From Anti-war.com

IMPERIAL PARALYSIS: The fragility of American power

"We're going to go about our daily lives and carry on: this will show that terrorism is not going to stop American democracy." These were the brave words of New York City major Rudolph Giuliani at a news conference held hours after the World Trade Center attack. The next question came from a reporter who asked, to audible groans, whether or not the New York City primary would be canceled. Governor George Pataki, standing next to the mayor, confirmed that the election had indeed been called off. And that's just the beginning of what's been called off from New York to California, and points in between. All flights have been canceled everywhere in the country, and over London as well. The stock exchange did not open and will not open until further notice. NATO headquarters in Brussels was evacuated. The US military went on its highest alert. A flotilla of US warships sailed into New York City harbor – and that says it all.

THE GLASS GOLIATH

With one well-coordinated blow, the entire free world has been paralyzed. It is as if a rock-wielding David has hit a glass Goliath straight between the eyes, shattering the imperial colossus and bringing down the whole top-heavy apparatus with an earthshaking roar. The entire US government was shut down. President George W. Bush, in Florida at the time, was flown at to the safety of Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. Top government officials and congressional leaders were secreted to an undisclosed location: US fighter jets patrolled the skies above the nation's capital.

DESECRATION OF THE TEMPLE

Most devastating of all was the attack on the Pentagon, which took a devastating hit – 800 dead – and not only in terms of physical damage. If anything was considered invulnerable, then surely this building, the sanctum sanctorum and architectural symbol of American military power, was it. What could be safer terrain than the capital of a world empire, a city where the fate of nations is routinely decided, where the supplicants of the world gather to humbly present their petitions to the Senate and lobby the White House?

BLOWBACK

The sheer fragility of the American Imperium is what is painfully apparent here. Painful most especially to the US government, whose complete inability to defend the country while claiming the mantle of the world's only superpower is exposed for all to see. It is the weakness of an entity that has grown too big, too overextended, too blinkered by pride (some would call it hubris) to see the pitfalls of the policies it has pursued, not only in the Middle East but around the world, from the Balkans to the Far East. Our foreign policy of global military and political intervention in the internal affairs of other nations, from Bosnia to Belarus, has produced what policy analyst Chalmers Johnson has referred to as "blowback." In his book of that title, as if in anticipation of the perplexed "Why?" of the average Americans'reaction to this carnage, Johnson wrote:

"Only when we come to see our country as both profiting from and trapped within the structures of an empire of its own making will it be possible for us to explain a great many elements of the world that otherwise perplex us."

THE INVISIBLE ENEMY

The response of a weak adversary is always to exaggerate its own power, to make a great show of faux strength that mostly amounts to a lot of noise, and that is precisely what the US is now doing. We have pledged to go after the perpetrators or those who gave them safe harbor, and the usual parade of laptop bombardiers has declared "war" on "the enemy." But who or what is the enemy? And, most of all, where are they?

KAGAN'S KRISTOL BALL

But the lack of any tangible, stationary enemy – say, a particular country or even a group of individuals – shouldn't stop us from making a formal declaration of war: "Let's not be daunted by the mysterious and partially hidden identity of our attackers," says Robert Kagan in the Washington Post. "It will soon become obvious that there are only a few terrorist organizations capable of carrying out such a massive and coordinated strike." If there are only "a few," then why not get more specific? Osama bin Laden, the all-purpose Arab arch-villain, is routinely blamed for any and all terrorist acts outside of Northern Ireland and the jungles of South America. However, the ambitious Kagan – co-author, along with Bill Kristol, of an infamous article proposing that the goal of US foreign policy must be "global hegemony" – is after more than that:

"It will become apparent that those organizations could not have operated without the assistance of some governments, governments with a long record of hostility to the United States and an equally long record of support for terrorism. We should now immediately begin building up our conventional military forces to prepare for what will inevitably and rapidly escalate into confrontation and quite possibly war with one or more of those powers. Congress, in fact, should immediately declare war. It does not have to name a country. It can declare war against those who have carried out today's attack and against any nations that may have lent their support."

A DECLARATION OF FATUOSITY

We should declare "war" on a nameless enemy, about whose whereabouts we haven't a clue – as if some empty resolution penned by a parcel of politicians could possibly erase or rectify the horror of the past 48 hours. Surely, a formal declaration of war against the Unknown Enemy would only underscore our own impotence. Such a fatuous proclamation would turn tragedy into farce – a talent politicians of all stripes have in abundance.

GET THIS STRAIGHT

Let's see if I get this straight: Tim McVeigh was a "lone nut" who blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building all by himself, but the World Trade Center terrorist plot just had to be aided and abetted by a foreign power. If Mr. Kagan has information that "some governments" cooperated with or even knew about the attack in advance, then why doesn't he name them? The reason is because, to Kagan and his ilk, it doesn't matter who did it – the point it to strike out at anyone or anything within range.

HOROWITLESS

Mindless rage expressed in terms of a self-conscious demagoguery is what we get from David Horowitz, the wild man of the Neocon Right. He asks how it was possible for 4 commercial airliners to be hijacked from major airports within a set time frame, wonders how the Pentagon – the Pentagon – could've been pulverized so thoroughly, and avers:

"We know the answer. America is soft. America is in denial. America is embarrassed at the idea that it has enemies and must protect itself."

YOU SOFTIE!

Huh? Is our alleged "softness" to blame for this horrific tragedy – the softness that prevents us from completely militarizing America, and converting a free society into a prison? America – in denial? But how could that be, when so many millions and so much rhetoric has been expended in the war on terrorism? No expense was spared, either in terms of tax dollars or basic civil liberties – and still it happened.

SHAMELESS

Even more absurd is the idea that our government is somehow "embarrassed" by all the enemies it has made, worldwide: you certainly couldn't tell that from our actions. Indeed, the whole point of being a superpower is that you don't have to be embarrassed about anything: you brazenly disregard moral principle, and go right ahead and bomb a Sudanese aspirin factory to get a presidential sex scandal off the front pages. The arbitrary and often deadly exercise of overwhelming military force is what being a superpower is all about.

BLAMING AMERICANS FIRST

Oh, but Horowitz would ascribe this to Clinton's personal evil, and dismiss any more systematic critical analysis of our role in the world as simple "anti-Americanism." But the real anti-Americans are those who would sacrifice thousands more of their fellow citizens in defense of a policy and a mindset that is pure hubris. Talk about blaming America first: Horowitz spends most of his piece attacking those "soft" Americans who have "been so eager to cash in on 'peace dividends' that it has stripped itself of even prudent defenses." Oh, how dare those selfish soft Americans try to get some of their hard-earned tax dollars back from a thieving federal government. Horowitz's big solution is – yawn – a missile defense "to protect against even worse terrorist acts in the future." Yeah, but what about the sort of attacks we have just experienced – a bunch of knife-wielding terrorists who commandeer a plane and ram it into the biggest, most visible symbols of American military and financial preeminence? What he doesn't want to admit is that there is no defense against such acts – short of abolishing the Constitution and instituting martial law, that is.

YOU'RE SO VAIN

"America is in denial that much of the world hates us," rants Horowitz, "and will continue to hate us. Because we are prosperous, and democratic and free." But the US government is perfectly well aware that large sections of the globe have no love for the US government, and yet this has not had the slightest effect on US foreign policy. The whole Arab world is united in its opposition to our mindlessly pro-Israel stance – including the Saudi and Kuwaiti regimes that we prop up with our troops and treasure – but that has not altered our position one iota, no matter who occupies the White House. It is so typical of the paranoid and reflexively defensive Horowitz to inveigh against all those terrible foreigners who supposedly hate us because we're so wonderful. But I wouldn't count on either prosperity or freedom if the war Horowitz and Kagan would so dearly love to see declared and fought should ever come to pass. For the only way we can "win" such a battle is to lose the very values that we want to defend in the first place.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2001

Answers

Oops, the author is Justin Raimondo

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2001

Paralysis? What an absurd notion! This country is not and was not paralyzed. The President was on the job immediately via the sophisticated command center in Air Force One, other essential personnel at the Pentagon were doing their work via their own alternative means. There was no paralysis. True, there has been a halt in the commercial work done by those untold thousands dead in Dantean nightmare of the World Trade Center rubble but that is not essential to the job at hand.

There will be no olive branches extended by this family, as there were none when my husband flew combat missions in Lebanon after the hevay loss of life suffered by the Marines when their airport barracks was bombed. He could be recalled if things get bad and he will go gladly. My son could be drafted and he also will go gladly. I won't like it but will keep the home fires burning with a good spirit.

The article you posted makes me more resolute, not less.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2001

Philadelphia Enquirer

Thursday, September 13, 2001

Commentary

Give war a chance

Only swift, strong action works in a fight against terrorists.

Archive | Commentary

By David D. Perlmutter

As students gathered around my desk for an impromptu policy debate Tuesday morning, it was clear there was much confusion about the day's terrorist attacks - but little ambivalence.

These liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, men and women, agnostics and devout believers agreed on one point: This is war.

But when I asked against whom, they fell silent.

One student proposed faintly, "Everybody?"

I disagree there. We don't have to fight everybody. We know who our enemies are, and we know their home addresses. Historically, our response to terrorism has followed the path of least persistence. We have judicialized acts of terror; when a civilian target at home or abroad, or an army base, an embassy or a ship is bombed, press spokesmen condemn the outrage, so-called friendly governments are consulted, and the FBI begins a long and tortuous investigation.

Much fanfare accompanies a successful prosecution, as if jail time would dissuade madmen. Occasionally the United States will strike back against some small sideshow target, perhaps in the Sudan or Afghanistan. Such low-level retaliation - a factory here, a tent there - puts no fear of any god in the perpetrators and perpetuators of terror.

This time, however, our strategy must veer from one of lawyers, platitudes and pinpricks. We must look back to a simpler, older model of dealing with what is, by every definition, an act of war, a terrorist-driven Pearl Harbor, against the United States of America and its people.

The key consideration is that the terrorists who do the deeds cannot prosper without the infrastructure, administration and financial support - as well as the tacit or explicit encouragement - of certain nation-states. The names of these rogues are known to us and have been documented. They are Libya, the Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. They may be less formidable in pure military strength than Tojo's Japan and Hitler's Germany, but at one stroke their agents, accomplices, proteges or proxies have killed more American civilians on American soil than died on that soil in all of World War II.

President Bush has a choice now. He can listen to the voices of moderation who will no doubt recommend caution, thorough investigation, consultation with allies and the thousand-odd arguments for inaction and paralysis. The terrorists would dismiss such familiar, tepid responses; they will not be deterred by anything less than war. The nations that support them will not close down the hundreds of headquarters, training camps, and bomb factories and turn over the criminals and masterminds - who may include their own country's leaders - to the United States unless the future existence of their nation, or at least its economic infrastructure, is at stake. Any retaliation that is not massive will not work.

For years the CIA and State Department have known the identities of terrorist leaders and foot soldiers in the rogue cohort. Now is the time for a simple ultimatum: Turn them over or reap the whirlwind. Prepare for the systematic destruction of every power plant, every oil refinery, every pipeline, every military base, every government office in their entire country. While we will not go as far as to "bomb them back to the Stone Age," the usual suspects who support terrorism should know the price: the complete collapse of their economy and government for a generation.

This was the strategy that won World War II. The Allied powers decided that, for the likes of Nazis and fanatical Japanese militarists, there could be no negotiation, only unconditional surrender and a roundup of war criminals. We also accepted that, for the sake of eventual peace, our own soldiers as well as enemy civilians might die. Anything short of such an immediate demand for justice - if unmet to be followed by total war - will result in the tragedies of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon building and the hijacked airliners repeating themselves again and again.

Bush must put aside the checks-and-balances thinking of a CEO or a prudent manager by going before Congress, as did President Franklin Roosevelt, and asking for the almost unlimited power of a declaration of war against terrorists and terror-nurturing nations. The alternative is a humiliated America permanently trapped in fear and cowering in bunkers.

Sometimes you have to give war a chance.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2001

My prediction is that the cycle of violence will not end until substantial parts of the US are a smoking ruin, tens of millions are dead, and our nation has collapsed onto the ash heap of history. We will end up there because that is where we have decided to go.

The fact is that a handful of terrorists have managed to shut down the US government, the US air travel system, and the national financial markets, by the use of fully loaded passenger jets as weapons. And we are supposedly the most powerful nation on earth. We are also the most arrogant, thinking that we can stick pins in rattlesnakes all day long and not get bit. We think we can murder the children of our enemies without their striking back at our own children.

Yes, I think there should be justice for this tragedy, but I think the justice should begin at home. While continuing our attempts to find the direct terrorists, I think we should arrest the indirect terrorists here at home, starting with former President Bush Sr and former president Bill Clinton and Henry Kissinger. And then we should raid the World Bank and IMF and put that crowd on trial for crimes against humanity. (I would include Reagan too, except that he is not mentally competent to stand trial these days.)

When we do this, the world will know we are serious about terrorism.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2001

the US government was not and has not been shut down.

air traffic may be shutdown in the US, but it has also been severely restricted around the world as well. Note Great Britian, for instance.

Adn you know as well as me that Bush is not going to arrest his father.

One must remember that part of freedom, if we actually have any, is to allow others the same, even if it can evolve into a threat against us. Once that threat is acted upon we must, in order to retain our freedoms, neutralize the threat. No more, no less.

In the past we have done less, in the interests of peace and the protection of those who deserve freedom no less than us.

This time, I feel that we will see many die in order to explain to the rest of the world that we mean to live what we believe: freedom or die.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2001

What would you suggest instead, Robert? Negotiation obviously does not work with terrorists. You cannot reason with unreasonable people. These are beyond unreasonable, they are madmen. Isolationism? No way, they can get to us no matter how isolationist we are. You have to understand that bin Laden and his associates intend to render the entire western world a smoking ruin, whether we act or not. Our only chance of defeating them is to hit them soon and hit them hard. Given the offers of assistance pouring in from other countries, some of whom have been, let's say lukewarm in the past, it's safe to conclude that we're not the only ones who have reached that conclusion.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2001

Fidel Castro stands ready to assist us in our time of need, in whatever limited way Cuba can. saw that on the news last night.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2001

Git,

I am not saying that we shouldn't look for the perpetrators, arrest them, put them on trial, etc. I am saying we should avoid a rush to judgment and we shouldn't do things that will provoke any more terrorist attacks on the US. "Things that will provoke" terrorist attacks particularly include killing innocent bystanders, "collateral damage" as they say in the trade.

I am also not kidding when I think that our former presidents and the WOrld Bank/IMF crowd should be rounded up and put on trial. This event is proof of the massive failures of US foreign policy since World War II. If we are going to be a vicious, bloodthirsty, America the Merciless World Empire, then we'd better get used to civilian casualties, because that's the inevitable result. Nobody flies jetliners into buildings in Switzerland, and that's because the Swiss stay home and mind their own business.

Osama bin Laden can hate us all we want, he can do nothing unless he is continually supplied with people who are willing to martyr themselves for his cause. And those kinds of people are produced by the foreign and economic policies of the US via our henchmen at the World Bank and the IMF. If we kill Osama, and don't stop killing the kids of poor people worldwide, then new menaces will rise and they will be even worse. There may be a thousand Osamas out there, and we can kill them all, but the World Bank and IMF will set up 10,000.

Suppose up the street there is a bully. Every day he goes out and kicks somebody around. One day, the neighbors get mad and go burn his house down. He's mad, angry, and doesn't want this to happen again. Butif he rebuilds his house, and continues his old ways, somebody will burn down his house again. So yes, he has to rebuild his house, but yes, he also has to stop being a bully.

America was once the Beautiful, now we are the Mercenary and the Merciless. We brought this evil upon ourselves by our foolish and counterproductive foreign and military and economic policies. This doesn't excuse the evil that was directed against us, my point in noting this is to help us find a lasting solution. By all means, round up and incarcerate the perpetrators, all of them, including (beginning with!) the ones with white skins, impeccable lineages, and positions of power and influence in the US.

Robert Waldrop, OKC

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2001

Sorry, Robert, I'm not convinced. I can only hark back to my experiences in a Nazi-ravaged country and listening to the first-hand experiences of relatives, refugees and military personnel, bolstered by my memories of playing in burned out shells of buildings and bomb craters, of rationing (food, clothes, housing, metals, furniture, gas, etc.) for the first 12 years of my life.

My garden this year is a mess. I haven't been that well and the weeds, which are normally pulled up as they appear, have taken over. Now I shall have to either spend many long days out there or hire someone to come and take care of all the weeds, they're that bad. If I had only found the energy and will to root them out when they were small. . .

Bullies. Yes, I remember a case a few years ago where a small town was held hostage by a bully of a man. He turned up murdered one day and it was suspected the whole town had a hand in his death but nobody would talk and the authorities didn't press the matter as hard as they might have. No more bullying.

-- Anonymous, September 14, 2001