notoriety, with many
paradoxical effects, for the area of the world where I lived
for two years and where I spent the last three years working
on human rights. President Bush said that war against terrorism
is not about Islam itself, but has allied the United States
with a government that is waging a vicious and destructive
anti-Islamic dirty war against its own citizens. Bordering
Afghanistan, the former Soviet state of Uzbekistan is ruled
by a cruel dictator, Islam Karimov, who has jailed over 7,000
peaceful Muslim believers, calling them Islamic terrorists,
because they are suspected of harboring critical thoughts
towards his bloody, corrupt and repressive regime.
In the months since the tragedy, human rights activists
estimate that 600 more people in Uzbekistan have been imprisoned
for their beliefs, where police routinely submit them to
cruel torture and the courts are servile appendages of the
government. But because Uzbekistan came out immediately in
support of the war, and has allowed troops to be based on
its soil, the Bush administration has promised over $100
million dollars in new economic and military assistance to
the country. Despite the administration's insistence that
aid to Uzbekistan depends on its performance in human rights
and democratization, the message is clear: Uzbekistan is
being rewarded for its military cooperation. As if to underline
the point, in late December, as Secretary of State Colin
Powell traveled to the capital Tashkent, the Soviet-style
Uzbek parliament announced plans to hold a referendum on
extending President Karimov's term for another two years,
possibly for life.
On the one hand, I am thankful that the United States military
forged links with Uzbekistan that has allowed them to better
prosecute this necessary war. On the other hand, it grieves
me to think that our country has, once again, abandoned the
pursuit of liberty and rights for a repressed people, in
favor of its own short-term strategic goals.
Another paradox is, of course, that through this terrible
tragedy, the long-suffering Afghan peoples might have a chance
to build a stable, responsible government.
Personally and professionally, the lesson of Sept. 11 seems
to me to be about the terrible toll that is wreaked when
peoples are long denied justice. Sadly, given the United
States foreign policy choices made in the aftermath of Sept.
11, the denial of justice is doomed to linger in another
part of the Central Asian region.
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