Nation Topics - Panama City | The Nation

Five Cuban counterterrorism experts are being held indefinitely in
American prisons while the "bin Laden of Latin America" is let free.

Does it lessen the horror to admit that this is not the first time the
US government has used torture to wipe out political opponents? The
exclusion of the impact of the School of the Americas on war crimes in El
Salvador, Argentina and Panama from our current debate on torture is
evidence of our collective amnesia.

How 9/11 Changed Our Lives

Hundreds of readers, aged 16 to 94, replied to our request for
letters detailing how September 11 changed (or didn't) "your views of
your government, your country, your world, your life." Many responses
are personal: A husband and wife separate; family members no longer
speak to one another; a woman searches for, and finds, her biological
father--all impelled by the fallout of that day. New Yorkers--and
others--report sleeping less soundly; a Brooklyn man leaps from bed in
the night at the sound of crashing booms, rushes to the window... and
finds it's a thunderstorm. A woman recovering from a Caesarean section
watches the towers fall from her hospital room and wonders what sort of
world her son, born the day before, will grow up in. A reader whose 9/11
birthday has become a deathday vows to light a candle this birthday "in
hope for our world that one day 9/11 will become a day that...changed us
for the better." Below is a selection.
      --The Editors

Rolla, ND

Largely because of my age--75--September 11 didn't change my life one
iota. Except for this: My reaction to the fascist foragings of John
Ashcroft and the dude who sponsored him, "Shrub," has been to rejoin the
ACLU after an absence of twenty-seven years.

K.W. SIMONS

Columbus, Ohio

How has my life changed since September 11? My life goes on much the
same--except that I'm not living in America anymore. In America, people
are not disappeared. In America, cherished constitutional rights are not
abolished with the stroke of a pen. In America, disagreeing with the
government doesn't make you a terrorist. In America, ordinary citizens
don't have to wonder whether their e-mail is being read and phone
conversations taped by government agents. In America, there is no
Ministry of Truth (for telling lies) or Ministry of Love (for making
war). America doesn't wage unending war. America doesn't casually
threaten first-strike use of nuclear weapons. I see the nation I love,
in its fear and rage, stinging itself to death like a scorpion.

LINDA SLEFFEL

New Haven, Conn.

Our government's militaristic response to the crimes of 9/11 and the
failure of the Democratic Party to challenge Bush's flawed and
self-serving war on terrorism pushed me, after thirty-four years as an
active antiwar Democrat, into working for the Green Party in our
November 2001 municipal elections. Today, I am a Green Party candidate
for the US House of Representatives.

Unlike the "Arthur Andersen Democrats" and the "Enron Republicans"
against whom I'm running, I am a patriot who is not afraid to challenge
the so-called Patriot Act, which guts the Bill of Rights, or the "war"
on terrorism, which has killed hundreds of innocent civilians, created
more terrorists, earned more profits for military contractors and made
the world safer for oil companies but more dangerous for the rest of us.
Vote Green in November.

CHARLIE PILLSBURY

Valparaiso, Ind.

September 11 changed my life because of the government's immediate
response and continuing abuse of it as an excuse to erode civil
liberties. So what have I done? I subscribed to The Nation for
the first time ever (I'm 25), and so far have given away three gift
subscriptions. I began giving money monthly to environmental and
pro-choice organizations, as well as regular donations to the ACLU.
Motivated by John Ashcroft's total disregard for the Constitution, I
will be going to law school in the fall of 2003 to join the ranks of
those who work on the side of justice that strengthens and protects
civil liberties.

KAYTIE FREY

Alexandria, Va.

I was in the Pentagon on September 11. Our office was on the opposite
side of the building, and as we filed out none of us guessed how
horrible it was until we saw, from the parking lot, the columns of
smoke. That first evening, amid the shock and sense of loss, I thought,
"This is what blowback really means." No one can excuse Al Qaeda's
murderous hatred, but I now realize that this terror network was made
possible by the arms and money we provided the Afghan mujahedeen during
our demented anti-Soviet crusade. Those Americans who supported these
thugs and psychopaths should be ashamed. Whenever I see that antidrug ad
that claims that buying pot helps terrorists, I am reminded that our own
cold war "patriots" helped to slaughter 3,000 people, and tried to kill
me at my desk.

JOHN ZAVALES

Dania, Fla.

Prior to 9/11 I spent my 83 years maturing in a cocoon spun by
America's fuzzy, heroic image. While well aware of its flaws, I had been
sustained by an aura of essential good will as we fought fascism,
rebuilt Europe, forgave former enemies. My cocoon erupted on 9/11, and I
emerged irate but deeply troubled by the vision of an America that would
justify such an attack. I realized our Marshall Plan spirit had morphed
into a superpower mentality, where political problems are solved by
bombs rather than sweet reason: Witness Vietnam, Baghdad, Panama City,
Belgrade, Afghanistan. With knee-jerk enthusiasm we've obliterated
infrastructures and dealt out "collateral damage" to poor nations. No
wonder we've become a target for organized hate. Can we curb our
arrogance and revive our image as people of good will before we
self-destruct?

LLOYD EDWARD SLATER

Bristol, Vt.

I am of the generation that reached maturity in the 1960s and '70s. A
time of struggle and pain, yes, but also of hope. We marched, fought,
demanded a new world paradigm. Comes Reagan and my righteous generation
finds greed. What then happened to that promise? Sweet upward mobility;
the dawn of our renunciation. The 2000 election fiasco. A leader takes
power by judicial coup and not a whimper from the streets, and I cannot
comprehend. I am lost.

September 11. Our hand is forced. The time for intelligence, discussion,
debate, understanding, reflection has come, yes?

No. Wrong again. Now we love our fear. Good versus Evil this is, and we
joyfully surrender our liberties, our humanity and embrace a permanent
state of war with an omnipotent, omnipresent enemy. Our new paradigm:
sadism. I am not prepared for such a savage reversal of fortune. I am
ashamed.

MICHAEL TORRE

Los Angeles

After the savage attacks on September 11, I felt scared, angry,
confused. Days later, I found my way to an interfaith service at All
Saints Church in Pasadena. I was deeply moved by the scriptural
readings, prayers and songs offered by Christians, Jews, Muslims,
Buddhists and others. Out of that healing event, we created Interfaith
Communities United for Justice and Peace (www.icujp.org), which has been
the center of my personal efforts to contribute to greater understanding
and lasting reconciliation between people of all nationalities and
beliefs. At a study group arranged by ICUJP, I sat next to an
African-American Muslim teacher. He turned to me and said he didn't have
a Torah. I responded that I didn't have a Koran. At the next meeting, we
exchanged our holy scriptures. It brought us closer together, and we
have become friends.

STEPHEN F. ROHDE

Bellingham, Wash.

After the initial shock/grief came the stunned recognition of the
despair and deep hatred felt against the United States, then finally the
gut-wrenching knowledge that the vast majority of US citizens love being
hated. They shower approval on the Administration and Congress for every
piece of legislation that increases US killing power, entrenches inroads
on constitutional freedoms and inflicts economic and physical handicaps
and health hazards on all the populations of the planet.

The Pentagon/Administration response to the "act" was so fast, the
erosion of civil liberties so quickly and deftly accomplished, flags
blanketed the continent so speedily and providentially--I can't help but
think that the act of terrorism was not only expected but that
contingency plans had been prepared months, perhaps years in advance--a
Stalinist-type master plan. These duplicitous plans have been welcomed
and incorporated into everyday living with hardly a ripple to indicate a
residue of thoughtfulness or alternative possibilities.

Yes, I am changed. I am ashamed of my country and bitterly acknowledge
that there is no prospect of new directions.

K.W. LEW

Englewood, NJ

September 11 changed my life by directing my 94-year-old,
still-functioning wits and remaining energies from the sheltered
smugness of an assisted-living home out again into the real world with a
determined campaign to compel G.W. Bush to answer this key question: Why
were no jets commanded to divert those three lethal hijacked planes
after each had appeared off-course on radar and all failed to obey the
orders of air controllers? Why, Mr. Bush?

JANE SHERMAN LEHAC

Tucson

Liars! From the very top on down, my government does not know the
meaning of the word "truth." In light of the billions of dollars we
spend on electronic communication monitoring installations at Menwith
Hill, Britain, and at several sites in the continental United States, we
taxpayers have been deceived. Our NSA claims to have worldwide
monitoring capabilities over all electronic communications.

It is inconceivable that with all the electronic communications before
9/11, some intelligence was not deciphered and passed on to the
appropriate officials. When, where, by whom was the necessary
intelligence intercepted, interpreted, analyzed, collated and forwarded
to the responsible agencies and parties? Polygraphs everyone?

JAMES B. BURKHOLDER
Colonel, US Army, retired

Glenford, NY

September 11 has reinforced all my negatives: suspicion of government
motives; frustration at the perpetuation of failed policies; horror at
the immense war budget; fear of nuclear proliferation; opposition to
oppressive and domineering globalization; anger at support given to
repressive regimes while raving and ranting at Cuba; despair that an
equitable Middle East solution cannot override oil interests; and
finally, that we are doing absolutely nothing to address the grievances
of "terrorists" while eroding our own democracy and allowing degradation
of the environment.

GERTRUDE HAMES

Nantes, France

September 11 is an American hegemonical construct, a good guys vs.
evil vision that is as much a part of American cultural imperialism as
McDonald's or the latest Hollywood movie. Sycophantic French politicians
and intellectuals (like Bernard Henri-Levy) quickly proclaimed that "we
are all Americans." The result has been a frustrating diversion from the
real issues. To limit the discussion to terrorism--who has the world's
biggest arsenal of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons? Who refuses
to sign any treaty outlawing them, or landmines for that matter?
Who--and for good reason--refuses to reject genocide or pre-emptive
nuclear strikes? The biggest threat to world peace today is not
minuscule terrorist groups but the US government. As an American who has
lived in France for the past twenty years, for me September 11
epitomizes the self-centered worldview of too many of my countrymen.

GENE ZBIKOWSKI

Albuquerque

I have not felt so alienated from this country since Nixon was elected
to a second term after Watergate and all his misdeeds in Southeast Asia.
I was so devastated by the instantaneous deaths of so many people, and
then so appalled by the nationalistic frenzy, the lust for revenge and
the level of pure propaganda in the mainstream media. So much emotional
manipulation, so little cogent analysis. Having Bush in the White House
made it all much harder for me, given his general ignorance of foreign
affairs and his entourage of cold warriors. I have never appreciated the
alternative press, especially The Nation, so much.

BEVERLY BURRIS

North Bend, Ore.

I'm a Democrat and former Green Beret with a BA in political science
and get my news primarily from ABC, NPR and BBC radio. After Al Qaeda
spectacularly murdered a couple thousand Americans, we "brought death"
to Afghanistan in retaliation, belying "Clinton's weakening" of our
forces. That twice as many Afghan citizens died collaterally, many
Americans died from friendly fire and Al Qaeda apparently returned to
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, might bear investigation. No?

On the home front, our Attorney General has, modestly, hidden Justice,
and God knows what else, but the anthrax murders remain unsolved. Our
National Security Adviser's patent culpability for the attack's success
is unremarked upon. Republicans' malfeasance, ideological incoherence
and compassionless corporatism, ever more glaring, go unchallenged. Do
most Americans still want a national health plan? Yes?

Nothing has changed, nor will it unless Democrats fix Dumbya and try a
testicular implant (metaphorically speaking, of course!).

GORDON STRASENBURGH

Long Beach, Calif.

September 11 is a lot about the enemy from without. But the enemy from
without will never, try though it may, extinguish the American
experiment. We Americans, on the other hand, are armed and capable of
such a result. As I fear us more than them, September 11 has little
changed my life.

KEITH McCALLIN

St. Louis

I am of Indian origin and before September 11 learned to avoid racism
by presenting myself in a relentlessly middle-class fashion. And if the
precise diction, discreet deodorant and the late-model four-door sedan
proved insufficient, then out came the race card. "Is my race a
problem?" I would ask with a faint British intonation. I felt a sense of
entitlement in challenging the closet racial profiler to deny his own
prejudices.

But 9/11 changed all that. My identity as a comfortably assimilated
immigrant who moves easily among various cultures, languages and
geographical regions has been shown to be a fragile myth. To the
security guards at the malls, airports and theme parks around the
country, I look like the sister of the nineteen hijackers. My
cosmopolitanism, my ability to read ancient Tamil love poetry, my
advanced degrees become irrelevant in the face of such appalling
culpability.

ANUSHIYA SIVANARAYANAN

Harrisonburg, Va.

"We'll never be the same," broadcasters kept pronouncing while
replaying jets slamming towers. That sounded so false, from people
worried about their makeup surviving marathon airtime. (Do I seem cold?)
My firstborn son died from an auto accident on August 11, 2001. I don't
expect to be the same. A month later, I felt families' desperate waits,
dwindling hopes. Not the urge for revenge; I lacked that option. Leaders
who scare me more than bin Laden jumped to exploit the revenge rush,
while the "commentariat" lock-stepped in boosting an amorphous war,
blowing off civil liberties. My faith in journalism tanked. I'm a
freelance reporter. An apparent economic fallout from 9/11 was the
folding of a little alternative magazine I wrote for. I still feel
powerless, but better since visiting a conference to interview
peacebuilders from several continents. Their spirits moved me.
Accustomed to danger, children dying, they hadn't given up.

CHRIS EDWARDS

Flat Gap, Ky.

Everything changed with the Supreme Court's appointment of George W.
Bush, not with the events of September 11. Like a bicycle ride along a
peaceful country road when a pack of dogs run out from nowhere and bite
your ankle, any sense of security is now an open wound. Even the dogs on
your own front porch become suspect and you lose your trust.

CATHERINE S. WELLS

Omaha Indian Reservation, Macy, Neb.

On September 11, Ariel Sharon said all Americans are Israelis,
learning that terror can strike anywhere, anywhen. With equal
conviction, Yasir Arafat might have said all Americans are Palestinians,
compelled to retaliation and pre-emption. Although these metaphors are
apt, neither is accurate.

Rather, it may be said with supreme justification that all Americans are
Native American Indians, living under occupation by a hostile government
ever ready to liquidate our life, liberty, property--our pursuit of
happiness--in conducting an endless, self-righteous campaign.

Presaging the Department of Homeland Security, the Bureau of Indian
Affairs has extraordinary powers, employing DOJ, FBI, CIA and military
enforcement and investigations. Intelligence responsibilities are
debated, ignoring our experiences: Feds rarely uncover evidence; they
create it, solving mysteries and preventing disasters only by
expropriating the work of others. Their goals are to destroy, not
protect; to master, not serve. Heed us, America. Our plight is
yours--our history, your future.

J. WILLIAM MORELAND
Chief Judge, Omaha Tribal Court

Legnica, Poland

I'm a 73-year-old retired American academic who witnessed the events
of September 11 on CNN here in Poland. Initial reactions: outrage, angry
"patriotism" and a powerful helplessness. As reason replaced reaction,
those feelings diminished.

The attack? Inevitable. Built on US ignorance and arrogance and
exclusion. Why do they hate us? Years of ruinous intervention and
destabilization of Third World countries, especially those seeking
self-determination in leftist political movements. September 11
unleashed religious and political fundamentalist zeal, a manic frenzy of
"security" threatening constitutional safeguards.

Polish officials assured me of protection. As an Arab-American, would I
suffer abuse at home? Life-change? Yes. 9/11 sharpened my sense of
responsibility for others. Sadly, the hatred that generated the attacks
has not provoked objective intellectual examination of cause, has
only brought a violent reactionary backlash effect. The
conscience of America remains where it was: anesthetized by greed,
racism, nationalism and impotent leadership.

JAMES E. HASHIM

Media, Pa.

I drive tractor-trailers, tankers. I could do great harm to thousands
of people without learning or buying a thing, with a good chance of
getting away and doing it again. The fitful inspections of a few trucks
after 9/11 are long gone. Since neither means nor opportunity need
restrain anyone's hand for long, I was naïve enough to hope that
9/11 might launch some citizen debate on applying the golden rule to the
rest of the planet. Our collective reaction to 9/11 has taught me that
self-interest and intelligence are not as intertwined as I had hoped.

MATT BECKER

Cazadero, Calif.

September 11 haiku:

   among the rubble
   the chickens come home to roost
   waking us up now

SUSAN SEITZ

Brooklyn, NY

I am a songwriter and visual artist, and I thought I would go home
that evening to document the day in words and images, but I found I
couldn't. I just watched the smoke rising, from my window in Brooklyn. I
found that there were experiences too deep for words or songs. That
night I wrote in my journal:
  I have no songs to sing, until I can sing all songs
   I try to speak, but I have no voice until I can have all voices
   I would call on God but I think that God will only answer
   to all of his names, spoken as one.

KEVIN ZIEGENHAGEN-SLICK

Princeton, NJ

There were oblique benefits. There was commercial-free network TV for
four days after 9/11. The twin towers had been the worst hazard of all
on the Atlantic flyway, and during three decades of autumn and spring
migration on a few mornings, fallouts of thousands of shorebirds and
passerines lay on the asphalt below them.

The worst did not occur. If planes had been flown into the Indian Point
and Three Mile Island reactors, probably failing to penetrate the
containment chambers but destroying the surrounding cooling systems,
there could have been millions dead and dying after meltdown.

And there was unintended bathos. In the hours following, Gen. Norman
Schwarzkopf suggested that it might have been the Montana Militia.

D.E. STEWARD

Ithaca, NY

What surprises and disappoints me is how little has changed since the
terrorist attacks. I thought the horrific death and destruction on our
own soil so clearly demonstrated hatred and resentment toward us that we
would work ceaselessly to implement an evenhanded approach to Israel and
Palestine. I thought our leaders would ask us to make some sacrifices,
and we'd give up our SUVs and other aspects of our everyday life built
on oil gluttony and being beholden to Saudi Arabia. I thought a
successful attack with box-cutters would highlight the stupidity of
"missile defense" and we'd begin to change how we spent our defense
dollars. I thought we'd finally acknowledge we need transportation
diversity and begin creating a healthy passenger rail system with less
dependence on air travel. I thought we'd become less unilateral and work
harder to build alliances and honor treaties. I was so wrong.

JUDY JENSVOLD

Stony Brook, NY

September 11 has not changed my life. It has accentuated and
invigorated my desire to return home, to Jaffa, Palestine, as soon as
possible. I am a graduate student at a US university, and I have not
felt as strong a desire to return to my culture, national history and
values as in the aftermath of what has become an American right to a
moment in time called "9/11."

I came to this country with as little animosity as possible for a Third
World colonized citizen, hoping to refute all I had learned as a child.
I am about to leave with repugnance, wrath and hopelessness toward an
arrogant, brutally hypocritical, mass-destructive autocracy, the United
States of America, governed not only by its political head but by its
willfully ignorant people.

MARY GEDAY

Daytona Beach, Fla.

Having come to America from the Philippines, a country colonized by
Spain and the United States and then brutalized by the dictatorship of
Ferdinand Marcos, I learned early the meaning and the beauty of freedom.
The longer I lived here, the better I appreciated how precious freedom
has been in all its manifestations.

Then came September 11. In a matter of minutes, I learned that the thing
I have held as so sacred in my life could also be fragile. Why, why? How
could there be so much hate when America is the one country that has
welcomed people of all colors, races and religious creeds to share in
its blessings of freedom?

September 11 taught me more than ever that America is worth fighting and
dying for; that out of the ashes, we shall emerge stronger and more
united, and that my adopted country will continue to be a shining beacon
for the rest of the world.

REMIGIO G. LACSAMANA

Salem, Mass.

I lost my brother to murder in 1984. Some people reacted with dismay
that my opposition to the death penalty didn't change. Did they think
this principle was based on some bizarrely naïve idea that people
never commit terrible crimes? Or was it that the closer to home a
perpetrator strikes, the harsher the appropriate punishment? A family
conflict erupted after the murder: Was it legitimate to try to
understand how these two young men had arrived at the point of
committing this crime, to examine the social web of race and class in
which they and my brother intersected, or was such an examination
tantamount to offering an excuse for what they'd done?

Change the details, and precisely these same tensions have characterized
the public debate following September 11. I hope we Americans can work
through them patiently and thoughtfully, as my family and I have had to
do.

AMY GLUCKMAN

Gays Mills, Wisc.

The events of 9/11 have strongly reaffirmed my commitment to my
intentional community, Dancing Waters Permaculture Co-op, created to
remove land from the debt cycle through collective ownership. Using
consensus decision-making, our collective is a nonviolent attempt to
demonstrate an alternative to the capitalist, consumerist ideology that
the terrorists symbolically targeted when they attacked the World Trade
Center.

KATHLEEN TIGERMAN

Bristol, Vt.

The worst thing was going out into my yard while the towers were
burning. My cats were there, our garden was a jungle and the Vermont day
was so beautiful it hurt. My heart was pounding. I wondered if these
simple things that brought me such joy would even exist for another
month, another week, another hour.

Unfortunately, with the White House occupied by people who make Dr.
Strangelove and General Ripper look normal, I still wonder how long we
will have our freedom or our lives. I can't say I am optimistic, but
miracles can and do happen. Love must happen on earth, or none of us
will survive.

LINDA WIGGIN

Garfield Heights, Ohio

Having been involved with the movement to shut down the WHISC/SOA for
several years, I sat in a bus stop in Cleveland after my school was
evacuated on September 11 with the terrible feeling that these attacks
were some sort of repercussion of US foreign policy.

As the antiwar movement began to take shape, I became involved as soon
as possible. I feel that a change in US foreign policy of militarization
and neoliberal economics isn't just needed, it is imperative to the
survival of this country, and possibly the world.

I participated in the antiwar demonstrations on September 29, and many
more since then. September 11 changed my life in the sense that I now
feel that being a single-issue or armchair activist isn't enough, that I
must be involved in what I believe and educated and involved in other
people's struggles.

ALEX IWASA

Oxford, Ohio

The first news I received of the attacks came from my government
teacher. The tragedies of that day shocked me more than any event in my
seventeen years. Something else that happened was almost as surprising
to me. Alongside pictures of toppled buildings came pictures of people
in other countries holding vigil for America. That people all over the
world cared that much about America surprised me. I knew that we have
friends and allies, but it never seemed they were that close to us. We
don't seem to feel as much solidarity with others. Instead of doing our
part in the world, we do things such as not participating in the Kyoto
Protocol and the International Criminal Court. It seems we only act when
our interests are threatened. America is shown great friendship by other
countries--we need to learn how to give friendship back.

HARRY NEACK

Mt. Pleasant, SC

September 11 made me, an 18-year-old living in the suburbs, much more
cynical, and that's difficult to do. When our leaders had an
unprecedented opportunity to lead, all I got was a bunch of talk (unless
a behemoth military budget counts as "leadership"). And when I expected
citizens to be shaken from their 1990s isolationist,
stock-market-is-booming delirium, all I got was the irony of an SUV with
huge American flags posted all over it. I really don't intend to sound
rude or coldhearted; I was just as shocked, saddened and outraged when I
saw the CNN footage. But unity and resolve are not jingoism. And a just
response is not unilateralism and carpet-bombing. If the so-called Bush
Doctrine is all the "change" I can expect from our leaders (and the
willful submission of others, Democrats), then I wish I was ignorant
enough not to care. The biggest tragedy of 9/11, aside from the
appalling loss of human life, is one of missed opportunity on the part
of the government and the failure of its citizens to call them on
it.

BRADY WELCH

Alexandria, Va.

I cannot identify with the notion that "nothing will ever be the same
again." That's a young person's view. For those of us pushing 60, the
world turned on its head when Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were
killed. With them died the strong possibility of social change. By the
time Reagan took office, many of us had stopped caring. I know I did.

Oddly, September 11 has made me care again. Not the attacks, which were
an outrage, but the federal government's response--the so-called war on
terrorism, with its shameful trampling of civil liberties, its reckless
threats to engage in war against Iraq and its self-righteous moralizing
about "goodness" here and "evil" there. I feel an urgent need to work
for peace and nonviolence once again.

JOSEPH BARBATO

Price, Utah

My quest to tell the truth led me in midlife to my dream career. I
became a reporter for my hometown newspaper. There wasn't a lot of hard
news, but the opinion page allowed me to explore broader issues and
excite discussion in my community. That all ended on September 11, when
exciting discussion became unpatriotic. Censorship and my ensuing
protest cost me my job. Mainstream media, I learned, is often the
purveyor of silence.

But I have become the resister of silence. I print copies of
antiviolence fliers from my home computer to plaster on windshields, and
I have discovered independent media. The little girl who was afraid of
the sound of her own voice spoke to a crowd on the steps of the State
Capitol at a peace rally on April 20. The small-town reporter spoke the
truth, and her voice was heard around the world.

Orwell said, "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth
becomes a revolutionary act." On September 11 this middle-class,
middle-aged middle American became a revolutionist.

JACKIE ANDERSON

Berkeley, Calif.

The horrifying events of September 11 and the mushrooming horrors
unleashed (war, racism, loss of civil liberties) have changed me.
Disgusted by the vapid rhetoric of patriotism, I realized how profoundly
I prize this continent and its progressive heroes and how repulsed I am
by nationalism everywhere. I ache for a transformed world but am more
uncertain how we will get there. We cannot be cast forever as sacrifices
in someone else's nightmare: Bush's "limited nuclear war," religious
fundamentalisms' apocalyptic wet dreams, capitalism's age-old werewolf
hunger.

As a lesbian, feminist, Marxist-humanist, I know that Bush, bin Laden,
Sharon and Hamas would certainly agree to hate and silence me. So part
of my struggle is to live: fiercely cherishing lovers, friends,
allies and the beauties of this vital planet.

JENNIFER RYCENGA

Stanford, Calif.

September 11 and its aftermath have made me afraid for this country.
The attacks were tragic evidence that an America once loved and admired
around the world is now an object of hatred. Instead of asking why, the
Bush Administration and a complaisant Congress used the event as an
excuse to kill more innocent people in Afghanistan, justify a bloated
military budget, harass immigrants, jail suspects without charges,
institute domestic spying and erode civil liberties in the name of
"security." I worry about the callous brutality shown when our leaders
debate over when and how to launch a war on Iraq, but show no concern
for the thousands of Iraqi people who are certain to be killed in such a
war. In short, I am afraid that in waging George Bush's open-ended "war
on terrorism" America will become the most dangerous terrorist of
all.

RACHELLE MARSHALL

Chapel Hill, NC

As I watched the towers fall on TV from my home in Prescott, Arizona,
on September 11, I shed tears not only for the horror and tragedy of the
attacks, but also in anticipation of the reaction of our government at
home and abroad. Later I headed two hours north to my favorite
cathedral, the Grand Canyon, for some solitude, silence and perspective.
I quit my job and now find myself back in my native North Carolina,
about to embark on a PhD program in political science.

People hear what I'm doing and say, Good luck changing the system. I
say, Well, thank you. Because if at any age I ever lose my idealism and
vision for global social, economic and environmental justice, I pray
someone will put me on a bus to the canyon for a little perspective.

JENNIFER E. WEAVER

Claremont, Calif.

I have been stunned by how a coup d'état can take place in
America. The combination of irregular presidential election, traumatic
terrorist attack, administrative control by radical conservatives and
the intimidation and cowardliness of the opposition have achieved
incredible changes. Our country now has an endless war policy,
unilateral withdrawal from international agreements, illegal detentions,
threats to constitutional rights and theft of the people's resources for
military ends. The well-oiled evince a voracious appetite for world
domination and homeland insecurity. I feel like an alien in my beloved
land, now a place of nightmares.

Can we wake up and reclaim our freedom? I work toward a community of
communities across this land who dream a new vision and turn fear,
suspicion and greed into generosity and justice for all.

PAT PATTERSON

Hawley, Mass.

After the horror let go of my throat I thought, that's it, thirty-five
years of work for peace and equality down the tubes. Our leaders will
now have license to bomb anywhere, anytime, void the Bill of Rights and
shoo away dissent with the flag. They won, we lost.

But wait. History doesn't change course in a day. The world a year after
the attacks looks a lot like the world before 9/11. Liberty imperiled as
always, hard cheese for poor people and poor societies, our leaders
choosing which tyrants to support and which to overthrow, the rich in
power. But the loony system they rule is weaker, not stronger, than a
year ago--is bumping into its own homemade contradictions. If anything,
the terrorists deepened its confusion. I'm ready to rise up once more
against it.

RICHARD OHMANN

When it comes to the events of September 11, everyone is an expert and no one is. Everyone, because the attacks and their consequences had the rare character of a universal event. Few in the world have been left untouched by them, from New York City schoolchildren to Kabul shopkeepers. No one, because, as Strobe Talbott and Nayan Chanda put it in their introduction to The Age of Terror, "this was something new under the sun."

Or was it? Did we lose our innocence on September 11? Were the attacks a turning point in human history, like the smashing of the atom or the fall of the Berlin wall? Will we never be the same again?

These are the kinds of large questions that have been kicking around since September 11, and it's easy to understand, given the suddenness of the attacks, the scale of the horror and the intensity of the response, why they have been posed. My own view, reinforced by a look at five collections of essays written after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, is that it is too soon to tell. Some of the initial analysis is already looking dated or much too optimistic about the changed landscape. And in any event, it's important to be careful about the "we" packed into these questions, and alert to signs that September 11 is being used more often to reinforce entrenched views across the political spectrum than to challenge settled assumptions.

In time, books about what happened on September 11 and its aftermath will no doubt constitute a virtual cottage industry, perhaps occupying their own section at the local Borders or Barnes & Noble. For now, though, the first out of the box are compilations of essays and articles. It must be said at the outset that any book conceived and written in the span of a few months is at best an album of snapshots of a moment, and that while each of the books reflects a particular political orientation and sensibility, none of them constitute a sustained argument or a monolithic point of view.

Two of the books emerge from institutions of the establishment center: How Did This Happen?, edited by James F. Hoge and Gideon Rose, the editor and managing editor of Foreign Affairs, published by the Council on Foreign Relations; and The Age of Terror, edited by former Deputy Secretary of State Talbott (director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, soon-to-be president of the Brookings Institution) and Chanda, the center's publications director.

Despite the fact that no military or national security authority anticipated the stunningly simple way unspeakable damage was wrought on September 11, these two books want to reassure us with "experts." How Did This Happen? promises readers it will answer that question "in all its critical aspects" by bringing together "experts whose insights make the events of that terrible day more understandable, even as we steel ourselves for the conflicts ahead." The Age of Terror promises that an "agenda-setting team of experts" will begin to tell us "what happened here and why," and "examine the considerations and objectives of policy decisions in post-September 11 America."

In other words, Sisters Mary Yale and Harvard Explain It All to You. Except that most of these experts turn out to be men: Only three women are among the twenty-six writers in the Hoge/Rose book, a group that includes a former national security adviser, NATO commander and Secretary of Defense; and only one is among the eight academics in The Age of Terror. (The paucity of female "experts" in these pages, while appalling, is hardly limited to the books in question; a recent report by the White House Project kept track of appearances on the leading Sunday television news and public affairs interview programs and determined that after September 11 the percentage of female guests--only 11 percent to begin with--dropped by 39 percent. That's almost as much of a gender shutout as in prewar Afghanistan under the Taliban.)

The first few essays in the Hoge/Rose book try to explain Islam, marshaling scholars and writers like Fouad Ajami and Karen Armstrong. Walter Laqueur provides a look at "The Changing Face of Terror," and then there are a few pieces each on the impact on US intelligence, security, and diplomatic, military and economic policy. The Talbott/
Chanda book follows a similar template, touching fewer bases.

The three other early collections to emerge since September 11 bear a surface similarity to the Hoge/Rose and Talbott/
Chanda books. They, too, have portentous subtitles ("Conversations in a Time of Terror," "Beyond the Curtain of Smoke," "Solutions for a Saner World"). All the books bear a cover photograph of the crumbling World Trade Center towers (except Another World Is Possible, which has a silhouette of the pre-September 11 lower Manhattan skyline; The Age of Terror also features a Coca-Cola truck amid the Ground Zero debris, perhaps befitting the work of a center on globalization). And they all attempt to survey various aspects of the post-
September 11 world. But there the resemblance ends.

If the editors and authors of The Age of Terror and How Did This Happen? seek to explain September 11, in effect, to themselves--to those who take as a given a world led by a benign United States, in other words--those who compiled and contributed to the other three books are accustomed to their marginalization as critics of the prevailing world order. They might well be living in a parallel universe.

In ascending order of marginalization, After 9/11: Solutions for a Saner World emerges from the San Francisco-based Independent Media Institute. Among its contributors are many who have written for this magazine, including its editor, and such stars of the progressive punditocracy as Barbara Ehrenreich, Jim Hightower and Arianna Huffington. It's in many ways the most comfortable to me of these books, more critical of the existing world order than the "expert" editions but more engaged with it than the other two volumes. But it left less of an impression on me, as well. While there is some overlap between it and September 11 and the U.S. War: Beyond the Curtain of Smoke (for example, Barbara Kingsolver, Arundhati Roy and Michael Klare appear in both), the latter volume, published by City Lights Books and Freedom Voices, delivers us an angrier, more sectarian left--the kind of book that contains an oil pipeline map and ends with a poem telling us that the planes that crashed on September 11 were made by "the same billionaire wing-makers whose jets burned the sky over Baghdad, Panama City, Grenada, the Mekong." September 11 and the U.S. War, like After 9/11, consists almost entirely of brief, Op-Ed-length articles that have appeared elsewhere. Unlike After 9/11 (which is dedicated to "the everyday heroes who rose to the challenge of 9/11"), there is barely room in this volume for a nod to the human toll--in the United States, anyway--of the violence inflicted on that day. The editors and authors get straight to business in stating their "dissent from the bellicose actions" taken by the United States, exposing, as they talk about Eduardo Galeano, author of the lead essay, the "fundamental falsehoods of US militarism and its mirrored evils abroad."

The third of the books by the marginalized, Another World Is Possible, was produced by six activists in their 20s affiliated with the Active Element Foundation. If After 9/11 is Tracy Chapman, and September 11 and the U.S. War is Pete Seeger, Another World Is Possible is Rage Against the Machine. The contributors are trying, in the words of Kofi Taha's brief foreword, to "find a language that evokes love, compassion and critical thought in the face of tragedy," and to recognize "this pivotal moment in human history that will either positively propel us forward or plunge us in ever-deepening despair."

One of the positive things about Another World Is Possible is the way the editors disagree with one another--two of them even question whether its subtitle, "Conversations in a Time of Terror," is too "American-centric." Walidah Imarisha, an artist, poet and "rabble-rouser," doesn't like it because "it's been a time of terror for folks of color, in and out of this country, for centuries." Shaffy Moeel, a former reporter for youth radio, thinks Americans should understand that terror is what is faced by 25 million Africans with HIV who can't afford treatment drugs and by Iraqi children deprived of food and medicine. And the authors here don't always take themselves as seriously as some others on the left: It's refreshing to read that Beka Economopoulos, another of the editors and a trainer for the Ruckus Society, avoided the "sectarian and process-heavy" meetings called by the left in the days after September 11.

Another thing that makes this book more compelling than its counterparts is the contribution of Jeremy Glick, a graduate student at Rutgers and one of the editors. On the one hand, much of his writing seems as "sectarian and process-heavy" as any in the collection's pages (and there is plenty of that). On the other, Glick's father was killed in Tower One on September 11, and he writes movingly of what happened to him in the weeks afterward when he experienced a "complete collapse of the public/private."

Another World Is Possible is also more original and graphically lively than any of the other books, containing interviews, photographs and even a running e-mail exchange among the editors, begun on September 11 when several of them weren't sure whether the Jeremy Glick among the casualties was their friend and contemporary or his father.

One way to measure the appeal of these books--or any, really--is whether they manage to surprise us, or tell us something we didn't know. In After 9/11, I was surprised to find peace activist Riane Eisler, president of the Center for Partnership Studies, telling interviewer Helen Knode that she supports a "military response against terrorist bases in nations that fund and support terrorism," because "if you've got a psychopath lunging at you with a knife, that's not the time to talk about peace and love." I was informed, if somewhat amused, by Dr. Michael Bader's examination of the post-September 11 "terror sex" phenomenon--that "some of us get turned on by disasters...because disasters make us unconsciously feel safe to be sexual." (That made me wish they were still making new Seinfelds--oh, the possibilities!)

In Another World Is Possible, I was taken with the editors' ability to unearth quotes from Martin Luther King Jr. that have been largely forgotten in the process of his near-canonization, like these lines from his 1967 Riverside Church sermon: "I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered."

In How Did This Happen?, I learned from Greg Easterbrook's piece on airline security that it would be sensible to equip planes with transponders that can't be turned on and off by pilots in a hijacking, except automatically upon takeoff and landing. From Stephen Flynn's sobering article, "The Unguarded Homeland," I got a sense of the vulnerability of the harbors of Long Beach, California, and Port Everglades, Florida, and of what a huge disruption it would be to the residents of those states if the oil tankers docked there were attacked in the manner employed against the USS Cole in Yemen. From Walter Laqueur I learned that suicide bombing is not the exclusive province of Islamic terrorists--Sri Lankan Tamils have a higher per capita rate of them, but they are neither Muslim nor religiously motivated. And William Wechsler, a former adviser to the Secretary of the Treasury, writing about efforts to cut off Al Qaeda's financial support, sheds fascinating light on Osama bin Laden's rise. He didn't attain prestige by "leading an army into battle" or "valor in combat"--the source of his power is his fundraising prowess. So for terrorists, it seems, as for politicians, success increasingly comes through the ability to raise large amounts of money.

In The Age of Terror, I appreciated the fresh and provocative perspective of Maxine Singer, president of the Carnegie Institution, writing on the "challenge to science" posed by September 11: that "millions of people in poor nations [who] watch their children die of diseases we have not seen in generations" may not see "the introduction of dangerous biological and chemical agents into our relatively clean environments" as so horrible. Perhaps, Singer writes, "the willingness of terrorists to die for a cause we find unfathomable may be influenced by the fact that life spans in their societies are in any case short."

Nothing in September 11 and the U.S. War surprised me.

A number of the essays in these books, particularly in the two "expert" volumes, seem much too optimistic or have already been superseded by events. In How Did This Happen?, economist Martin Baily calmly assesses the economic impact of the World Trade Center attacks, including the effect on the recession, unemployment and the globalization debate, concluding blandly that "economic fears will be overcome." A few pages later, Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College, writes that it will be difficult for Democrats to shift to the left or Republicans to the right, and that "screaming talk show hosts" who blame "their favorite targets" for the World Trade Center attacks will find no one listening. Has he watched The O'Reilly Factor lately? Wolfe observes with approval that "Bush's support has broadened as his proposals have become more inclusive." I would have liked a dose here of New York Times columnist Paul Krugman's relentless, dead-on exposure of the way the Bush Administration has used the cloak of war to disguise an ideological agenda of tax cuts for the rich and privatized Social Security.

In The Age of Terror, Yale history professor Abbas Amanat writes of hopeful signs in the calls for "open society, coexistence and rule of law" in Iran. These are hopeful, indeed, and call for a sensitive and nuanced response by the United States. But it is harder to keep such hopes alive when the burgeoning forces of democratization in Iran are greeted with a US policy--set forth by President Bush in the State of the Union address after Amanat's essay went to press--pronouncing that nation one of three countries in an "axis of evil" that the United States must vanquish now that it is finishing up in Afghanistan.

Paul Kennedy, another Yale history professor and author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, applauds the post-September 11 disappearance of US unilateralism. It was certainly possible to think, in the days and weeks following the attacks, as Washington set about lining up the support of other nations for its campaign against terrorism, that we had come to the end of a dismal period in which, only a week before, the United States had walked out of the UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, having already thumbed its nose at treaties on global warming and the International Criminal Court. But that optimism doesn't seem warranted now, in the mood of US triumphalism surrounding the perceived success of the go-it-alone approach.

Finally, a few of the contributions are, simply put, a bit bizarre. In The Age of Terror, Charles Hill, a former aide to Secretaries of State Kissinger, Haig and Shultz, writes, as if to shake his head at misguided priorities, "In the aftermath of the September 11 mass murders, many Americans admirably rushed to recommit themselves to civil liberties and respect for the rights of individuals who share the appearance, ethnicity or faith of the terrorist enemies of the U.S." On this planet? In the country I'm living in, the Attorney General rushed to apprehend thousands of immigrants without charges or access to public counsel, sent FBI agents to question 5,000 more and impugned the patriotism of those who dared to challenge his policies. The President rushed to set up military tribunals, akin to those we have condemned when used by Peru or Turkey, to try suspected terrorists. Hill goes on: "Over the past few decades, Americans have begun to fall prey to an inverse version of the conspiracy-theory mentality: that virtually every problem in the world can be attributed to some fault of ours." Not that I've noticed. Maybe he's been spending too much time reading September 11 and the U.S. War.

Harold Hongju Koh, former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, is virtually alone in both of the mainstream volumes in raising the alarm about the serious challenges to civil liberties and human rights brought on by the US response to September 11. Aside from Michael Mandelbaum's essay in How Did This Happen?, only Koh seems concerned about the US tendency to overlook the human rights abuses of "friendly" states, from our allies in the cold war to those in the campaign against terrorism. And only he condemns the rapid resort to "crisis restrictions" on civil liberties and the "oppressive orthodoxy" of "patriotic correctness"--a nice turn of phrase that I hope catches on--that swept the country in the weeks and months following the attacks.

Yet even Koh, in his eagerness to demonstrate that it's possible to combat terrorism and protect civil liberties, overstates the experience of "our fellow democracies like Britain and Israel...in balancing a crisis atmosphere, a forceful response, and strenuous efforts to increase homeland security, with a sustained commitment to domestic civil liberties." For a different view, the latest issue of Index on Censorship, the London-based human rights magazine, reports the testimony of the British rights organization Liberty before Parliament's Home Affairs Committee that twenty-five years of antiterrorism laws in Britain have led to "appalling human rights abuses and miscarriages of justice, and the unnecessary detention of thousands of innocent, mostly Irish, people."

Civil liberties are under greater strain in the United States than at any time in recent memory; the Taliban are nearly routed in Afghanistan. That much is clear at this writing. Beyond that, it's almost impossible to predict the longer-term impact of the World Trade Center attacks. In fact, what's remarkable to me about some cataclysmic political events of the past few years, which totally absorbed public and media attention for months on end and which were widely assumed to have altered the political equation in fundamental ways, even calling into question the legitimacy of all three branches of government (I'm thinking here about the impeachment and trial of President Clinton and the crisis over the 2000 presidential election, finally resolved by a highly suspect ruling of the Supreme Court) is not how much they changed American life and politics but how quickly they faded from consciousness, and how little enduring impact they seem to have had. September 11, we are endlessly told, transformed George W. Bush into a leader and erased any lingering doubts about his legitimacy. But in fact, for most Americans, whatever they thought of his competence or policies, doubts about his right to be there had virtually evaporated by the time of the inauguration, and only weeks into Bush's presidency it was quite easy to forget the extraordinary means by which he had reached it.

President Clinton was supposed to be fatally wounded, first by Kenneth Starr's disclosure of what he did with Monica Lewinsky--few public figures aside from Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee have had to endure such a detailed public account of their sexual activities--and then by having to stand in the dock for it. There is no doubt that Clinton's energies and attention were diverted by the trials visited upon him by the independent prosecutor and the Republican-controlled House and Senate. But life went on, and it's hard to see any enduring damage to the political system. Monica Lewinsky is a minor celebrity, popping up on HBO and Larry King Live, and Hillary Clinton chums it up in the Senate with dozens of colleagues who voted to oust her husband from office.

A historian might say it is too soon to assess the impact of either the impeachment or the election, and some may think it trivializes the crimes of September 11 to discuss them in the same breath with the perfidies of Kenneth Starr and Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris. Perhaps it does, and I recognize that the events of September 11 sent waves far beyond the shores of US politics and culture. But it is possible to think that the political and diplomatic consequences of September 11--not the personal trauma of thousands of lives forever disrupted by murder, or the psychic scars borne by millions from the violence witnessed and spawned that day--may be far less significant than the conventional wisdom now allows, or at least that it is too soon to tell.

I must also confess skepticism, after reading so many thousands of words written about September 11, from across the political spectrum, that anyone's view of the world has been very much changed. What strikes me most forcefully is how virtually everyone with an opinion or an orientation has cut 9/11 to fit his or her preconceived agenda. The crude and outrageous assertion by Jerry Falwell that gays and abortion-rights activists are to blame for the attacks on the World Trade Center was roundly denounced from all quarters, but there are plenty of other people using the events of September 11 to ride their favorite hobbyhorse.

In The Age of Terror, for instance, Niall Ferguson, an Oxford professor of political and financial history, starts out usefully enough, challenging the military historian John Keegan's assertion that he could not find parallels for September 11. (Ferguson cites the Japanese kamikaze pilots, German use of anthrax in the First World War and the rash of 1970s hijackings.) But by the end of his essay he is urging a "proper role for imperial America" in "imposing democracy on all the world's 'rogue states.'" At the other end of the spectrum, Wendell Berry, writing in September 11 and the U.S. War, hopes that the attacks ended "technological and economic euphoria."

But since, as I suggested at the outset, everyone is entitled to be an expert on this subject, I would like to ride two of my own hobbyhorses for a moment.

The first is about the "we" that the editors and most of the contributors to the two mainstream volumes claim to speak for and to. The brief introductory essay by Hoge and Rose in How Did This Happen?, for example, laments the loss of the "open, secure life Americans took for granted"--a frequently voiced sentiment in recent months that seems unobjectionable at first. But did all Americans take such a life for granted before September 11? Did young African-American men feel secure on the streets of New York City after Amadou Diallo? Or single mothers in East New York who put their children to bed in the bathtub to keep them safe from drive-by shootings at the peak of the crack epidemic?

That's not terrorism, one might respond. Fair enough. Did doctors and nurses working in abortion clinics feel the benefits of an open and secure life after Dr. Barnett Slepian was gunned down? Did such shootings, and a wave of arson and bombing and anthrax threats, have the desired effect of suppressing a woman's right to choose in many parts of the United States? You bet they did. Some communities have always lived with the threat of terror. One thing September 11 did was democratize the fear.

The second hobbyhorse is closely connected, and it has to do with the media's--well, ultimately, the democracy's--failure to do its job in equipping citizens to exercise any meaningful stewardship over the country's role around the world. The disconnection of US foreign policy from democratic discourse is profound. On this point, After 9/11 is strongest, providing a forum for Danny Schechter's argument that "the structure and orientation of our media system and its abandonment of international news...has fueled two cultures, virtually segregated from one another. A small elite operates globally with a 'need to know,' and most people are in effect told they do not."

Is there any chance this picture will change? That Americans will insist on being better informed about the world and the US role in it, and on a foreign policy that respects international law and institutions and the need to act in concert with other democratic nations? That the spirit of community and "everyday heroism" that moved New York and the nation in the weeks after September 11 has sparked a deeper and more enduring sense of civic responsibility and a more inclusive sense of community? That politics-as-usual will be set aside in order to address enduring inequities, here and around the world?

Too soon to tell.

SLENDER THREAD IN PALESTINE...

Panama City, Fla.

Neve Gordon's "An Antiwar Protest Grows in Israel" [Feb. 25] on the reservist protest is the most encouraging news to come out of Israel in months.

R.T. CARPENTER

...AND IN AMERICA...

San Francisco

In "A New Current in Palestine" [Feb. 4] Edward Said asks, "Where are American liberals?" Said's certainly right that outside of "a tiny number of Jewish voices," far too few Americans of any stripe are protesting the Israeli occupation. Those few Jewish voices belong, by and large, to Tikkun magazine, a progressive Jewish critique I help edit.

Tikkun has published Said and other Palestinians, along with the remaining voices of the Israeli peace movement, like Uri Avnery, David Grossman and Tanya Reinhart. Some of our strongest pieces against the occupation are by our editor, Rabbi Michael Lerner, who argues that the occupation hurts the state of Israel by undermining core Jewish values. Because of this position we have received hate mail, and Lerner has received death threats. We are trying to mobilize an activist force to lobby US and Israeli leaders to end the occupation and to support Palestinians in nonviolent action. Please check out Tikkun on the newsstands or at www.tikkun.org.

JO ELLEN GREEN KAISER

...EVEN IN LA

Montreal

Thank you for publishing Amy Wilentz's "In Cold Type" [Feb. 11]. Its reference to Al Jadid is perhaps the first mention that this Los Angeles quarterly, devoted to Arab culture and arts, has had in a mainstream US publication, although it has been published for several years now. Many of Al Jadid's contributors are Americans of Arab origin, and they represent a good segment of the Arab-American intellectuals and their community. If Al Jadid has been ignored, it is not because it has not been actively trying to communicate with other Americans but probably because mainstream American intellectuals are too concerned with their own "niche obsessions" (Wilentz's term for the concerns of some publications like Al Jadid). US intellectuals and others should pay more attention to minority publications if they want to have a better knowledge of those who share the country (and the world) with them. I commend Wilentz for commenting positively on Al Jadid (despite its "painful" review of her novel).

ISSA J. BOULLATA

PARADIGM SHIFT: DOES DUBYA GET IT?

Northridge, Calif.

Benjamin Barber remarks ["Beyond Jihad vs. McWorld," Jan. 21] that the September 11 attacks have produced a paradigm shift in government ideology: The old realpolitik has been replaced by a policy with rights and democracy as its goals. But though the tiger may have changed its stripes, we might well suspect it is still the same old tiger. The focus on democratic principles may make it easier to gain the support of fellow Western democracies, but these values can still be regarded as secondary to economic interests and the pursuit of empire as the dominant goals of US foreign policy. Such suspicions are strengthened by noticing the governments the United States is eager to take as allies in the struggle against terrorism: Pakistan and Uzbekistan, among others.

More persuasive is Barber's point that our newly recognized global interdependence offers the opportunity to work with international movements and the organizations representing them that have sprung up in the past half-century: the green and environmental movements, internationally oriented rights and labor movements, debt-reduction and literacy projects and many others. Arguably such grassroots activity has always been the most important source of social progress. The immense potential for progressive change inherent in these movements can give hope even in these politically regressive times.

CHARLES CRITTENDEN

Catonsville, Md.

I am not nearly as sanguine as Benjamin Barber about our government's ability or willingness to view the world through a new prism. When our leader declared "war" against the new world menace, I knew there would be a supreme effort to fit the new demons into the old cold war textbook. Barber suggests that "the myth of our independence can no longer be sustained." I do not believe the Administration understands that. In the same way that "realpolitik" protected our national interests against those of foreign nations, we will now protect our ideals and ideas against those that are foreign. The variety of foreign ideas that could fall under the rubric "evil" will allow for continuous conflict. Barber asks, "Do we think we can bomb into submission the millions who resent, fear and sometimes detest what they think America means?" Unfortunately, yes--we will force our ideology on the rest of the world with "for us or against us" absolutism. We will arm nations to insure that they can police dissent within their borders.

Barber's other main premise is that democracy and shared values will define friendship among nations in this new order. I suggest that it may be capitalism and globalization that will bring us together, but it will not be democracy--at least not in the short run. We will be hard pressed to promote democratic values abroad as we dismantle them at home. Both political parties appear to be moving away from expanding the franchise. Propaganda and secrecy assure an ill-informed electorate. Electoral reforms inspired by the 2000 election are not happening, and money still buys public policy. Interest in politics is shrinking--people have figured out that they have no real choice. And 2000 showed that the election can be rigged. Incumbency and special interest money will assure a favorable climate for free trade and unregulated capitalism. Our ethic will continue to be greed and consumerism. Words for the idea that we should sacrifice some of our bounty to help the poor of the world are not in our vocabulary. Ideas like cooperation, sharing, temperance, community, sustainability and reverence for the diversity of nature have no relevance in bottom-line, short-term thinking. As long as money equals redemption, our values will continue to clash with "primitive" cultures and with our own metaphysical yearnings for what we have lost. Interdependence may be realpolitik, but self-sufficiency and sustainability trump dependence and should be the defining goal of the world's communities.

J. RUSSELL TYLDESLEY

BARBER REPLIES

New York City

Both letters are pessimistic about the capacity of this Administration to absorb the lessons of the new realism. I am not exactly sanguine myself, but my object was not to persuade readers that George W. Bush had converted overnight to multilateralism--only to suggest that multilateralist interdependence is today a mandate of political realism. Whether or not prudent long-term realism can offset the seductions of "short-term thinking" remains to be seen. Realism does not describe what people do; it suggests what they should do when they heed the lessons of politics and history. What has changed for now is not US policy but the status of democracy--no longer a daydream of idealists but a prudent multilateralist instrument for securing the safety of Americans in a world in which, realistically speaking, independence is a myth and unilateralism a recipe for defeat.

BENJAMIN BARBER

UZBEKISTAN: JIHAD'S COUNTRY?

Madison, Wisc.

I take exception to Raffi Khatchadourian's portrayal of Namangan and the Fergana Valley as steeped in "radical Islamic fervor" ["Letter From Uzbekistan," Jan. 21]. I lived in Namangan for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer and in different areas of Uzbekistan for another three years. While the general population is taking on more religious beliefs than before their independence in 1991, I would not go so far as to describe them as Khatchadourian has done. Sure, there are the exceptions like the IMU's Juma Namangani, and of course there are human rights abuses by the government.

My experiences on the ground, however, were very positive. I worked closely with the local population. I came in contact with all social classes in Namangan, from "privileged" college students to collective farmers in the outlying villages of Qora-Tepa and Chinobod. Generally, I found the local citizens to be moderate in their religious views, social mores and political feelings.

GEORGE HOFHEIMER

KHATCHADOURIAN REPLIES

New York City

I portrayed the Fergana Valley (a place The Economist describes as a "tinderbox") using firsthand experiences and interviews with local human-rights activists, journalists and religious leaders. A man I called Azizov offered evidence that "radical Islamic fervor has become inseparably interwoven with growing popular discontent," because the repressive regime of Islam Karimov is aggravating the very problem it is trying to stamp out by driving people to the only alternative to state terror--radical Islamic movements. Azizov, who has worked with the New York Times and the Washington Post and who would be in danger if I revealed his real name, is an Uzbek who has lived in Namangan for more than forty years and has interviewed founding members of the IMU.

Another source was Azizulla Ghazi, who works in Osh for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, which released a report last year containing many on-the-ground interviews. I sought out members of the banned Hizb-ut Tahrir radical Islamic movement, who told me its numbers are growing. I suggest reading journalist Ahmed Rashid, who has written about this subject for The New Yorker and in his book Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia. In the January 29 edition of Jane's Intelligence Review Tamara Makarenko observes that "developments over the past four months may actually result in the growth of political violence in the region."

As for my portrayal of Namangan, I believe it's fair to say that "poverty and unemployment are rampant" and that it is a place of "intense social conservatism and piety." These characterizations have been widely reported; neither suggests that everyone in Namangan is a burning jihadist.

RAFFI KHATCHADOURIAN

PROGRESSIVES UNITE!

Rockford, Ill.

Progressive Voices is creating a national directory of progressive, community-based organizations to better bring us together as a movement--a formidable though very fulfilling task. We have been able to identify more than 1,000 progressive community groups through various media and personal contacts, but if this project is to be successful, we must find a way to reach progressives in even the most rural locations, to reach those with the most modest technology. Nation readers, please send us the names, contact information and basic description of any groups that fit the criteria.

DOUG MORROW
Progressive Voices
6469 Ral Mar
Rockford, IL 61109
(661) 742-1161
doug_morrow@hotmail.com

Research support: the Investigative
Fund of the Nation Institute. Additional reporting: Edmundo
Cruz.