"Faceless cowards." This was mini-President Bush in the first of his
abysmal statements on the assault. Faceless maybe, but cowards? Were the
Japanese aviators who surprised Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941,
cowards? I don't think so, and they at least had the hope of returning
to their aircraft carriers. The onslaughts on the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon are being likened to Pearl Harbor, and the comparison is
just. From the point of view of the assailants the attacks were near
miracles of logistical calculation, timing, audacity in execution and
devastation inflicted upon the targets. And the commando units captured
four aircraft, armed only with penknives. Was there ever better proof of
Napoleon's dictum that in war the moral is to the material as three is
to one?
Beyond the installation of another national trauma, there may be further
similarity to Pearl Harbor. The possibility of a Japanese attack in
early December of 1941 was known to US Naval Intelligence. The day after
the September 11 attack, a friend told me that a relative working at the
US Army's Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey said that six weeks earlier
the arsenal had been placed on top-security alert. In late August Osama
bin Laden, a prime suspect, said in an interview with Abdel-Bari Atwan,
the editor in chief of the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, that
he planned "very, very big attacks against American interests." On the
evening of September 11, Senator John Kerry said he had recently been
told by Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet that the agency
had successfully pre-empted earlier attacks by bin Laden's people. Maybe
the intelligence agencies didn't reckon with the possibility of assaults
in rapid succession.
The lust for retaliation traditionally outstrips precision in
identifying the actual assailant. The targets abroad will be all the
usual suspects. The target at home will be the Bill of Rights. Less than
a week ago the FBI raided InfoCom, the Texas-based web host for Muslim
groups such as the Islamic Society of North America, the Islamic
Association for Palestine and the Holy Land Foundation. Declan
McCullagh, political reporter for Wired, has described how within hours
of the blast FBI agents began showing up at Internet service providers
demanding that they install the government's "Carnivore" e-mail tracking
software on their systems.
The explosions were not an hour old before terror pundits like Anthony
Cordesman, Wesley Clark, Robert Gates and Lawrence Eagleburger were
saying that these attacks had been possible "because America is a
democracy," adding that now some democratic perquisites might have to be
abandoned. What might this mean? Increased domestic snooping by US law
enforcement and intelligence agencies, ethnic profiling, another drive
for a national ID card system.
That dark Tuesday did not offer a flattering exhibition of America's
leaders. For most of the day the only Bush who looked composed and
controlled was Laura, who happened to be waiting to testify on Capitol
Hill. Her husband gave a timid and stilted initial reaction in Sarasota,
Florida, then disappeared for an hour before resurfacing at an Air Force
base near Shreveport, Louisiana, where he gave another flaccid address.
He then ran to ground in a deep shelter in Nebraska, before someone
finally had the wit to suggest that the best place for an American
President at a time of national emergency is the Oval Office.
Absent national political leadership, the burden of rallying the nation
fell as usual upon the TV anchors, most of whom seem to have resolved
early on, commendably so, to lower the emotional temper and eschew
racist incitement. One of the more ironic sights of Tuesday evening was
Dan Rather talking about retaliation against bin Laden. It was Rather,
wrapped in a burnoose, who voyaged to the Hindu Kush in the early 1980s
to send back paeans to the mujahedeen being trained and supplied by the
CIA in its largest-ever covert operation, which ushered onto the world
stage such well-trained cadres as those now deployed against America.
Tuesday's eyewitness reports of the collapse of the two Trade Center
buildings were not inspired, at least for those who have heard the
famous eyewitness radio reportage of the crash of the Hindenburg
zeppelin in Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1937. Radio and TV reporters these
days seem incapable of narrating an ongoing event with any sense of
vivid language or dramatic emotive power.
The commentators were similarly incapable of explaining with any depth
the likely context of the attacks. It was possible to watch the cream of
the nation's political analysts and commentating classes, hour after
hour, without ever hearing the word "Israel," unless in the context of a
salutary teacher in how to deal with Muslims. One could watch endlessly
without hearing any intimation that these attacks might be the
consequence of the recent Israeli rampages in the occupied territories,
which have included assassinations of Palestinian leaders and the
slaughter of Palestinian civilians with the use of American arms and
aircraft; that these attacks might also stem from the sanctions against
Iraq, which have killed more than half a million children; that these
attacks might in part be a response to US cruise missile destruction of
the Sudanese factories that were falsely fingered by US intelligence as
connected to bin Laden.
The possibility of a deep plunge in the world economy was barely dealt
with in the initial commentary. Yet before the attacks the situation was
extremely precarious, with the chance of catastrophic deflation as the
1990s bubble burst, and the stresses of world overcapacity and lack of
purchasing power taking an ever greater toll. George Bush will have no
trouble in raiding the famous lockbox, using Social Security trust funds
to give more money to the Defense Department. That about sums it up.
Three planes are successfully steered into three of America's most
conspicuous buildings, and the US response will be to put more money
into missile defense as a way of bolstering the economy.
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