The Quiet Price

Lawrence Wright's excellent book The Looming Tower won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction this past Monday, a fact that was overshadowed by the worst shooting in American history and, closer to home, the traumatic rape and torture of a Graduate School of Journalism student in her own apartment. But even in light of these unspeakable events, the book was particularly prescient. Wright discusses the rise of the modern Al-Qaeda organization and the birth of the United States' fledgling counterterrorism unit in the 1990s. As Osama bin Laden's organization grew bolder, the various intelligence organizations working to find him grew ever more hostile towards one another, with tragic results. The lessons we can learn from the personal stories in Wright's historical narrative resonate poignantly in light of the events we must now process.

The Looming Tower is not necessarily a book a student of political science would be expected to read. It's too close to the ground, more interested in its subjects than the ideological posturing of the organizations and states. We learn about Ayman al-Zawahiri's childhood, how bin Laden's wives behaved at times when all the money was gone, the theatrics of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and countless other figures. Yet understanding the people behind the posturing often makes the ideology itself understandable, if still repugnant.

More importantly in the current situation, a closer look at those people involved also makes us consider the consequences of their actions as more than numbers on a page or grim pictures on a television screen. The most wrenching human story-and lesson-comes from the home front in the form of John O'Neill, a gregarious no-nonsense FBI agent who recognized bin Laden's dangerous game long before most people in the intelligence business even knew who the Al-Qaeda leader was. O'Neill was a "flawed and polarizing figure," in Wright's estimation, but he was also determined to stop bin Laden no matter the cost to himself. He worked tirelessly, losing twenty pounds during a month in Yemen, never stopping even though he found himself being repeatedly passed over for promotion. Despite his loud-mouthed ways, O'Neill turns out to be a complex and likeable human being as The Looming Tower progresses, more than a name on a page. It makes the end of his story all the more difficult to bear and all the more important to learn from.

O'Neill left the FBI in August of 2001, too frustrated to continue working on bin Laden against constant inter-departmental sparring. He took a job as head of security at the World Trade Center. His body was recovered from the ruins on Sept. 22. There's a power and horrible sense of loss behind the personal history of O'Neill's life and death, one of thousands from that disaster. Through Wright's display of this haunted man and his legacy, we can begin to understand the true human cost of a grand-scale tragedy.

As students of the liberal arts, particularly in the realm of political science, many of us are often called upon to take a reductionist view of the world. We think of states as "actors" and we examine "doctrines" and theories of counterinsurgency with the same dry prose with which T.E. Lawrence once described them. We're often told that we can't put a price tag on human life, but some analytical political science theorists do-it depends on factors such as how much you make, what you do, and how your death would affect the economy, but yes, you can quantify the value of life pretty easily if you start looking at people as data points and death as just another variable.

But as O'Neill's tale reminds us, the repercussions of the loss of even one life ripple outward and affect all concerned. John O'Neill had several romantic relationships (sometimes simultaneously), was married several times, held firm friendships around the country, and his funeral was only one of thousands as a result of that day in September. The quiet price of life is one that cannot be measured in dollars, one that warps the world around it with its loss. We cannot process the number of dead in the Sept. 11 attacks-2,992-in terms of grieving spouses, parents, children, friends, lovers. Such loss is beyond our comprehension. It is comforting to take refuge in the reductions of realist international relations, Marxism, Keynesian economics, Foucault's panopticon, or whatever systemic explanations of reality we cling to in academia rather than face the searing losses head-on.

This week, as we come to terms with the senseless murders in Virginia-32, still too many to imagine in terms of funerals-and the horrific assault of one of our own students, we will undoubtedly hear questions on subjects such as gun control, neighborhood safety, the media's culture of violence, security on campuses, and any number of other "hot button" topics. In a way, such discussions allow for the same kinds of comforting reductions that systemic theories allow us to feel over issues of politics. But we must not become consumed by them. The quiet price is there for the families, friends and day-to-day acquaintances of the dead, the wounded, the abused, and the scarred. It hangs like a millstone around the necks of all our easy-answer theories and rapid-fire news-cycle questions. Only by acknowledging this price can we hope to begin looking for solutions and peace, relying not only on our grand theories but our own hearts and minds.