Looking Back in Anger - More Terrorism is imminent

New York Press ^ | 9/10/02 | MUGGER - Russ Smith

[areafiftyone]

Like millions of Americans, once or twice a week I go numb and think back to the terrorist attacks of one year ago. It doesn’t take much to set off a wistful reverie. The paved-over playing fields of Stuyvesant High School visible from my terrace. A "for rent" sign on a storefront in Lower Manhattan. The framed photo of my sons playing baseball last August on the roof with the World Trade Center in the background. An e-mail from a friend whose family fled Tribeca last October. A phone call from one of my cousins, a firefighter who spent three months at Ground Zero.

The left-wing press, exercising its stronger-than-ever First Amendment rights, is often so frantic that it’s hard to ignore. The New York Times, which has degenerated into an anti-Bush/appeasement-at-any-cost propaganda sheet, recalling the paper’s strange coverage of World War II, is a topic I’ll examine below. But even fringe publications like The Nation are as irritating as Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, who are stricken with amnesia about their own vast array of foreign policy failures while butting into the Iraq debate, as if anyone wants to hear from these born-again experts on terrorism.

Just one example, from a Sept. 23 Nation editorial: "Abroad, the Bush team’s initial military victory in breaking up Al Qaeda cells and routing their Taliban protectors in Afghanistan has been tarnished by a stream of postwar revelations of needless civilian deaths from US bombs and mistreatment of Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners."

Maybe it hasn’t dawned on the upper-income-bracket editors of The Nation, but these captured fanatics are enemies of the United States and were engaged in war with this country’s military, as well as rejoicing at Osama bin Laden’s well-planned massacre a year ago.

With the exception of those old enough to remember Pearl Harbor, the carnage of Sept. 11, 2001, is the central historic event of our lives. I was eight years old when John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, and for decades after the question, "Where were you when...?" was a common benchmark, something anyone born before, say 1957, could share, regardless of political ideology. The crumbling of the Twin Towers instantly relegated that (still-unsolved, in my mind) shocking murder to a long-ago era.

Writing two days before the first anniversary of Sept. 11, my sadness and incomprehension of that day has largely been replaced by anger. It’s mostly directed at the ratings-obsessed media, the lack of security in New York City and other obvious high-density targets, self-aggrandizing politicians mainly concerned with reelection and a rubber-necking U.S. culture that craves constant commemoration of an horrific occurrence.

The television coverage of this one-year milestone (far more saturated than the one-month, six-month and nine-month ceremonials about the same event) is grotesque. In part, it’s an insult to all the families whose lives were forever altered by the attacks, as if they need one more extended period of mourning to mark their losses. On a larger scale, the ubiquitous tv marathons, books and magazine "special" editions this month trivialize the perilous condition of the world, a confusing jumble of violence that hasn’t been matched since World War II.

Both Newsweek and Time printed "One Year Later" issues last week, which was reasonable enough, but the fact that both publications dated their editions Sept. 11, 2002 (a Wednesday), instead of the usual Monday date, was obscenely cynical. Worse yet was that Newsweek’s newsstand copies were printed on heavier-stock paper than issues sent to subscribers, with "Commemorative Edition" the headline at top. The flailing U.S. News & World Report also published a stand-alone, advertising-free "commemorative issue" (the fine print on the cover reads"Keep on sale through Nov. 11, 2002"), and opened with a mandatory photo of the burning towers in New York.

I witnessed the event live on Hudson St. and then like the rest of the nation saw nonstop film of those planes crashing into the towers for days after. It’s not an image–or sequence of images–that bears repeating at this point.

Last Saturday night I was watching a video documentary about Ulysses S. Grant, and while rewinding the first reel, Larry King sprung up on CNN, interviewing network anchors Peter Jennings, Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw about their "reporting" experiences last year. After being assaulted by about 15 cliches, I turned to Cartoon Network until the second half of the Grant biography was ready for viewing. One hopes, probably quixotically, that Americans will boycott the orgy of television self-congratulation, save the live speech by President Bush on Wednesday morning in New York City.

Writing in the Sept. 6 New York Times, critic Caryn James had several smart insights. She said: "Some of Wednesday’s attention is clearly necessary, notably the live coverage of the memorial ceremonies at ground zero. The documentaries and taped reports, though, continue what television has already been doing. There is such an emphasis on human-interest stories and eyewitness accounts, it’s as if the whole country has been engaged in a year of televised talk therapy...

"In an ABC report scheduled for Wednesday night, Barbara Walters visits a therapy group of widows and their adolescent children. The cameras have followed these people for months; they knew they were being discreetly observed. Yet there is still a creepy voyeurism involved, no matter how complicitous the subjects."

A month earlier, on Aug. 2, The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger was more harsh. In the column "Wonder Land" he wrote: "There’s a fine line between remembrance and mawkishness. TV makes sure we cross it. The way American television production is conceived, with all of life reduced to melodrama, makes this inevitable, and we’re used to it. But what happened September 11 transcended nearly all frames of human reference within which most of us have ever lived, and it’s unsettling to know almost for a certainty that TV next month will absorb this event into its maw and make it their show. This might not happen, if they did less. But on TV, more, and a lot more after that, is all."

My own plans for the one-year anniversary are simple: I’ll read the daily papers, drop my sons off at school, play "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" twice in a row, hold a lit candle as I gaze into the distance from my roof at where the Trade Center once stood and probably watch the Yanks and Orioles play at the Stadium.

•

The good news from Mayor Bloomberg is that he doesn’t believe Sept. 11 ought to be declared a national holiday. (It’s bad enough that President Bush is referring to the date as "Patriot Day.") On WABC-AM last week, Bloomberg said: "It doesn’t seem to me to pay a lot of respect for those that died by going to the beach or playing a round of golf."

More troubling, however, is that Bloomberg hasn’t exerted his authority in the squabble over the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan. This is a vital undertaking, with extreme economic consequences for the city, and yet it’s been bogged down by egotistic architects, community boards, the media and families of the victims of the Trade Center’s collapse. Obviously, a memorial to those who died is a central component: a monument with the names of all those who perished, along with a small park, would be fitting. But to transform the symbol of American, and global, capitalism into unfettered open space, as some suggest, is folly.

The state of New York’s economy is dire enough as it is, and the current dawdling and backbiting is just postponing what will be a protracted reconstruction even if it began today. It’s not just high-profile business that must return to the area, but all the restaurants, delis, shoe-shine stalls, florists and pharmacies whose livelihood depended on the big firms that were once ensconced in those 16 acres.

There’ve been a lot of high-minded complaints about the slew of vendors who peddle souvenirs (mostly manufactured, no doubt, in China) to tourists near Ground Zero, with a particularly high concentration at Trinity Church on Broadway. So don’t go there, or wear sunglasses; it’s not as if a rack of FDNY caps and chintzy Statue of Liberty necklaces can possibly add to the heartbreaking sights of the area. Besides, the outdoor commerce throughout the city–whether it’s hucksters selling bogus videos on Canal St., immigrants with makeshift fruit stands or the pitiful people who lay out old magazines and books on the sidewalk–reflects the vibrancy and entrepreneurship of New York that is one reason this is the capital of the world.

I agree with the National Review’s Rich Lowry, who wrote on Aug. 16, "So, yes, the new project should be creative, be respectful of the lost, be integrated into downtown Manhattan in a way that the unneighborly World Trade Center wasn’t, but, above all, it should be tall.

"Because height has been a way of expressing human pride and longing for the ultimate since the Tower of Babel and the Egyptian pyramids–build it high...

"Because the men and women who died on Sept. 11, whether busboys or investment bankers, came to the towers that day to work, and the skyscraper has always been about the dignity and ambition of commerce, from the Woolworth Building to the Sears Tower–build it high."

Far more daunting than the bureaucratic morass of rebuilding is that Bloomberg and his administration have done little, at least to the visible eye, to prevent the inevitable acts of terrorism that are sure to occur in the next several years.

Last Friday morning, while picking up a magazine at a Penn Station newsstand, I noticed for the first time in almost a year a squadron of military personnel. Finally, I thought, there was security at one of the city’s most vulnerable sites. As has been noted in this column many times, one crude bomb detonated underground at Penn or Grand Central Station could instantly create New York’s second Ground Zero, this time in midtown. The resulting devastation, counted in lives, buildings, the subway system and business, is incalculable: it could cause an instantaneous flight to other states, making the fiscal nightmare of the mid-70s look like boom times.

But after getting to work, and mentioning what I’d seen, a colleague reminded me that some 300 congressmen had descended upon the city that morning, some riding Amtrak, for their pointless, feel-good ceremonial session at Federal Hall. The brief spectacle of superficial bipartisanship was unbearable, as Tom Daschle, Trent Lott, Dick Cheney and Dick Gephardt took turns saying essentially nothing. Presidential candidate John Kerry profited from the excursion: in Saturday’s New York Times, he was front and center, hand over heart, in a three-column photo that ran above the fold. The same day, Kerry was the latest Democrat allowed an anti-Bush forum in the paper’s op-ed section. Apparently the Massachusetts aristocrat is executive editor Howell Raines’ preferred 2004 Democrat nominee of the moment. Of course, there’s no doubt that the Times would prefer the next president come from its own offices–freelance diplomat Thomas Friedman, anyone?–but for the time being the Lords of Times Square will probably work within the traditional electoral process.

Daschle, who’s currently attempting to stall debate about an invasion of Iraq until after the midterm elections, was typical in his remarks. He said: "Let history record that the terrorists failed... We will never forget the terrible beauty that was born here one year ago." Let alone the now familiar abuse of Yeats’ verse, Daschle is wrong: The terrorists have not failed. As Russ Hoyle wrote in the Daily News last week, 72 percent of New Yorkers believe another attack is "very or somewhat likely," with subsets of that number predicting suicide bombers, chemical or biological weapons or car bombs.

You’d think last Thursday’s arrest of two Al Qaeda sympathizers near Heidelberg, Germany, who according to local authorities were in possession of "290 pounds of chemicals and electrical parts and five pipe bombs" in their apartment, would be about the 101st wake-up call to European and American political leaders that the first 21st-century war has just begun. According to The Washington Post, a German law enforcement official said: "We suspect that they intended to mount a bomb attack against [United States] military institutions and the city of Heidelberg."

But German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, locked in a tight reelection race, is unalterably opposed to regime change in Iraq, and, probably because of his perilous political situation, is far more vehement than other timid heads of state. He told The New York Times’ Steven Erlanger earlier this month, "How can you exert pressure on someone by saying to them, ‘Even if you accede to our demands, we will destroy you? I think that was a change of strategy in the United States–whatever the explanation may be–a change that made things difficult for others, including ourselves."

Schroder’s hard-line stance won him a glowing endorsement from Iraq’s government last weekend, a black ribbon of approbation that perhaps is already in his scrapbook. In the Sept. 8 edition of Der Spiegel, Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said: "German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer know that an energetic ‘no’ will protect Europe and the whole world against the overbearing superpower of the United States. Germany’s veto is carried out in the name of all people who do not want to bow to the will of a handful of Jewish and far right American groups."

That was a nice touch of Sabri’s, blaming Jews for America’s opposition to Saddam Hussein, in a leading German magazine. Schroder’s opponent, conservative Edmund Stoiber, who I hope will prevail later this month, is being cagey about the Saddam problem, but at least he appears more reasonable. Reacting to Schroder’s currently intractable position–which is bound to change once the U.S. invades Iraq–Stoiber said in Munich: "That is not how things are done between friends."

•

Atlantic editor Michael Kelly, in a flawed opening essay for the magazine’s October issue, does make one crucial point about the current imbroglio over Iraq. Cribbing from an observation of colleague Christopher Hitchens, Kelly writes: "The great running tension now in policy and politics, and in the public discussion of policy and politics, is not so much between left and right or even between Democrat and Republican as it is between those who understand 9/11 as a dividing line and those who do not."

Kelly decides that after a triumphant beginning, President Bush has ceded the debate to those who don’t understand that the complexities of global politics changed forever a year ago. He continues: "We are back in familiar territory. Europe is over its uncomfortable spell of pretending that it supported America in its war aims... In Europe and America…the necessity of prosecuting the war against anti-American terrorist groups and their state sponsors (the next critical step being war against the regime of Saddam Hussein) is no longer obvious. And much to the relief of the establishment press of both continents, it is fashionable again to denounce George W. Bush as a fool and a lightweight and a not-really-President who does what Dick Cheney and big business tell him to. Home, sweet home."

Although Kelly was hampered by a long leadtime for his piece–he gives the advantage to Democratic candidates in the midterm elections because of the WorldCom and Enron revelations, and concludes with a by-now irrelevant point that Al Gore’s presidential hopes are kaput–like many other pundits he misunderstands the Bush administration’s strategy for overthrowing Saddam.

Look back at the past year and you can draw a straight line in Bush’s policy that will culminate with a military invasion of Iraq several months from now. He began last September by saying that although this new war was not started by the United States, it’ll be this country that ends it. His State of the Union address identified the "axis of evil" countries, most notably Iraq.

At West Point’s commencement in June, the President defined what is now known as the Bush doctrine of preemptive action against hostile countries. He said: "For much of the last century, America’s defense relied on the Cold War doctrines of deterrence and containment. In some cases, those strategies still apply. But new threats also require new thinking. Deterrence–the promise of massive retaliation against nations–means nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation or citizens to defend. Containment is not possible when unbalanced dictators with weapons of mass destruction can deliver those weapons or missiles or secretly provide them to terrorist allies.

"We cannot defend America and our friends by hoping for the best. We cannot put our faith in the word of tyrants, who solemnly sign non-proliferation treaties, and then systematically break them. If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long."

The mainstream media largely ignored this speech, and its implications, and instead concentrated on "corporate greed," Bush’s long-ago involvement with Harken Energy and his fundraising for Republican candidates who, one hopes, will keep power in the House and regain control in the Senate. Typically, once the tv network and cable stations grew bored by this refrain–and it was revealed that Democrats were also up to their ears in questionable ethics–they turned to child abductions as a lure for viewers.

Meanwhile, as Dick Cheney outlined the administration’s case for "regime change" in Iraq, the political elite cried out, "Where’s the debate?" on this "unilateralist cowboy" policy. Although Democratic leaders were largely silent on the issue, preferring to postpone any decisions on Iraq until after the elections, a gaggle of former government officials took to the op-ed pages to register their disapproval or endorsement of the Bush doctrine. In rapid succession, the views of Brent Scowcroft, Henry Kissinger, Richard Holbrooke, Alexander Haig Jr., Ken Adelman, Bob Dole, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George Shultz, James Baker and Zbigniew Brzezinski were printed (usually in The Washington Post or New York Times, although Clinton was relegated to the UK’s left-wing Guardian) and discussed. World leaders like Nelson Mandela and Kofi Annan registered their disgust with the administration. Even longtime pariah Ramsey Clark, once LBJ’s attorney general, got into the act, saying a Baghdad attack would be a "massive crime against all international law and against all morality and the United States is better than that... It is unacceptable–after all the suffering, all the injury and violence the U.S. government has inflicted on the people of Iraq–if it would now attack again." Not coincidentally, Clark delivered his message to Bush from Iraq, where he’s apparently a favored guest.

So, in the absence of congressional "debate" (with the exception of Sen. Kerry, GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel–who’s auditioning to become the new John McCain–Majority Leader Dick Armey and Sen. Zell Miller), the controversy rages on, courtesy of men no longer in power. I doubt Bush planned this fusillade of opinion, but it’s certainly worked out to his benefit.

Now, after Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell (proving far more hawkish than Democrats expected) have presented the administration’s case, Bush, after securing Tony Blair’s support, will address the United Nations this Thursday. I have no knowledge of his planned comments, but he’s not likely to deviate from the historic West Point address. Unless Tom Daschle is successful in blocking deliberation over Iraq in the Senate–an extremely risky strategy–there’s little doubt Bush will receive approval from Congress to proceed with his military plans.

Score one for the illiterate, inarticulate cowboy that the Beltway apostles of appeasement delight in ridiculing on a daily basis.

•

The New York Times, for all its editorial bluster, has a disgraceful record in matters of international crisis. Its fear of appearing as a "Jewish" newspaper during World War II skewed the paper’s coverage of the magnitude of Hitler’s grand plan. In The Trust, a largely favorable history of the Times (cowritten, with his wife Susan E. Tifft, by Alex Jones, a former reporter at the paper), then-publisher Arthur Sulzberger’s reticence to report aggressively on the war is well-documented.

The authors write (p. 218): "The Times was hardly alone in downplaying news of the Final Solution. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, other major dailies...like the public at large, disbelieved reports of Jewish genocide in Europe or suspected that they were exaggerated in order to attract relief funds. But the Times was unique in one respect: as the preeminent newspaper in the country, with superior foreign reporting capabilities, it had much power to set the agenda for other journals, many of which took their cue from the Times’ front page. Had the Times highlighted Nazi atrocities against Jews, or simply not buried certain stories, the nation might have awakened to the horror far sooner than it did."

You’d think that more than 60 years later the Times would’ve overcome its fear of a Jewish identity and would vigorously defend Israel, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, against the fanatics of Hamas and the PLO. But that hasn’t been the case. Instead, the paper last spring criticized Sharon for excessive militarism, even as the Mideast’s only democracy was shattered by suicide-bombings, and continued to coddle Yasir Arafat, with the hope that one day he’d fade from the Palestinian leadership. It’s been President Bush–who, unlike Bill Clinton, has refused to meet with Arafat–advocating unstinting support for Israel (admittedly with a few detours), even though he’s run the risk of alienating potential Mideast allies in the upcoming fight against Iraq.

The Times has far too much power in Washington, but for once it could’ve used its influence and editorialized in favor of the immediate removal of Arafat, a dangerous dictator who continues (with Iraq’s help) to foment chaos in the region.

Finally, the Times, under the leadership of Howell Raines (and puppet publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.), has been the leading voice of dissent against military intervention in Iraq. In a Sept. 5 editorial, the paper said: "Support from the U.N. Security Council for any American attack is essential, and Mr. Bush’s speech next week should be a start along that road, not a mere symbolic stab at consultation... As the countdown begins, Mr. Bush must be mindful that the terror attacks a year ago did not give him a license to wage war in Iraq. He will have to earn that."

And Sept. 8: "Likewise, Sept. 11 seemed to have little impact on Mr. Bush’s economic thinking. Everyone makes sacrifices in times of war, including leaders... Mr. Bush might have postponed or even rolled back his tax cut and redeployed the money in more meritorious ways, perhaps to underwrite a serious program of foreign insistence to encourage the growth of democratic institutions in countries where poverty and corruption breed terrorists–and cynicism about an American government that supports tyrannical leaders."

The Times’ baloney about a rollback in Bush’s tepid tax cuts enacted last year is a red herring. War or no war, the paper is philosophically opposed to tax cuts of any kind, and to pretend otherwise is the kind of distortion that the paper is notorious for. But more significantly, the insistence that Bush has to kneel before an impotent UN Security Council for permission to defend the United States is just dishonest. The Times is against Iraqi intervention and even the evidence the administration is amassing of Saddam’s stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction won’t change its view.

The world is at a perilous crossroads and yet the Times reacts to a very real crisis the same way it covered Hitler’s rise to power in the early 1930s. One wonders if even the leveling of Tel Aviv in the near future would change the mind of Howell Raines.

[goodieD]

"More terror is imminent"..... when is "imminent" exactly? 1 year? 5 years? 10?

[lds23]

A good read, but the mainstream press, the liberal elites, and the outright socialists will NOT allow their 60-some year agenda to be derailed by reality.