"God has chosen the foolish things of the earth to confound the wise." -Bible
"The notion that disarmament leads to peace can be discounted by the nearest dog fight." - Paraphrase of George Bernard Shaw, Irish philosopher and dramatist.
When American Airlines Flight eleven slammed the north tower of the WTC on September 11, a shocked population must have reflected on human frailty. Nothing is really safe in this world. Frailty, thy name is human; some sleep-starved pilot, without a doubt.
Twenty minutes later, the design unfolded when a second plane slammed into the south tower, as TV cameras and the millions of eyes were focused on the scene, and the world knew it was hostile action. The daring and the coordination of the assault, without the carnage, would have captured the idle imagination. Now these qualities seem devilish.
The fallen angels who carried out the assault had a more lasting delusion: they must have died satisfied that, as a team, they had shaken the bastion of earthly power. The hijackers had brought low two high symbols of power, which money can rebuild. They had also killed innocent thousands, whom money cannot replace. Their delusion? They offered President Bush on a platter what he could not buy - an end to the isolation in which he had ended his European tour to sell missile defence and amend the climate change treaty and the loneliness in which the US government, with Israel, left the UN Conference Against Racism.
The fallen angels had made the first military strike of such proportions, based almost entirely on one weapon, knowledge, along with some stone-age implements. Against these the military-industrial-commercial complex had the weapon of non knowledge of the plot, the moment and the means. It was an aggressive use of information. The navy and army arsenals were powerless against it. Here was new meaning for the information age. Mere knowledge of airport security procedures, of flight schedules, of fuel capacities, of the skill of flying, of a pilot's poor defences, of time-tables, turned out to be a source of mass carnage.
Capital does not circulate alone. It drags along with it dozens, hundreds, thousands, millions, who both feed it and are fed by it. Apart from owners and managers at the WTC there would be clerks, labourers, security men and women, technicians, day hands, passengers, workers, customers, a sample of the human, but not always humane world.
The assault has been described by many leaders as an attack on civilisation. Rather, it was an attack on humanity by individuals, like many in their target country, not yet truly civilised. Describing one place as civilisation implies that some other place is not a civilised place.
Responding to the attack on the WTC and the Pentagon, the President of the USA had declared that "America is at war." For the war President Bush started building an anti-terrorist coalition. NATO regardless of its unhappiness with Bush's missile defence non-cooperation, offered its complete commitment. NATO invoked a rule which says that an attack on one member is an attack on all.
On the domestic front, Congress, against the opposition of 'one grain' woman, as we say in Guyana, Ms Barbara Lee (D) of Courtland, California, voted "to grant President Bush authority 'to use all necessary force' against those behind Tuesday's devastating terrorist attack..." Ms Barbara Lee, one woman against the House, will hardly get the Nobel Peace Prize for her powerfully courageous peace gesture, but she has earned it, nevertheless. President Bush's rhetoric varied on and on, as new diplomatic realities faced him, as a result of more and more solidarity and more and more advice were received. Some support appears to be conditional on the types of retaliatory violence planned by the USA and the degree of proof required by allies before a military strike.
The fallen angels, from their own point of view, had won the first engagement. September 11 caused the drift to recession in the economy to move into a trot towards recession. To ordinary citizens it brought tears and grief, to the airline industry shock and collapse, to the economy, not the US economy alone, but the world economy, pernicious jitters. If the distance between countries of the world has already increased, the Caribbean can be even more keenly isolated and pressured. Travel jitters depend on reality and the imagination. This can have a chilling effect on travel into and out of the region. Caribbean countries will have to think on our feet, as one regional party implies, so as not to be caught in diplomatic, economic or actual crossfire. The USA will now be less open to migrants. It is likely to change as a haven for troubled souls, various types of dissidents and for undergraduate and other students. Our universities may need money and other resources to expand their services. All realise that life in the USA will not be the same. People outside the USA will make deductions about their own particular fears.
All this is true. What is also true is that with effective investigation, life for the terrorists also will not be the same.
If those so far identified are in fact offenders, if their operations in stated countries are as stated, if also their financial paper trail has been correctly suspected, then they can neither live nor function in the same way. They will be in as much disarray as society in the USA. It will take them time to regroup and re-configure their style of operations at every level. Alert security agencies will hardly be caught napping in the same way.
The USA's dilemma is that while it boasts of its numerous cultures, the very rheto-ric of the rulers, now under revision, has tended to encourage the knee-jerk response of 'guilty Muslims'
Noteworthy is the spiritual and cultural response to the attack of September 11. The September 15, all faith service in the National Cathedral (non denominational) in Washington was in content a summons by the Chosen to God to join the grand coalition. Among the three men who addressed the gathering, except for the Islamic and the Jewish holy men reading prayers, only one who appeared most distant from the establishment, showed any deep religious conscience. In the opening sentences of the service he prayed for wisdom, "that as we act we do not become the evil that we denounce."
The Los Angeles Times next day reported Congresswoman Ms Barbara Lee as saying that this same remark by that cleric ended her agonising over the vote and made her the sole representative voting against. More uplift came from Ms Denyse Gayes with her celestial singing of 'America the Beautiful.'
The USA, which has assumed the name 'America,' has many citizens of many races who could renew the faith and spiritual awareness of that congregation. None of them, however, were given the pulpit. Instead, apart from President Bush, it was Rev Billy Graham who held centre stage. He proved himself on that occasion the ardent patriot rather than the holy Rod of Correction. Thus there was no other word of admission, or admonition, even in a place of worship, of the USA for anything it might have done to contribute to the growth of the intense feelings among populations in the Middle East, or to the origin and growth of any the formations which may now menace its safety.
Other responses are important to note. There is a noticeable vein of concern that an all-out military assault may be not only a poor example to the world, but counter productive. There are cautious, confident voices calling for basic proof. There are the parents who wrote to the NYT and to President Bush pleading, "not in our son's name." There are the many, some of them mourners, who are calling for more thorough and more lasting responses than war, who say there has already been too much bloodshed. There are other preachers who warn against a vain cycle of violence, or recall who said, "Vengeance is mine." There are groups of women, groups of young people, developing letters and petitions by e-mail hoping to influence policies they sense as just as evil as those visited upon the mourners and the society. A group of young people wrote, "Do not do unto others what they do unto you."
The USA's dilemma is that while it boasts of its numerous cultures, the very rhetoric of the rulers, now under revision, has tended to encourage the knee-jerk response of 'guilty Muslims' and placed these believers under general suspicion and frequent attack and harassment from citizens. A Muslim organisation here has offered help to the administration in its approaches to the Middle East, pointing out that no authentic expert was to be found among the President's advisors. Only in his September 20 address to the Congress and the nation did President Bush give this matter the importance it deserves.
To the general judgment that September 11 happened because of a failure of the much vaunted intelligence institutions, a New York Times columnist, Friedman, appearing on Public Radio's Fresh Air answered, "It was not a failure of intelligence. It was a failure of imagination on the part of the intelligence agencies."