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Alternet on Sept. 11

Four Articles

"America Under Attack": Guilty Or Not, Here We Come" Danny Schechter
No, Mr. Bush, Not Everyone Wants Bloodshed Rahul Mahajan, AlterNet
The Enemy With a Thousand Faces Gary Kamiya, Salon
After 9-11, We All Have New Battles to Fight Geov Parrish, AlterNet

"America Under Attack": Guilty Or Not, Here We Come"
Danny Schechter, <www.MediaChannel.org>
September 12, 2001

Walking home through empty streets, as New York shut down early on the day
of the World Trade Towers apocalypse, one was struck at how dazed and
stunned people seemed. There was an eerie silence punctuated by ambulances
and police cars racing from place to place. Cops guarded post offices,
police stations and the bus terminal, as if the terrorists would be back.
The mayor gave press conferences from "a secret location" as if the Osama
bin Laden brigade had targeted him, clearly a conceit wrapped up as a
security consideration.

I had spent the morning following events on the web and the radio. At home,
I was finally able to experience the day's turmoil that many media outlets
were saying had "changed America forever," in the way most Americans
experienced it -- on TV. I watched for five hours, jumping from channel to
channel, network to network. It was, of course, wall to wall catastrophe,
with each outlet featuring its own "exclusive coverage." Some credited to
others but each with somewhat distinctive angles of the same scene -- that
jet plane tearing through the World Trade Center. And when we weren't seeing
that horrendous image being recycled endlessly, used as what we in the TV
business used to call "wallpaper" or B-roll, other equally compelling images
were on the screen: the Pentagon on fire, huge clouds of smoke coming out of
the buildings, buildings collapsing, people jumping from high floors and
running in the streets. It was on for hours, over and over again, awakening
outrage and then oddly numbing it by overexposure.

The reporting focused first on the facts, the chronology of planes hijacked
and national symbols attacked. And then the parade of "expert" interviews
began, featuring virtually the same group of former government officials and
terrorism specialists on each show. Even Ronald Reagan's favorite novelist
Tom Clancy was given airtime to bang the drum for giving the military and
CIA everything it says it will need to strike back. He was on, no doubt,
because for many, these events seemed like a case of reality catching up
with fiction.

You could imagine the show bookers all working overtime from the same
Rolodex, shuttling these pundits-for-all-seasons from studio to studio, from
CNN to Jim Lehrer's News Hour to CBS and back again. How many times
have we seen these soundalike soundbite artists like former Secretary of State
Lawrence Eagleburger and generals like Norman Schwartzkopf waxing tough
for the cameras? They were itching for "action."

I heard no one saying that violence breeds violence or that a massive
retaliation may only invite more of the same. The only critical edge to the
coverage involved raising the question about why so many official
predictions about imminent terrorist threats went unresponded to for so
long. These concerns were raised, but quickly sidelined by discussions of
national complacency and/or naïveté about the world. How the U.S.
intelligence apparatus could have missed this was taken only as evidence
that it needs more money, not a different policy. No mention was made of the
cutbacks in international news coverage that keeps so many Americans so out
of touch with global events.

Suddenly, we had moved from the stage of facts to the realm of opinion and
endless speculation about what America would do and, then, what America MUST
do. The anchors were touched when members of Congress spontaneously erupted
into a bipartisan rendition of "God Bless America" on the Capitol steps.
They paused reverentially to go live to the White House for a presidential
address that turned out to be five minutes of banalities and
rally-round-the-flag reassurances. Who was it that called patriotism the
last refuge of scoundrels? The news anchors certainly never used that line.

Missing was any discussion of possible motives by the alleged terrorists,
why would they do it and why now? What was their political agenda? There was
no mention of September 11th as the anniversary of the failed Camp David
accords. There was certainly no mention of the fact that State terrorism by
countries be they the U.S., Russia, Iraq, Afghanistan or Israel often
trigger and harden counter-terrorism by guerrilla forces. There was
virtually no international angle offered in most of the coverage except a
few snatches of file footage of Osama Bin Laden fondling an AK47. Bin Laden
looked like a cartoon figure, like Ali Baba in cartoons from my youth, not
the insane militant terrorist that he is. It must be said that most of the
journalists I saw were cautious about attributing this to him, perhaps
because of early blame to Arabs of the Oklahoma City bombing of a federal
building, which turned out to be the work of an American.

NBC carried the only substantive report I saw on why Palestinians consider
America complicit in the attacks against them. It did mention that Hamas and
Bin Laden denied involvement and even featuring a condemnation of the
violence by Arafat. That was reported by the always excellent Martin
Fletcher, a Brit who is as informed about what is happening on the ground
there as most of the anchors and reporters here seem not to be. I saw one
other soundbite from a Middle Eastern politician, one call to arms from
Ariel Sharon and one message of resolve from Tony Blair. That was it for
foreign response. CNN carried eerie videophone footage of an attack on an
arms depot in Kabul, Afghanistan but it turned out not to be connected. Some
on-air reporter explained that it may have been part of that country's
ongoing civil war. Another replied, "Oh, are they having one?"

As the coverage wore on, George Stephanopoulos, ex-President Clinton's
former boy wonder, now an ABC commentator, popped up with Peter
Jennings to explain, on the basis of his experience on the inside, that in
situations like this, governments need a scapegoat and someone to demonize
and predicted they'd find one, fast! Jennings, to his credit, reminded viewers
that in the past our counterattacks against terrorist incidents were hardly
triumphant. He and the other national anchors were far more restrained and
cautious than the local stations. I was impressed by the flashes of
responsibility that seeped through the appeals to national resolve.

Also missing was much discussion of the economic consequences, although on
ABC there was the suggestion that this event might send the world economy
into a recession, as if we don't already have one. (Oil prices went up today
and the exchanges were closed.) Later, on the same network, Diane Sawyer
brought this aspect home by holding up financial documents that littered the
streets. You got a sense of how serious this is by a constant replay of a
phone number for employees of Morgan Stanley, the investment bank that was
the largest tenant in the World Trade Center. If they lost top managers and
key employees, as is likely, this will have an economic impact.

It was only back on PBS, in one of Jim Lehrer's interminable beltway blather
sessions, that one got an inkling of what the Bush administration may
actually be planning to do, once the final fatality count sinks in and the
sadness of the funerals and mourning begins. Then, as everyone expects,
Americans will go from shock to outrage. One of Lehrer's mostly conservative
experts, Bill Kristol, editor of Rupert Murdoch's Weekly Standard, passed on
a high-level leak. Namely, that the U.S. will link Bin Laden to Sadam
Hussein.

Recall that Dubya said he would "punish" states harboring terrorists. No one
really spent much time discussing what that meant. Now Rupert's emissary was
predicting that the game plan might be to ask for a declaration of war
against Iraq to "finish the job." (The next morning, the demagogic face of
Murdochworld summed up its feelings with this headline on a New York Post
column by Steve Dunleavy calling for bombing Kabul and legalizing
assassinations: "SIMPLY KILL THESE BASTARDS!") There was no discussion of
any evidence implicating Iraq, or explanation of the economics of the oil
situation there, which U.S. companies currently tap in abundance. You can
bet that as this terrible tragedy is formally cranked up into an ongoing
national crisis, there will be even more calls for war. Failing economies
often need rely on a good one to get back on track.

So, is another Gulf War in the offing? Will Son of Bush "finish" his
father's failed Desert Storm? That is a real possibility, suggesting also
that more media manipulation is on the way. The coverage on Tuesday night
was tilting in the direction of whipping up the outrage with no alternatives
to war even discussed.

This possible Let's Get Iraq scenario wasn't discussed in any depth, perhaps
because there is no footage to show yet. But you heard it here first: the
road to revenge may just take us back to Baghdad, guilty or not. Will
international terrorism be wiped out then? Will we then get the faceless
"them"? It was a bit frightening to hear many of the on-air wise man speak
of the next steps as a long difficult struggle that will take national
resolve and may lead to restrictions on the freedoms we have long prized.
This line of thinking could well lead to an antiterrorist campaign targeting
domestic protesters as well. Historians will recall that the mysterious fire
in Germany's Reichstag set the stage for the rationalizations used in the
Nazi terror.

Will God then bless America only when the cruise missiles start flying? I
thought only the bad guys spoke in terms of holy war.

Stay tuned.

P.S.: I must admit that I share much of the popular emotional outrage at the
carnage. If we could have afforded it, we might have had an office there. In
fact, I used to work out of CNN's bureau when it was based at the World
Trade Center and have been in and out of those towers over the years. It is
terrifying and traumatizing to realize that it is gone, like one giant
bloody amputation from the body of the city. This was not just an attack on
symbols but real people, not just at world capitalism but at urban culture.
I am, I realize, in a kind of shock, working on automatic pilot. It is at
least something to do.
____________________________________________________________________________

No, Mr. Bush, Not Everyone Wants Bloodshed

Rahul Mahajan, AlterNet
September 13, 2001

As the calls for war in the mainstream media and the halls of power grow
louder, with Senator John McCain speaking for many when he said, "God may
have mercy on them, but we won't," a different kind of response has been
building as well.

The peace community -- from established groups like Peace Action and the
Fellowship of Reconciliation to grassroots activists across the country --
has united in a strong, consistent and deeply heartfelt response. Reading
the statements being put out, one sees clearly that the entire community
joins wholeheartedly with the nation in condemning the brutal attack of two
days ago, and in the fear, grief and shattering sense of loss it has
occasioned.

There is also widespread agreement that there should be no rush to judgment
and no massive "retaliation" that would target the innocent civilians of any
country. Noting that international law does not recognize any right of
retaliation or vengeance (Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which governs the use
of force, requires that any action be taken only with the permission, and
under the auspices of, the Security Council, the only exception being
self-defense against imminent attack which does not include vengeance for
past attacks), Peace Action and others are calling clearly for any remaining
perpetrators to be brought to justice through legal channels, with
international cooperation.

Very similar sentiments were expressed in a community discussion last night,
organized by Austin's progressive activist community. Two hundred and fifty
people came together, to express their emotions and their experiences, to
share ideas and information, and to plan future actions.

From the beginning, it was clear that people really needed to talk. There
was no good way to cope with the flurry of hands that was raised at every
pause.

One young man tearfully expressed his fear that, with all the talk of
America going to war, the draft would be reinstated and that he would have
to kill or die in an effort he opposed. Several were afraid of the loss of
our civil liberties. Others shared their fear for friends, relatives and
friends of friends who worked near the World Trade Centers, and who had not
been heard from. Everyone felt grief and anger that so many innocent people
were killed.

Many, however, expressed strong emotions of a different kind. Deep disquiet
with their friends and acquaintances caught up in a vortex of fury, often
racist in tone. Anger at the mainstream media, almost universally perceived
to be even worse than government officials in their constant calls for blood
-- somebody's, anybody's. Guilt, pain and sorrow on contemplating the
seemingly inevitable killing of innocent civilians being planned by our
government.

And, far and away the most common feeling, isolation. Many expressed their
heartfelt gratitude that the discussion had been organized, because they had
been feeling, "Nobody else thinks the way I do."

After talking through their feelings, many who had been sunk in despair felt
newly energized to do what they could to head off war, and the discussion
ended in a massive organizing meeting.

The lesson is clear. There are many, many people in this country who see
clearly that one killing of innocents will not be requited by another, that
a radically different path is needed to assure our security and that of
people in other parts of the world.

In the days to come, if those people rely only on the television and the big
daily newspapers, they will feel isolated and beleaguered, deprived of their
voices and their democratic right to help shape the public dialogue.

That will be a tremendous tragedy. Even though this is an incredibly
difficult time to speak up, and voices against war will inevitably be
branded as apologists for terror, this is also a very important time to
speak up. Americans have seen up close the tangible effects of our foreign
policy, and they are interested as they have not been since the nuclear
freeze movement, maybe even since the Vietnam war.

Let us call, then, for communities across the country to have similar
dialogues, to work through feelings of pain, fear and grief and begin to
fashion a coherent response to warmongering before the war is upon us. We
who favor peace must create our own national dialogue before we can hope to
influence the larger one.

Austin could have such a large meeting on such short notice because of a
multi-year sustained effort (www.nowarcollective.com), centering around
antiwar work, that has built up a very large (4,000) email announcement and
rapid response list. Localities without that kind of infrastructure may take
a little longer, but the need for timely action is great.

Rahul Mahajan is an antiwar activist, and serves on the Coordinating
Committee of the National Network to End the War Against Iraq and the Board
of Directors of Peace Action. He can be reached at rahul@tao.ca.
_____________________________________________________________________
The Enemy With a Thousand Faces

Gary Kamiya, Salon
September 13, 2001

While Bush administration officials refuse to state with certainty who was
responsible for this week's terrorist offensive against the U.S., Osama bin
Laden, the millionaire Saudi exile who is based in Afghanistan, is clearly
their top suspect. His terrorist organization, Al Qaeda, is one of the only
ones in the world, if not the only one, with the resources, experience and
sophistication to carry out such an attack, experts say.

There is some evidence, though sketchy, linking bin Laden to the attack.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said U.S. officials learned of an intercepted
telephone conversation between two bin Laden associates "who acknowledged a
couple of targets were hit." Bin Laden's followers also warned an
Arab-language newspaper by telephone three weeks ago that a major attack on
the West was coming soon, according to a London-based Arab journalist.

The New York Times reported that bin Laden made a two-hour videotape that
was delivered to a Kuwaiti newspaper in June. On that videotape, which was
widely disseminated in the Arab world, bin Laden exulted in his power to
strike at the United States, saying, "With small capabilities, and with our
faith, we can defeat the greatest military power of modern times. America is
much weaker than it appears." He also appeared to call for a suicide attack
in the United States, saying to supporters, "You will not die needlessly.
Your lives are in the hands of God."

The complexity and coordination of the attacks, with four planes hijacked
within a short time of each other, pointed to the Saudi fugitive, officials
and experts said. "This apparently was well-planned over a number of years
-- planned by real pros and experts," Hatch said Tuesday. "[Our] belief is,
at least initially, that this looks like Osama bin Laden's signature."

Bin Laden, who has been on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List since 1993, is
thought to have masterminded the attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa in
1998, last year's attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, and the first terrorist
attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. He is also known to have
bankrolled terrorist and radical fundamentalist groups throughout the world.

For most of his career, bin Laden's primary goal has been the ouster of
American troops from the Arabian Peninsula. Lately, however, his statements
have given more emphasis to supporting the Palestinian struggle against
Israel. He has considerable support among sectors of the Arabic world,
particularly its most disaffected and impoverished elements -- as witnessed
by the cheers that greeted the announcement of the attacks in Palestinian
refugee camps.

Al-Qaeda is an umbrella organization that includes about 20 Islamist groups,
including Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and the Armed Islamic Group, with
operatives in many countries. The exact number of his followers is unknown:
Estimates range from a few hundred to 3,000. How many of these are commandos
prepared to die in suicide missions is unknown.

Bin Laden has always denied responsibility for the attacks he has been
accused of perpetrating. Associates close to him, and his Taliban hosts in
Afghanistan, denied that he was involved in the latest attack. But his
denials carry little weight with terrorism experts like Michele Zanini, who
see him as representative of a new breed of terrorists who see no reason to
avow their acts because they have no single political goal.

According to an anonymous source close to bin Laden who gave extensive
information to the PBS program "Frontline" for a documentary on him, bin
Laden was born in 1957, the seventh son of 50 children born to a Yemeni
father who made millions running construction projects in Saudi Arabia. His
father was a fairly devout Muslim, and young Osama was also religious.

It was not until after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, however,
that he became a zealot. Bin Laden traveled to Afghanistan numerous times,
providing resources to the mujahadeen resistance and ultimately becoming a
military leader himself. While in Afghanistan, he and his organization, Al
Qaed, may have received training and financial assistance from the CIA,
which, as detailed in Mary Anne Weaver's article "Blowback" in the May
1996 Atlantic, provided more than $3 billion to seven Afghans, helping create
a hard-line Islamic Frankenstein from which the U.S. would later recoil. The
"Frontline" source denies that bin Laden received any aid or training from
the CIA. But in any case, the so-called "Afghan Arabs," battle-hardened,
often virulently anti-Western and fundamentalist mujahadeen, were to become
a far bigger problem for the West than the futile imperialist graspings of
the declining Soviet empire. Some "Afghan Arabs" went on to fight in
Chechnya and Bosnia; others remained in Afghanistan; others dispersed
throughout the world.

The decisive and traumatic event in bin Laden's relationship to the West was
the 1990 stationing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia before the 1991 Gulf War.
For bin Laden, the fact that the godless United States, the best friend of
Israel, was profaning the soil of the country housing two of the three most
sacred Islamic sites was intolerable. Bin Laden quickly became too radical
for his native country and was expelled from Saudi Arabia because of his
anti-government activities; he is suspected of involvement in the deadly
1995 and 1996 car bombings in Riyadh and Dharan. (Bin Laden denied
involvement in the bombings, but told CNN, "I have great respect for the
people who did this action. What they did is a great job and a big honor I
missed participating in."

After his expulsion from Saudi Arabia, bin Laden moved to Sudan, where he
lived for five years. When U.S. pressure forced Sudan to expel him, he
returned to Afghanistan, where he is currently based.

In August 1996, bin Laden issued a fatwah, or religious decree, authorizing
his followers to kill U.S. military personnel. In a 1997 CNN interview with
Peter Arnett -- which was played before the jury trying four men accused of
bombing the U.S. embassies in Africa -- bin Laden explained that "We
declared jihad against the U.S. government, because the U.S. government is
unjust, criminal, and tyrannical."

Bin Laden said he issued the fatwah because of American support for Israel,
which occupies territory claimed by the Palestinians, and in reaction to the
presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia. "It is not permissible for any
non-Muslim to stay in our country," he said.

Railing against the United States, bin Laden said it "wants to occupy our
countries, steal our resources, impose on us agents to rule us based not on
what God has revealed." He added, "If American presence continues, then it
is natural for reactions to continue against this."

Rejecting the American characterization of him as a terrorist, bin Laden
said, "With a simple look at the U.S. behaviors, we find that it judges the
behavior of the poor Palestinian children whose country was occupied: if
they throw stones against the Israeli occupation, it says they are
terrorists whereas when the Israeli pilots bombed the United Nations
building in Qana, Lebanon while it was full of children and women, the U.S.
stopped any plan to condemn Israel. Wherever we look, we find the U.S. as
the leader of terrorism and crime in the world."

In the interview, bin Laden denied he was linked to Ramzi Yousef, the chief
conspirator behind the 1993 World Trade Center attack. (In an article that
appeared in the winter 1995-96 issue of the National Interest, terrorism
expert Laurie Mylroie wrote that a "very persuasive case can be made that
Ramzi Yousef is an Iraqi intelligence agent, and that his bombing
conspiracies were meant as Saddam Hussein's revenge for the Gulf War.")

But bin Laden did make clear in that interview that American civilians would
be future targets. "We do not differentiate between those dressed in
military uniforms and civilians; they are all targets in this fatwah," bin
Laden said.

If this dedicated enemy of America does indeed prove to be guilty of
planning the monstrous attacks of this week, how can the U.S. bring him to
justice? Here the problems become far more complex and difficult than the
bellicose table-pounding of some pundits would suggest.

Bin Laden has apparently used the Internet as a tool for communicating with
his widespread terrorist organization. In February, USA Today reported that
bin Laden uses digital encryption tools to hide messages in typical Web
pornography and sports chat discussions. These messages may very well
include plans for upcoming terrorist attacks.

American intelligence specializes in high-tech surveillance, so if bin
Laden's organization is using computers to communicate, it could be its
Achilles' heel. But failing a major electronic intelligence breakthrough --
which would be highly unlikely to give his actual location in any case --
locating and wiping out bin Laden's operation will be extraordinarily
difficult. First is the issue of dispersal. Bin Laden operates more as a
venture capitalist of terror than a military leader, disbursing funds to a
loose network of terrorists and operatives scattered around the world.
Command structures, such as they are, are set up in classic terrorist "cell"
fashion, in which each operative knows only a few others.

Killing or capturing bin Laden himself could be possible, although his
constant movements within Afghanistan may make it necessary to send in
ground troops. And his elimination could severely hurt his organization --
not least by stemming a key source of funds. But the fact remains that
radical anti-American Islamist terrorist operations would probably carry on
without him. This makes direct military action, whether "surgical," low-risk
operations like cruise missile strikes or full-bore assaults using ground
troops, problematic -- how do you hit a "target" that consists of a few men
lurking in the alleyways and bazaars of Peshawar or Kabul -- or the streets
of Boston or Santa Monica?

And not just there. Bin Laden's operatives are found throughout the world.
An article in Jane's Intelligence Review reported that Al-Qaeda "is a
conglomerate of groups spread throughout the world operating as a network.
It has a global reach, with a presence in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Turkey,
Jordan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Syria, Xinjiang in China, Pakistan,
Bangladesh, Malaysia, Myanmar, Indonesia, Mindanao in the Philippines,
Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, Tunisia, Bosnia,
Kosovo, Chechnya, Dagestan, Kashmir, Sudan, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania,
Azerbaijan, Eritrea, Uganda, Ethiopia, and in the West Bank and Gaza."

As for infiltration, the CIA simply lacks the resources, training and
willingness to place agents within the shadowy groups in which terror
attacks are planned. In "The Counterterrorist Myth," an article by former
CIA operative Reuel Marc Gerecht that appeared in the July/August Atlantic,
Gerecht argues that American intelligence agencies have almost no
Arabic-speaking agents of Arab extraction, and that few operatives would be
willing to undertake such dangerous work. He quotes a former senior Near
East Division operative as saying, "The CIA probably doesn't have a single
truly qualified Arabic-speaking officer of Middle Eastern background who can
play a believable Muslim fundamentalist who would volunteer to spend years
of his life with shitty food and no women in the mountains of Afghanistan.
For Christ's sake, most case officers live in the suburbs of Virginia. We
don't do that kind of thing." A younger case officer boils the problem down
even further: "Operations that include diarrhea as a way of life don't
happen."

Earlier this year, there were reports, which have proven false, that
Afghanistan's Taliban rulers might be willing to turn over bin Laden in
exchange for a lifting of the international sanctions against Afghanistan.
In fact, bin Laden and his followers may be enjoying greater freedom of
action in Afghanistan: A recent video shows them firing weapons and
assaulting buildings in military exercises, activities supposedly banned by
his hosts.

Despite the fact that they shelter bin Laden, just four months ago the
Taliban received $43 million from the United States to reward it for
condemning opium growing as anti-Islamic.

Finally, there are major geopolitical and strategic risks involved in
military operations against bin Laden. As Jonathan Broder pointed out
in a 1998 Salon article, Clinton's cruise missile strikes against bin Laden's
camps in Afghanistan missed the terrorist leader, but succeeded in
radicalizing many Muslims who had previously been moderates -- and turned
bin Laden himself into a hero. Enraged voices in the United States are
calling for immediate military action against ill-defined "enemies," but it
will be scant satisfaction to destroy Kabul if 500 new suicide bombers arise
from its ashes.

In an article in Wednesday's New York Times, Clyde Haberman asked
rhetorically, from the Israeli perspective, "Do you get it now?" -- using
the question to tacitly defend the much-criticized Israeli practice of
assassinating or "eliminating" Palestinian leaders. Israel has indeed
experienced an endless flood of suicide bombers, young men willing to kill
themselves to cut down Israelis, and America may indeed "get it now" -- but
if our ill-considered actions lead more sectors of the Arab world to hate
America as much as they hate Israel, we may get it even more in the future.

Without diplomacy and significant movement on the intractable
Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- the single issue that most drives the Arab
world's hatred of the U.S. -- military actions that kill innocent people in
Islamic countries could end up reaping the whirlwind.

And yet, after the unspeakable evil America has experienced, not to move
against bin Laden, if he is indeed guilty, would be as unthinkable as not to
move against Hitler.

The decisions that face American strategists and military planners in the
months ahead are daunting.

Gary Kamiya is executive editor of Salon.
_____________________________________________________
After 9-11, We All Have New Battles to Fight

Geov Parrish, AlterNet
September 12, 2001

Wednesday, as we awakened and confirmed that no, it wasn't all just a bad
dream -- that the World Trade Center and the west side of the Pentagon are
as destroyed as they were on Tuesday -- one thing became utterly clear. For
those of us who want a better, more just world, the terrain on which our
effort must be fought has shifted dramatically with one bold act. We have an
enormous amount of work to do, and a lot of work that needs to be done right
now, today, immediately, before the United States government, with or
without its allies, undertakes retaliatory measures that make a bad
situation much, much worse.

Tuesday night, I attended two events. First was a peace rally attended by a
couple of hundred people. To "warm up" the crowd, a guitar-playing duo sung
a half-hour of cringe-inducing traditional peace songs: "Give Peace a
Chance," "Kumbaya," "We Shall Overcome." The intentions were good, but the
effect was jarring, and probably offensive to many people who heard it on
TV. In the first 24 hours after the attack, Americans veered dangerously
between shock, grief, and rage. It was a time to urge calm, but not a time
to imply, to those who felt a desire to see our military flatten something,
that their impulses were bad. Misguided, yes, but at some level, an emotion
almost everyone felt. It was a time when doves and hawks alike needed to
come together and recognize our common sorrow and fear and anger.

Later, I went to an enormous interfaith service. In terms of trying to
"convince" Americans that more bloodshed won't help, this was actually a far
more effective event -- calming, community-building, invoking the things all
of us felt, including frailty. Even for people who don't recognize some form
of a Higher Power, there are simply days when you have to ackknowledge that
some things are completely beyond our control, personally or as a society.
Tuesday was one of those days.

It's a lesson the United States desperately needs to learn every day. Unlike
every other country in the world (with the possible exception of China),
residents of the U.S. are not only oblivious to the rest of the world, but
they can afford to be. There's no threat of invasion -- no history of it in
nearly 200 years -- and not since OPEC in the early '70s has anyone reminded
us that the rest of the world can intentionally hurt the U.S. economy badly.
We have felt far too self-sufficient, and too free to ignore the atrocities
done in our name elsewhere.

The broadest goal today of progressives is one that transcends any ideology:
we, all of us, as individuals, must become aware and participating citizens
of the world, not just the U.S. We have to pay attention beyond our flimsy
borders, and we must demand that the U.S. treat others as we would have them
treat us. Because no matter who was behind the attacks, it's certain that
they felt they were treating us as we have treated others.

And in countless cases, that is correct. The same emotions of shock, terror,
grief, rage, and powerlessness that many of us felt yesterday have been felt
before by the ordinary people in Belgrade, Dili, Mogadishu, Baghdad, Panama
City, Beirut, and many other places where the craters take the form of
American footprints. They know the world is a small place. So must we all.

Beyond that, however, we have some very immediate and urgent concerns:
peace, bigotry, media, civil liberties, and the attacks' effect upon global
and domestic issues. In order:

1) Retaliation is unavoidable. The steadily escalating rhetoric of George
Bush and his administration over the last few days has, most recently,
advanced to calling the attacks an "act of war" (rather than terrorism);
pledging to strike back not just at the perpetrators, but the countries
where they live; and all but stating that they would not be bound by the
norms of international law or justice in doing so (in Colin Powell's words,
they will strike back, "legally or not.") We've must do whatever we can to
beseech our government and its allies not to respond to the taking of
innocent lives by taking still more innocent lives.

The U.S. has the military technology to destroy precision targets with
military (or terrorist) value. All too often in the recent past, as with
revelations that the U.S. intentionally destroyed Iraq's water supply ten
years ago, we've chosen to punish civilians instead. Doing so again is not
only unjust -- a war crime, actually, although at this point it's common
practice -- but will virtually guarantee a cycle of further retribution. If
Israel, a small country with only a few hundred miles of borders and
shoreline to defend, is helpless to stop terrorism, the U.S. certainly will
be. Our only rational course is to eliminate, to the extent possible, the
actions that spur such unfathomable hatred toward us. The other road is the
road the Israeli government has chosen, and we see the results; in America,
it would only be worse.

2) Palestinians, Arab-Americans, and Muslims in general are in great danger
today in our country. In every community across the land, those of us not
facing that danger should decry race- or religion-based bigotry and hatred,
extend our solidarity, and, if necessary, our protection and support. Islam
is no more responsible for yesterday's horror than Christianity was
responsible for Hitler. And long-term, we should expect and try to head off
an inevitable backlash against all immigrants.

3) In times of national emergencies in the past, especially wars, our
national media has dropped all pretense of objectivity and has become a
willing tool for government propaganda and even disinformation. We must
demand that our networks and wire services and TV and radio stations and
newspapers report the facts fairly and fully, not protect our government's
actions from the public eye, and not disseminate hatred or play to a
manipulative sense of patriotism. Our media have a tremendous capacity to do
harm and make a bad situation worse; we need to flood them with requests to
act responsibly.

4) Our civil liberties and constitutionally guaranteed freedoms -- like the
freedoms of speech and assembly -- are clearly in danger. In a Washington
Post/ABC News poll this morning, two-thirds of Americans polled said they'd
be willing to give up civil liberties to combat terrorism. Such liberties,
when given up in a time of crisis, are never given back -- and granting
still more power to our government and this country's political and economic
elites, in the name of "fighting terrorism," guarantees that that power will
be abused to other ends.

One of those ends could easily be curtailment of the right to criticize our
government. I'm hoping and praying that the folks planning mass civil
disobedience and direct action in Washington D.C. during IMF/World Bank
meetings in two weeks are rethinking their plans. (For that matter, I'm
hoping the IMF and World Bank themselves will cancel.) A mass street protest
in D.C. right now simply won't be allowed; I have ugly visions of Army units
simply shooting any group of people that shows up with signs.

While globalization and any number of other issues are pressing and urgent,
the most pressing issue right now is solidifying our continue rights to
petition our government for a redress of our grievances (and to be able to
make our cases to the public, too). Between the trends of the last two
years, Genoa, and yesterday, that seems very much at risk right now. I've
heard several quite serious comments (on talk radio, for example) suggesting
that anti-WTO anarchists could be responsible for the attack. What that
means is that our media and politicians can so thoroughly misrepresent the
global justice movement that a few angry young protesters breaking windows
can be conflated with the premeditated murder of thousands. That should give
any would-be protester a lot of pause.

5) No global issue -- whether it's debt relief, structural adjustment
programs, interntaional credit and aid, global warming or other
environmental issues, trade and military treaties, arms sales, refugees,
global health, anything -- can be addressed now without factoring in how it
may effect what will become, unless we act now to defuse it, an undeclared
global guerrilla war. Just as with military retaliation, the U.S. and its
citizens simply can't risk having our government go it alone with the
attitude that it can impose its will anywhere it likes.

It can, but the risk is that a lot of us will die as a result. Given the
Bush crew's hostility to international agreements or even dialogue, we have,
in many ways, the worst possible set of people running executive branch for
the next three years.

6) Domestically, Bush's pledge to spend "whatever it takes" to respond
appropriately and to tighten security at home means that his tax cut for the
rich, the economy's downturn, and his increased military spending will
combine with this blank check to decimate the federal budget. Social
programs are at very great risk. So are Social Security and Medicare.

The one ray of good news is that the blasphemously expensive National
Missile Defense program -- which is essentially a Trojan Horse for exactly
the sort of Pentagon global domination scheme that inspires terrorism in the
first place -- is suddenly very vulnerable. The real threats to this
country's domestic security clearly don't lie in some mythical
intercontinental missile from some country that doesn't have the money or
technology to fix its typewriters. The threats come in small packages and
anonymous acts. It should now be obvious to all that NMD will make our
country less secure, by draining our budget of money that, in part, could
otherwise be used to promote programs that are actually relevant to the
dangers out there.

But while NMD may be at risk, there are also blank checks waiting for other
Pentagon schemes and certainly for the CIA and black budget agencies. After
all of that, there may not be any money left over for the basic services we
demand from government -- a state of affairs that was entirely preventable.
(Hint: tax the rich fairly.)

When people need something from their government and it's not there --
because it's been privatized or eliminated or spent already -- let's make
sure they remember the tax cut, and George W. Bush. And let's hope we have
the freedom tomorrow to make that case in public.