"I heard someone say on TV this morning that the eagle was selected as a symbol because the eagle wasn't afraid to fly during a storm.
"We have tears, but we're still flying!"
SPECIAL SECTION: "AMERICAN DREAMS: The World Reacts - Part 2"What follows are the raw, unedited responses of our Mailing List members immediately following last Tuesday's terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.:
FROM "asylum," Glendale, CA, USA:
"Work like you don't need the money...
"Love like you've never been hurt
"Dance like nobody's watching..."
"Fight like there's no tomorrow "
--
asylum
FROM ROBERT O., Nairobi, KENYA:
Its macabre. Its unacceptable.
Robert O.
SPECIAL FROM G21 Columnist KEVIN CAREY, Sussex, UK:
If I were you, desperately trying to drag your psyche back to routine matters, to get through the day after the attack on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, I would very likely not want to read this. The instinct in politicians and commentators to make connections stronger than the evidence can support is very great. There is no easier time to be glib than when you want to lash out, to react, to make a personal statement of affront and grief.
Kevin Carey
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For President Bush the dilemma is horribly shocking. Over and above tightening security and setting in train an investigation into all the things that went wrong, why and who might have been responsible, he should do nothing; but that will be deeply resented at home and taken as a sign of weakness abroad by the very powers who are best pleased by what has happened. To be thought weak in this instance is better than to be thought irrationally vengeful because the latter will undo any real possibility of extracting any good from this desperately horrible situation.
Last week in Northern Ireland Protestants wanted to stop tiny Roman Catholic children from walking along 'their' street to the Holy Cross Primary School. <
I know there is a connection between that mindless, unproductive bigotry and the mixture of political fanaticism and psychosis which has kept Ulster in fear for thirty years but I am not precisely sure what it is. The link between Palestinian children celebrating the US disasters and the dispute between the Palestinians and Israel is more obvious, though still difficult to fathom. As for the kind of hate which drives people to hijack aeroplanes and crash them, fully loaded, into buildings, causing countless deaths (and their own), to give it what we think of as a political motive is surely missing the point.
In a morally relativist age the language of causality comes too easily. That American foreign policy "caused" these acts of terrorism is a crass statement; the hijackers could have chosen not to take the course of action they did. This is fatally to mix the language of the laboratory with the language of free will.
Nonetheless, there is a haunting sense of a scores being settled which just will not go away. That is why we must resist the temptation to say that a military response will have been "caused" by the hijackings and what followed.
And yet there are some conclusions from Tuesday 11th September 2001 which will not go away. The first, and by far the mot important, is that America must realise that it is not an invulnerable world superpower, an island of calm and prosperity in a wicked and chaotic world.
The instinct may be to retreat still further into isolation but that would be entirely the wrong response. The second is that, even bearing in mind my qualification about the strength of connections between phenomena, America simply cannot afford to be hated as much as it clearly is by a substantial chunk of the world.
Many Islamic powers may be twitching at the prospect of an arbitrarily directed military spasm from the United States but that will not have spoiled the enjoyment of the time from the first impact to the spectacular crumbling of the twin towers.
From this there follow two concrete conclusions:
- The peace settlement which Prime Minister Barak of Israel offered to the Palestinians last year, which was mercilessly exploited by current Prime Minister Sharon to engineer his downfall and to trigger a new uprising in the West Bank, was the best Israel could possibly offer without a political implosion. In rejecting it, Arafat made a terrible mistake for which we have all suffered ever since; we the least, the Palestinians more and Arafat the most. He has almost lost control of his own territory and if he should die without a strong peace the consequences are incalculable. So, the first concrete conclusion to draw -- again, without saying that what happened on the East Coast of America is directly connected with the Middle East conflict -- is that the United States should assemble a global coalition and impose this fair and optimal settlement on all parties. If Washington is seen to be consultative, fair and firm that will be a proper beginning to a new world order of sorts. If that can be achieved, it will be a necessary pre-requisite to dealing with what have been called 'rogue states'.
- What shook me as I prepared for bed on Monday 10th September 2001 was the death of rebel General Shah Masud, last resistance to the Taliban. He was murdered (or perhaps just seriously wounded) by two assassins posing as journalists. The next story was of the show 'trial' in Kabul of aid workers accused of preaching Christianity. In legal terms the prosecution case may be unexceptionable but the process is uncivilised. Then came two stories of Afghans trying illegally to get into Australia by boat and into England by train. If it were not so geographically remote, Afghanistan would already have been sorted out but it must be. There is nothing in the law of nations that requires sane countries to pay for the folly and cruelty of madmen but interference requires strong justification, a broad consensus and a clear sense of fairness.
It would be gratuitous to write at any length about the need for an investigation into airport security and the like. I doubt that four people can learn how to hijack and fly commercial aircraft and then do what they did without leaving anything for the intelligence gatherers.
In any case, this was such a spectacular atrocity that the temptation to boast will be irresistible. That is human nature. But it was human nature, too, that willed and carried out these appalling acts and the final conclusion must be that we need to know much more about this black side of human nature, how it works and with whom it consorts, if we are to prevent similar depredations. There is an understandable urge at the moment to establish who was behind these events but in the long run it is much more important to know why.
We are all vulnerable. We have the grim satisfaction of knowing, in spite of what has happened, that we are less vulnerable than the Islamic, all non-democratic, leaders who smiled as the towers crumbled, but, aside from better intelligence and Intelligence Services, the best we can hope for is that if such a thing happens again we will meet it with a clearer conscience.
FROM JURATE M., Vilinius, LITHUANIA:
I sympathize with you in American sorrow.
JM
FROM DARHL S., Tampa Bay, FLA, USA:
interesting image on the link:
SPOT infrared satellite image of Manhattan, acquired on September 11 at
11:55 AM ET. Image may be freely reproduced with "CNES/SPOT Image 2001"
copyright attribution: http://www.spot.com/home/news/NYC-091101.jpg
FROM RIC W., Austin, TX, USA:
SUBJECT: Give Them a Reason to Live
Commentary of the September Tragedy
1. Silence and tears and words of condolence are all that are suitable now.
Poetry fails me. It will take a great poet to express the complex nature of
this event.
2. A Day of Mourning. It is not a sign of greatness to show the world that
we are unfazed and able to go back to work as usual. This is a horror. And
we should grieve. Grieve publicly and loudly and long. The world has long
been in a state of misery and we naively thought we were not part of this
greater world. We now know we are not an island. We are subject to the
collective sorrow and madness of the world and we need to grieve for the
toll our madness has wrought and for the madness that has been thrust upon
us.
3. Retribution. We must bring to justice any parties who played a part in
this. Clearly, unequivocally. No rush to judgment, but there must be
judgment. The human psyche demands justice. It doesn't have to be a capital
justice, but there must be justice. To think otherwise is to engage in the
arrogant idealism that has isolated us from the world and the terrorists
from their own humanity. (See point 5.)
4. Bush's request for money.
a. This does not change the nature of the national or international
economic crisis except perhaps to make it worse. Bush's policies do not
begin to address this problem. His capital gains idea would be laughable
were it not so indicative of his utter lack of imagination.
b. This does not mean we should give this man, the man who so
readily reaches for dictatorship quips, carte blanche to fight terrorism.
c. The missile defense plan. This horror should kill that boondoggle
of an idea. Clearly, low-tech guerilla tactics makes mincemeat of this
harebrained idea. Again, see Point 5 on why first world and second world
enemies (the only legitimate reason for a missile defense) aren't a threat.
5. You want to spend billions on defense against an invisible enemy? Buy a
Palestinian homeland; help with the third world infrastructure; stop
exploiting the economically powerless. Power is used to benefit the
powerless else it is lost. Give them a reason to live or they will die and
they will take you with them if they can ("If you are a bully/Treat me good,
a bully/I beg you treat me good/I'm like a steppin' razor/Don't you watch my
size--I'm dangerous, I'm dangerous."). This isn't Tripoli piracy these
people are dying for. These people hate us for a myriad of reasons. And they
have nothing to lose. They need a reason to live. All they have now is a
reason to die. We need to help them find a reason to live. Indiscriminate
retribution will only give them more reasons to die. Repeat: Terrorists
already have reasons to die; give them a reason to live.
SPECIAL SECTION: "The World Reacts" Continues (Stay with us!) 
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