This web page is www.oocities.org/rememberseptember11/comments.html Shades of Rome hang over Washington By Robert Harris News: Nato: massacre an attack on all members IN an essay published last year, the author Tom Wolfe, with characteristic humility, summed up how he thought a future historian would one day write about America as it approached the year 2000: "American superiority in all matters of science, economics, industry, politics, business, medicine, engineering, social life, social justice and, of course, the military was total and indisputable. Even Europeans suffering the pangs of wounded chauvinism looked on with awe at the brilliant example the United States had set for the world as the third millennium began." This is fine, and mostly true, but, even as I read it a year ago, I couldn't help feeling that a Roman could have written almost exactly the same at the start of the first millennium. It would surely have seemed equally inconceivable to a wealthy homo novus - let us call him Lupus - lounging in his villa on the Bay of Naples, that the Roman imperium would falter. After all, Latin was the universal language. The great military threat from the east - the Parthian empire - had faded. Rome controlled the global economy. Roman society, to the extent that it was possible for an ambitious slave to see his children become full citizens, was open to talented outsiders. Where was there a cloud on the horizon? Lupus could have had absolute confidence that history had come to an end. Well, if Wolfe's words seemed slightly hubristic even back in 2000, how much more so do they now, in the aftermath of the nemesis that has been visited on Washington and New York? We have been reminded, in the most horrible and graphic way, that no civilisation is ever safe, that history doesn't end, that claims of "superiority in all matters" are illusory, and that all empires - perhaps even this one - must eventually pass away. Of course, thank God, America is not going to collapse overnight, simply because two buildings, however symbolic, have been attacked. The Americans, like the Romans, are the world's most ingenious, resourceful and - when the chips are down - most disciplined people. They will still, I hope, be the dominant power on earth when I die. Who knows: the American imperium may even see out my children's lifetimes as well. But for the first time since the end of the Cold War, one has the uneasy feeling that the future is not as settled and monolithic as it once appeared, that the American empire may one day go the way of the Roman. It is, for a start, very hard for rational men and women, be they Romans or Americans, to combat the irrational. And the Romans in the first century, for all their superstitions, could be every bit as rational as we like to think we are. Pliny the Elder, for example, admiral of the Roman fleet and the empire's greatest encyclopaedist, dismissed the notion of an afterlife: "Neither body nor mind has any more sensation after death than it had before birth." His theological position was almost humanistic: "God," he said, "is man helping man." He did not realise, even as he was writing (this was 40 years after the death of Christ) that a cult religion from the east was beginning to take hold among the poor, which explicitly stated that there was an afterlife - one so glorious that martyrdom was a fate to be welcomed. Yet it was the spread of Christianity, more than anything else, that began to undermine the foundations of the Roman state. How odd it is that America, of all countries - a nation that believes overwhelmingly in a supreme being, and which, to a sceptical European, often seems terrifyingly literal in its Christianity - should be surprised to find itself rocked by a handful of men who regard martyrdom as a sublime consummation. The Romans' eventual solution - in the end, as we know, it was to prove no solution - was to adopt Christianity themselves. The Americans are hardly likely to do that with Islamic fundamentalism. Instead, they will try to defeat the irrational by rational means - rationality, in the third millennium, finding its natural expression via the Tomahawk cruise missile, the B1 stealth bomber and the Apache attack helicopter. But whether these will prove any more successful than the mass crucifixions and pogroms of ancient Rome is doubtful. In military terms, America, like Rome, certainly enjoys a massive technological superiority over its enemies - but with one crucial difference. Unlike the Romans, America - being a far more civilised society - is reluctant to take casualties. Thus we live in an age in which an American pilot who gets lost over his target - as one did in Bosnia, when Nato finally took action - who ditches his plane and has to be rescued at great risk to his comrades, is regarded not as an embarrassing fool to be quietly cashiered, but as a national hero to be greeted by the president. How is such a military mindset going to cope with an enemy who is not only ready and willing but eager to die? America has famously met and overcome such fanatics before. But the Japanese kamikaze pilots in 1945 were tools of a conventional military machine, controlled by a state: eventually, when ordered to do so, Japanese soldiers surrendered. The nightmare that the West now faces is far more insidious and multi-headed. Every ton of bombs dropped on the fundamentalists' bases, and on the people of the states that harbour them, is likely to create only more martyrs, more fanatics, more terrorist atrocities. In the end, it is the vast global success of the American imperium - its all-pervasiveness - that, like its Roman predecessor, renders it so vulnerable. Can it really hope to be everywhere at once? Can it really prop up Israel, contain Iraq, appease Iran, intimidate Libya, bomb the Taliban back into the Stone Age (admittedly, by the look of them, not too great a distance), police the Balkans, deter the Chinese from invading Taiwan, build a space shield to ward off rogue Russian missiles, meet its obligations to South Korea, keep India and Pakistan from brawling with atomic bombs, cut off the drug traffic from Latin America, create fortress-like borders to prevent a repeat of Tuesday's horrors - can it do all this, and at the same time ward off recession and remain the motor of the world economy? As Enoch Powell used to say: one has only to pose the question to know the answer. If this sounds anti-American, it isn't meant to be. I sincerely hope that America can manage it all. I don't want to see it retreat. I feel like the ancient Briton in the famous painting of the last Roman galley leaving England: I lie on the shore and stretch out my hand to a country that, for all its faults, remains the great protector of civilisation. But the dust-covered streets of Manhattan, and the images of men and women, coated in ash, groping and gasping in the darkness, created an irresistible reminder of that other great symbol of Rome's eventual destruction: Pompeii. President Bush said on Tuesday night that America wouldn't topple, even if its skyscrapers did. In the short term, thankfully, that is true. But the collapse of the World Trade Centre surely marks the end of the Antonine Age of American hegemony and the start of darker and more uncertain times. Pliny (who died in the eruption that wiped out Pompeii) was perhaps a wiser man than Wolfe, when he observed in his Natural History that "this alone is certain, namely that there is no such thing as certainty, and that nothing is more wretched and conceited than man".

In the face of terrorism (return to INDEX)

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TRIBUTE TO THE UNITED STATES       This, from a Canadian newspaper, no less, is worth sharing.             America: The Good Neighbor.            Widespread but only partial news coverage was given       recently to a remarkable editorial broadcast from       Toronto by Gordon Sinclair, a Canadian television       commentator. What follows is the full text of his       trenchant remarks as printed in the Congressional       Record:           "This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the             Americans as the most generous and possibly the       least appreciated people on all the earth.       Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and       Italy were lifted out of the debris of war by the       Americans who poured in billions of dollars and       forgave other billions in debts. None of these       countries is today paying even the interest on its       remaining debts to the United States.       When France was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it       was the Americans who propped it up, and their reward       was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of       Paris. I was there. I saw it.       When earthquakes hit distant cities, it is the United       States that hurries in to help. This spring, 59       American communities were flattened by tornadoes.       Nobody helped.       The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped       billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now       newspapers in those countries are writing about the       decadent, warmongering Americans.             I'd like to see just one of those countries that is       gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar       build its own airplane. Does any other country in the       world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the       Lockheed Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC10? If so, why don't       they fly them? Why do all the International       lines except Russia fly American Planes?       Why does no other land on earth even consider putting       a man or woman on the moon? You talk about Japanese       technocracy, and you get radios. You talk about German       technocracy, and you get automobiles. You talk about       American technocracy, and you find men on the moon -       not once, but several times and safely home again.       You talk about scandals, and the Americans put theirs       right in the store window for everybody to look at.       Even their draft-dodgers are not pursued and hounded.       They are here on our streets, and most of them, unless             they are breaking Canadian laws, are getting American       dollars from ma and pa at home to spend here.      When the railways of France, Germany and India were      breaking down through age, it was the Americans who           rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the      New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an      old caboose. Both are still broke.       I can name you 5000 times when the Americans raced to       the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me            even one time when someone else raced to the Americans            in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even       during the San Francisco earthquake.       Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I'm one       Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them get       kicked around. They will come out of this thing with       their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled       to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating       over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one of those."              Stand proud, America!

September 13, 2001 NEW YORK TIMES World War III By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN JERUSALEM As I restlessly lay awake early yesterday, with CNN on my TV and dawn breaking over the holy places of Jerusalem, my ear somehow latched onto a statement made by the U.S. transportation secretary, Norman Mineta, about the new precautions that would be put in place at U.S. airports in the wake of Tuesday's unspeakable terrorist attacks: There will be no more curbside check-in, he said. I suddenly imagined a group of terrorists somewhere here in the Middle East, sipping coffee, also watching CNN and laughing hysterically: "Hey boss, did you hear that? We just blew up Wall Street and the Pentagon and their response is no more curbside check- in?" I don't mean to criticize Mr. Mineta. He is doing what he can. And I have absolutely no doubt that the Bush team, when it identifies the perpetrators, will make them pay dearly. Yet there was something so absurdly futile and American about the curbside ban that I couldn't help but wonder: Does my country really understand that this is World War III? And if this attack was the Pearl Harbor of World War III, it means there is a long, long war ahead. And this Third World War does not pit us against another superpower. It pits us — the world's only superpower and quintessential symbol of liberal, free-market, Western values — against all the super-empowered angry men and women out there. Many of these super-empowered angry people hail from failing states in the Muslim and third world. They do not share our values, they resent America's influence over their lives, politics and children, not to mention our support for Israel, and they often blame America for the failure of their societies to master modernity. What makes them super-empowered, though, is their genius at using the networked world, the Internet and the very high technology they hate, to attack us. Think about it: They turned our most advanced civilian planes into human-directed, precision-guided cruise missiles — a diabolical melding of their fanaticism and our technology. Jihad Online. And think of what they hit: The World Trade Center — the beacon of American-led capitalism that both tempts and repels them, and the Pentagon, the embodiment of American military superiority. And think about what places in Israel the Palestinian suicide bombers have targeted most. "They never hit synagogues or settlements or Israeli religious zealots," said the Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit. "They hit the Sbarro pizza parlor, the Netanya shopping mall. The Dolphinarium disco. They hit the yuppie Israel, not the yeshiva Israel." So what is required to fight a war against such people in such a world? To start with, we as Americans will never be able to penetrate such small groups, often based on family ties, who live in places such as Afghanistan, Pakistan or Lebanon's wild Bekaa Valley. The only people who can penetrate these shadowy and ever-mutating groups, and deter them, are their own societies. And even they can't do it consistently. So give the C.I.A. a break. Israeli officials will tell you that the only time they have had real quiet and real control over the suicide bombers and radical Palestinian groups, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, is when Yasir Arafat and his Palestinian Authority tracked them, jailed them or deterred them. So then the question becomes, What does it take for us to get the societies that host terrorist groups to truly act against them? First we have to prove that we are serious, and that we understand that many of these terrorists hate our existence, not just our policies. In June I wrote a column about the fact that a few cell-phone threats from Osama bin Laden had prompted President Bush to withdraw the F.B.I. from Yemen, a U.S. Marine contingent from Jordan and the U.S. Fifth Fleet from its home base in the Persian Gulf. This U.S. retreat was noticed all over the region, but it did not merit a headline in any major U.S. paper. That must have encouraged the terrorists. Forget about our civilians, we didn't even want to risk our soldiers to face their threats. The people who planned Tuesday's bombings combined world-class evil with world-class genius to devastating effect. And unless we are ready to put our best minds to work combating them — the World War III Manhattan Project — in an equally daring, unconventional and unremitting fashion, we're in trouble. Because while this may have been the first major battle of World War III, it may be the last one that involves only conventional, non-nuclear weapons. Second, we have been allowing a double game to go on with our Middle East allies for years, and that has to stop. A country like Syria has to decide: Does it want a Hezbollah embassy in Damascus or an American one? If it wants a U.S. embassy, then it cannot play host to a rogue's gallery of terrorist groups. Does that mean the U.S. must ignore Palestinian concerns and Muslim economic grievances? No. Many in this part of the world crave the best of America, and we cannot forget that we are their ray of hope. But apropos of the Palestinians, the U.S. put on the table at Camp David a plan that would have gotten Yasir Arafat much of what he now claims to be fighting for. That U.S. plan may not be sufficient for Palestinians, but to say that the justifiable response to it is suicide terrorism is utterly sick. Third, we need to have a serious and respectful dialogue with the Muslim world and its political leaders about why many of its people are falling behind. The fact is, no region in the world, including sub-Saharan Africa, has fewer freely elected governments than the Arab-Muslim world, which has none. Why? Egypt went through a whole period of self- criticism after the 1967 war, which produced a stronger country. Why is such self-criticism not tolerated today by any Arab leader? Where are the Muslim leaders who will tell their sons to resist the Israelis — but not to kill themselves or innocent non-combatants? No matter how bad, your life is sacred. Surely Islam, a grand religion that never perpetrated the sort of Holocaust against the Jews in its midst that Europe did, is being distorted when it is treated as a guidebook for suicide bombing. How is it that not a single Muslim leader will say that? These are some of the issues we will have to address as we fight World War III. It will be a long war against a brilliant and motivated foe. When I remarked to an Israeli military official what an amazing technological feat it was for the terrorists to hijack the planes and then fly them directly into the most vulnerable spot in each building, he pooh-poohed me. "It's not that difficult to learn how to fly a plane once it's up in the air," he said. "And remember, they never had to learn how to land." No, they didn't. They only had to destroy. We, by contrast, have to fight in a way that is effective without destroying the very open society we are trying to protect. We have to fight hard and land safely. We have to fight the terrorists as if there were no rules, and preserve our open society as if there were no terrorists. It won't be easy. It will require our best strategists, our most creative diplomats and our bravest soldiers. Semper Fi.