Hitting Terrorism’s Roots Hitting Terrorism’s Roots
While the Bush Administration continues to build an international coalition it hopes will allow it to strike back effectively at those responsible for the September 11 attacks, ...
Oct 4, 2001 / The Editors
Rules of Engagement Rules of Engagement
As this is written, we wait and wonder what the military response will be to the inchoate enemy the President summoned up in his speech to the nation on September 20. Despite the near-unanimous celebration of it by the mainstream media, we were left with troubling questions. The President told the nation it was at war, "a lengthy campaign unlike any we have ever fought," its aim the total "disruption and...defeat of the global terror network." But he failed to clearly identify the enemy or specify any limits on the means to be employed, including avoidance of unnecessary civilian casualties. Osama bin Laden was denounced as the prime suspect, but no evidence of his guilt was adduced that night, and the Administration has yet to produce it. Bush said that this war would bring to bear "every resource at our command"--diplomacy, intelligence, law enforcement, finance. But the military option overshadowed all. And there was no mention of applying international law or working with the United Nations, which could lend international legitimacy to the fight against terrorism, giving political cover to Islamic nations who join it. The President pledged not to wage war on Islam but then proclaimed, "Every nation in every region now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." He thus broadened the scope of his war to include, potentially, sanctions or even attacks on nation-states deemed not to be "with us," although state-sponsored terrorism has not been implicated in the World Trade Center attack. Since most of the countries thought to harbor terrorists are Islamic, the possibility of action against them sparking a backlash in the Muslim world remains. A wider war against Afghanistan will heap more misery on that war-ravaged theocracy without fostering the secularization and democratization it so desperately needs. The threat of war has already unleashed a flood of refugees that could destabilize other shaky states in the region, primarily Pakistan, a nuclear power. Bush's black-and-white worldview could justify eliminating Saddam Hussein, a project pushed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz. We support an all-out but carefully targeted effort to neutralize identified terrorist networks. This may involve a limited military response, like attacks on terrorist bases, but primarily it should rely on such nonmilitary means as exchanges of intelligence among nations, coordinated investigations by law-enforcement agencies in affected countries and pressure on financial institutions and governments to cooperate in cutting off terrorist-group funding. Beyond this kind of international campaign, the United States should re-examine the role its foreign policy has played in creating the pools of anti-Americanism that breed terrorists. Not that reciting the dismal litany of US interventions and realpolitik "explains" this tragedy; or that America somehow deserved to be attacked on September 11 because of past policies. Rather, such a re-examination should lead to a more humane and truly internationalist foreign policy that recognizes a responsibility to other nations. Chris Patten, European Union external affairs commissioner, called for dealing with such persisting evils as "the whole relationship between poverty, degradation and violence, between drugs and crime and violence, and trade and development and violence." America must moderate the parochial unilateralism that is branded arrogance. It must step up efforts to defuse the festering Israeli-Palestinian dispute and encourage democracy in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Algeria. In a sudden--and expedient--conversion to internationalism the Administration pressed Congress to pay long-overdue UN assessments and called on the Senate to ratify two UN conventions dealing specifically with terrorism. That's a start, but more could be done to align US diplomacy with international bodies, including joining the International Criminal Court to help make it an effective tribunal for bringing terrorists to justice; reversing the decision not to sign the biological warfare protocol; ratifying the test ban treaty and curbing nuclear proliferation, thus diminishing terrorists' access to weapons of mass destruction. On the home front, the newly created Office of Homeland Security should coordinate the overlapping efforts of the two dozen federal departments and agencies that deal with domestic security. The nature of the attack on US soil has blown to bits any possible rationale for national missile defense. That money should go instead to infrastructure and transportation improvements (including railroads) and for training "first responders"--police, fire departments, hospitals, emergency medical services--to deal with the kind of mass disasters terrorists may inflict. Enhanced homeland defense, constrained by strict protection of civil liberties, could justify a rollback of the US military presence overseas and undercut a rationale for inflated military spending and military interventions. It could also channel the spirit of civilian volunteerism that recently flowered in New York City. We do not accept the notion that patriotism precludes politics. If waged sensibly, the fight against terrorism will be long, low-level and sustained. Politics can't be suspended during that time. More than a million people have been laid off in this country since July 2000. US trade policies are wiping out industries here and increasing poverty around the world. Millions live without health insurance. The President has called upon us to resume our normal lives. Surely that includes implementing policies to make America better, not suspending vigorous debate and civil liberties for a decades-long fight against terrorism.
Sep 27, 2001 / The Editors
Barbara Lee’s Stand Barbara Lee’s Stand
When Congress voted to authorize the Bush Administration to use military force in response to the September 11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Represent...
Sep 20, 2001 / The Editors
Nation Notes Nation Notes
The Nation's phone and e-mail were disrupted as a result of the World Trade Center attacks. We are grateful to Public Interest Network Services for advice and technical support en...
Sep 20, 2001 / The Editors
Justice, Not Vengeance Justice, Not Vengeance
The atrocious attacks on the World Trade Center were massive crimes against humanity in both a real-world sense and in a technical legal sense, as Richard Falk reminds us. As such...
Sep 20, 2001 / The Editors
A Great Wound A Great Wound
The battleground is now on US soil—not just against the terrorists, but those who would highjack the terrible event and twist it to their own ends.
Sep 13, 2001 / The Editors
Cleaning Up Elections Cleaning Up Elections
The Shays-Meehan bill would help reform campaign financing--but there is a much better solution.
Sep 6, 2001 / The Editors
In Fact… In Fact…
KATHY BOUDIN AND PAROLE DENIAL Noted with dismay: New York prison officials' recent decision to deny parole to former Weather Underground fugitive Kathy Boudin. This magazine can spare no sympathy for the 1981 Brink's robbery in which Boudin drove the getaway truck while former members of the Black Liberation Army killed two police officers and a security guard. But Boudin was an accessory, not a principal, in that robbery and had surrendered before the officers were killed. In twenty years behind bars, she has embodied the ideal of a prisoner remaking her life: earning a graduate degree and teaching other inmates at Bedford Hills. Even though the victims of the Brink's robbery and their families were divided over Boudin, Governor George Pataki chose to heed a vocal campaign by Rockland County police officials to keep her locked up. That denial is part of a national pattern in which governors, in the name of fighting crime, have made it almost impossible for prisoners to earn parole. In some states 80 percent of all applications are denied. The denial of parole is a hidden engine of the nationwide prison crisis that's breaking states' treasuries--and at the same time is leaving large numbers of nonviolent offenders with no incentive to rebuild their lives. The point of parole is precisely for officials and offenders alike to step back from the acts that got inmates locked up in the first place and look at the whole life. No possible purpose is served by keeping Boudin incarcerated. ON THE WEB: THIS [email protected] From the UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban Mark Gevisser writes that South African President Thabo Mbeki proclaimed that the divide between North and South "also coincides with the divide between white and black, broadly defined." Meanwhile, the Congress of South African Trade Unions struck to protest his government's "neoliberal" economic policy. Re the US-Israel walkout: Charles Tanzer reports that while the United States emphasized concern over the language about Israel in the final document, it "spent its time challenging nearly every word of the text, objecting to language that might actually require it to take steps to combat racism or acknowledge that slavery was a crime against humanity" (see www.thenation.com). CAREY McWILLIAMS AWARD Victor Navasky is co-winner of the American Political Science Association's Carey McWilliams Award. Named after The Nation's great editor, the award honors "a major journalistic contribution to our understanding of politics." The other winner is William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard. Asked how the association justified giving the award to the proprietors of two such different magazines, a spokesman said that they had in common a willingness to alienate their own constituencies. We congratulate Navasky and commend to Kristol the writings of Carey McWilliams.
Sep 6, 2001 / The Editors
Nothing Could Be Finer in North Carolina Nothing Could Be Finer in North Carolina
William Kristol claims that Senator Jesse Helms's departure at the end of his term represents "the end of an era." We can only hope. Helms has championed an odious brand of cons...
Aug 23, 2001 / The Editors
‘Nation’ Notes ‘Nation’ Notes
We regret the loss of two valued contributors. Richard Cloward, for forty-seven years a professor at the Columbia University School of Social Work, was author of such influentia...
Aug 23, 2001 / The Editors