npr | And nobody feels as much like a nobody as an immigrant does. And you
can engage with a great power like the United States simply by throwing a
bomb. You can declare war on the United States. And the amazing thing
about it is that the United States will accept the declaration of war.
We respond to terrorism by treating it not as a crime, but by treating
it as war. So someone like Tamerlan, who feels small and insignificant,
can suddenly claim a sense of belonging to a great, big effort - and a
place in history.
GREENE: This is obviously an event that many Americans followed
and have memories of. What do you hope people will learn from your book
that they haven't learned from other places?
GESSEN: A couple of things. One is that - and I understand that
this is a risky strategy, but I think it is really important to see
people as people, and to try to understand the story, and perhaps catch
yourself being sympathetic to these brothers, because I think that the
more we understand about something that we believe is a huge threat to
this country, the more effective we can be inviting it.
GREENE: And you said catch yourself being sympathetic there -just
want to make sure I understand that. You're suggesting that it can be
healthy to find some level of sympathy somehow.
GESSEN: Yes, I am suggesting it could be healthy to find some
level of sympathy because I think that the way that wars are fought is
that the enemy is always dehumanized. That's what we have done with
terrorism. It's a perfectly normal and logical thing to do. It also
makes wars continue and build. And until you start seeing your enemy as a
human being for at least a second, you're never going to advance in
your understanding of what's going on. That's one thing I want people to
take away from it. Another thing is I want people to question what they
think about terrorism and the war on terror, and how it's fought, and
the assumptions that have been made and that aren't usually questioned
by the media, like this whole radicalization narrative.
