Can our Culture Justify the Response to the 9/11 Attacks and Iraq War?

Can our Culture Justify the Response to the 9/11 Attacks and the Iraq War?

In my Cross Cultural Psychology class, we have been talking a lot about variances across cultures. The idea is that people from different cultures can view ideas, objects and concepts vastly different from those belonging to other cultures. Although this concept seems fairly obvious considering there are many things in American culture that we don’t see, for example, in East Asian cultures and vice versa, I never really understood how much variance there was across cultures. Parenting styles, abilities to assess oneself, work ethics, and alternate views on societies as a whole are just some examples of ways that the American culture influences our ideas, beliefs and views. The way American cultures influences these ideas, beliefs and views are vastly different from the way East Asian cultures, for example, shape their own ideas. Many of these differences across cultures can be explained by categorizing these societies into two groups: the individualist society, which is associated with American culture, and the collectivist society, which is associated with East Asian culture. In individualist societies, typically, the emphasis is on the self. The idea is that we do things because it will benefit us, as the individual, focusing less on the larger picture of society. In contrast, in collectivist societies, the emphasis is on the group. The idea, is that our actions affect an entire group and thus when making decisions, its important to think about the consequences of our actions as affecting the entire group/culture/society, not the individual.

At this point, you’re probably thinking, what does this have to do with national security, war or liberal imperialism? Well, I bring up the concept of cultural differences because I wanted draw a possible comparison between our culture and the way we respond to attacks. More specifically, looking at the United States’ response to the 9/11 attacks. First, I would like to propose this idea: The United States’ response to the 9/11 attacks was an individualistic response. When the Twin Towers were hit, we, as a nation, took these attacks as a personal attack on us, as individuals; it was as if the attack was directed at each of us individually. Therefore, our immediate response on such a personal attack was to defend ourselves. This is the same case in day-to-day life. If we feel threatened or attacked by someone, or that someone could potentially be harmful, I will speak for myself and say that my natural instinct is to do whatever I can to protect myself. I think that the United States had the same reaction to the 9/11 attacks, however their response was on a much larger scale (than any attack one can compare to an attack on a single individual.) So my question now is can we justify our reaction to the 9/11 attack by blaming our individualistic culture?

I would like to insert here that I recognize that there are many other factors that go into the reasons why we went into Iraq. However, I am focusing on the 9/11 attacks because it sparked this sense of fear and anxiety throughout the country. The United States had been involved in numerous wars over the 20^th century. However, we had never seen an attack like this on our own soil.

I would argue that, hypothetically speaking, if a country that was considered to be a collectivistic society had been attacked on the same scale as the 9/11 attacks, the response would have been very different. The emphasis in collectivistic societies is that one’s actions affect their society as a whole. Thus, I believe that this strong emphasis on community would have resulted in a different reaction (from the United States’ reaction to the 9/11 attacks) from this collectivist society under attack. Instead of viewing the attack as being a personal one, I believe that the attack would be viewed as one that affects the whole community, and in order to respond, there would need to be some kind of coming together of the society. War would not be waged until all pros and cons were weighed, and it was agreed that a war was the best possible option for society.

I understand that there are a lot of hypotheticals in this paper and with hypothetical situations there is often a lot of room for interpretation, debate, and inaccuracy. However, I wanted to bring up the question: if culture is so influential in society (and from much research demonstrated by my cross cultural psychology class, culture is vital) with regards to popular culture, beliefs and ideals, could it also be responsible for our decision making in times of war? If so, is this a fault of us as citizens of such a society, or is it inevitable, and something that we must accept and take as is?