Terrorism and the Struggle for Peace -- Part Two of Three

A consensus now exists across the American political spectrum, left to right, that everything fundamentally changed in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks. To be sure, there was an upsurgence of patriotism and national chauvinism, a desire to “avenge” the innocent victims of the Al Qaeda network’s terrorism.

I would suggest, however, that the events of recent weeks are not a radical departure into some new, uncharted political territory, but rather the culmination of deeper political and economic forces set into motion more than two decades ago.

The Price

Some reckon that the provision of any sort of historical context is an outrage to the memory of those slaughtered in the Sept. 11 attacks. Here's Christopher Hitchens, writing in the current Nation: "Loose talk about chickens coming home to roost is the moral equivalent of the hateful garbage emitted by Falwell and Robertson, and exhibits about the same intellectual content."

Hitchens seems to be arguing that Osama bin Laden and his Muslim cohorts are so pure a distillation of evil that they are outside history and any system of overall accounting. So all you can tell your kids is that the guys who planned and carried out those Sept. 11 attacks are really bad guys.

This isn't very helpful, particularly since among those kids to whom we are trying to explain Sept. 11 are America's future leaders and policymakers. Don't we want them to understand history in terms more complex than those of flag-wagging at the moral level of a spaghetti western?

What moved those kamikaze Muslims, among them many middle-class graduates from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, to embark some many months ago on the

The 'Wimp' Factor -- Goading to Shed Blood

Back in 1988, the father of our current president was bedeviled by what media outlets called "the wimp factor." After eight years as vice president, George Bush was making a run for the Oval Office. But quite a few journalists kept asking whether he was a tough enough man for the job. Newsweek even headlined the "wimp" epithet in a cover story about him.

That image problem faded in late December of 1989, when U.S. troops invaded Panama. The commander-in-chief drew blood -- proving to some journalists that he had the right stuff. A New York Times reporter, R.W. Apple, wrote that the assault on Panama was Bush's "presidential initiation rite" -- as though military intervention in a Third World nation was mandatory evidence of leadership mettle.

But even later, while still ensconced in the White House, the senior Bush remained notably stung by the epithet. He couldn't always keep the pain of it under wraps. "You're talking to the 'wimp,'" President Bush commented on June 16, 1991. "You're talking to the guy that had a cover of a national magazine, that I'll never forgive, put that label on me."

Behind the Reassuring Words

The Bush administration has vowed that it will not aim the Pentagon's firepower at civilian targets in Afghanistan. Such assurances are supposed to make us think that innocent bystanders will be spared when the missiles fly and the warheads explode. Don't believe it.

Back in early August 1945, President Truman had this to say: "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, in so far as possible, the killing of civilians."

Actually, the U.S. government went out of its way to select Japanese cities of sufficient size to showcase the extent of the A-bomb's deadly power. In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, hundreds of thousands of civilians died -- immediately or eventually -- as a result of the atomic bombings.

In the past several decades, presidents have routinely expressed their reverence for civilian lives while trying to justify orders that inevitably destroyed civilian lives. Denial is key to the success of public-relations campaigns that always accompany war.

Panic and Indignity: The Currency of Revenge

"America roused to a righteous anger has always been a force for good. States that have been supporting if not Osama bin Laden, people like him, need to feel pain. If we flatten part of Damascus or Tehran, or whatever it takes, that is part of the solution." Thus writes Rich Lowry, National Review editor.

"Or whatever it takes." How many cities are we supposed to flatten? Is the revenge ratio for our lost 5,000 to be 500,000? America's official reaction to most horrible crimes wrought almost entirely against a civilian population has been of a nature calculated to magnify an already dreadful disaster and further exhilarate the foe.

When Journalists Report for Duty

In Time magazine's special issue about the events of Sept. 11, chilling photos evoke the horrific slaughter in Manhattan. All of the pages are deadly serious. And on the last page, under the headline "The Case for Rage and Retribution," an essay by Time regular Lance Morrow declares: "A day cannot live in infamy without the nourishment of rage. Let's have rage."

Exhorting our country to relearn the lost virtues of "self-confident relentlessness" and "hatred," the article calls for "a policy of focused brutality." It's an apt conclusion to an edition of the nation's biggest newsmagazine that embodies the human strengths and ominous defects of American media during the current crisis.

Much of the initial news coverage was poignant, grief-stricken and utterly appropriate. But many news analysts and pundits lost no time conveying -- sometimes with great enthusiasm -- their eagerness to see the United States use its military might in anger. Such impulses are extremely dangerous.

For instance, night after night on cable television, Bill O'Reilly

A Unanimous Triumph for Masters of War

On Friday, the Senate voted 98-0 for a war resolution. It says: "The president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."

This resolution, written as a blank check, is payable with vast quantities of human corpses.

* * * * *

The black-and-white TV footage is grainy and faded, but it still jumps off the screen -- a portentous clash between a prominent reporter and a maverick politician. On the CBS program "Face the Nation," journalist Peter Lisagor argued with a senator who stood almost alone on Capitol Hill, strongly opposing the war in Vietnam from the outset.

"Senator, the Constitution gives to the president of the United

Terrorism, Television and the Rage for Vengeance

We stare at TV screens and try to comprehend the suffering in the aftermath of terrorism. Much of what we see is ghastly and all too real; terrible anguish and sorrow.

At the same time, we're witnessing an onslaught of media deception. "The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing," Aldous Huxley observed long ago. "Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth."

Silence, rigorously selective, pervades the media coverage of recent days. For policy-makers in Washington, the practical utility of that silence is enormous. In response to the mass murder committed by hijackers, the righteousness of U.S. military action is clear -- as long as double standards go unmentioned.

While rescue crews braved intense smoke and grisly rubble, ABC News analyst Vincent Cannistraro helped to put it all in perspective for millions of TV viewers. Cannistraro is a former high-ranking official of the Central Intelligence Agency who was in charge of the CIA's work with

Who saw it coming?

Tuesday's onslaughts on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are being likened to Pearl Harbor, and the comparison is just. From the point of view of the assailants, the attacks were near miracles of logistical calculation, timing, courage in execution and devastation inflicted upon the targets. Not in terms of destructive extent, but in terms of symbolic obliteration the attack is virtually without historic parallel, a trauma at least as great as the San Francisco earthquake or the Chicago fire.

There may be another similarity to Pearl Harbor. The possibility of a Japanese attack in early December of 1941 was known to U.S. Naval Intelligence and to President Roosevelt. Last Tuesday, derision at the failure of U.S. intelligence was widespread. The Washington Post quoted an unnamed top official at the National Security Council as saying, "We don't know anything here. We're watching CNN, too." Are we to believe that the $30 billion annual intelligence budget, immense electronic eavesdropping capacity and thousands of agents around the world produced nothing in the way of a warning? In fact, Osama bin Laden, now a prime suspect, said in an

Jesse Helms: 16th century thinkin'

AUSTIN, Texas -- I am indebted to Jon Stewart of the Comedy Channel and to "The Daily Show," the last real news program on cable television, for the idea of a collection of quotes from Sen. Jesse Helms:

-- On the subject of President Clinton visiting North Carolina: "Mr. Clinton better watch out if he comes down here. He'd better have a bodyguard."

-- "I'm going to sing 'Dixie' to her until she cries," of Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun after a debating her on the merits of the Confederate flag."

-- "The New York Times and The Washington Post are both infested with homosexuals themselves."

-- "The destruction of this country can be pinpointed in terms of its beginnings to the time that our political leadership turned to socialism.

They didn't call it socialism, of course. It was given deceptive names and adorned with fancy slogans. We heard about New Deals, and Fair Deals, and New Frontiers, and Great Society."

Years ago, Larry L. King, the Texas writer, observed in the wake of the political defeat of a couple of unusually unpleasant Texas congressmen,

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