Home of the brave will pull through
AS AN AMERICAN soon to leave Hong Kong for the third time and return to my Washington DC home, the appalling terrorist attacks guarantee the United States I find will be different in at least one substantial way from the country I left three years ago - it will be a nation at war. Not total war in the World War II sense, but one engaged in an expanding global battle against any groups which seek to organise such unprecedented carnage and against any governments anywhere which assist them.
US President George W. Bush made that explicit in his comments on Tuesday night. 'The search is under way for those who are behind these evil acts,' he said, adding most significantly that 'we will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbour them.'
Like many other Americans, I will welcome the effort - provided it is sustained and targeted, based on reliable intelligence and not on an angry urge to do something for the sake of action itself. And if televised interviews are a reliable indication, it is reassuring to hear so many politicians, including some of the most conservative of Congressional leaders, insisting that nothing rash be done.
But the enormity of the attacks will intensify calls for effective retaliation as their full impact drives home. The eventual death toll will total several thousand, though more days are needed before reliable counts can be known. By contrast, Japan's raid on Pearl Harbour, America's 'day of infamy', killed relatively few - 2,400 - in December 1941. The count at the World Trade Centre and Pentagon may even exceed those of the bloodiest event in US history, the 1862 Civil-War battle of Antietam, where 22,000 perished.
This appalling death toll means that an expanded battle against terrorism will not resemble the Vietnam War, which for so many years divided the nation and poisoned political life. It will have popular support provided its tactics relate clearly to an effective strategy.
Just who was responsible remains unproven. However, bit by bit, evidence is already emerging which links the terrorists to Osama bin Laden, the wealthy Saudi exile who enjoys the hospitality and personal friendship of Mullah Mohammad Omar, supreme leader of Afghanistan's Taleban regime. Speaking on Mullah Omar's behalf, a Taleban official has insisted that neither the regime nor bin Laden could possibly have been involved because neither has the resources required for such co-ordinated attacks on widely separated targets.
Given bin Laden's history - including his ties to the 1993 bombing of the same World Trade Centre and the deadly explosions at two US embassies in Nairobi (Kenya) and Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) in 1998 - such statements are not persuasive by themselves. But much more needs to be conclusively known before any reprisals are ordered.
The calls for action will be fuelled by several factors, among them a lingering national sense of frustration. The 1993 World Trade Centre bombers were caught and brought to trial; at least one had been scheduled for sentencing yesterday. But that did not prevent the US embassy bombings, nor did capture of some terrorists who caused them prevent last year's attack on an American warship in the Yemeni port of Aden which left 17 sailors dead. In each of those cases, and others, the organisers truly responsible remained free.
But many Americans will also be motivated by more than this sense of dissatisfaction with past anti-terrorist efforts when they call for a strong response. They will also have individual ties, however ephemeral, which will cause them to identify personally with the consequences of these latest outrages. Consider my own case. My son works near the World Trade Centre and watched as the second aeroplane hit a tower; at least one of his close friends almost certainly died there. My wife's office is near the White House, which was evacuated as a precautionary measure for fear of explosive attack. Twice in my life, first as a US Navy officer and later as a journalist, I have worked in the Pentagon, not far from that new gaping hole in its wall.
Others, including many in Hong Kong, have links of varying intensity to the people and places directly caught up in these attacks. In particular, those who work in the financial sector may have friends among the victims. This will feed their desire to see something done.
Other nations need to recognise this is not just an American problem. The raids by hijacked aircraft, which needed no armies to pull off, prove that any city could become a target. A handful of dedicated actors with training and enough murderous intent might well emulate this raid or try some variation - perhaps Basque separatists against Madrid, IRA sympathisers against London, any of several Balkan groups against Brussels, Chechens against Moscow, rebels in Aceh against Jakarta, and so forth.
Because of this universality, Washington should, and almost certainly will, seek international support and assistance for any counter-strikes against the people responsible. The barbarity of the raids means the law-abiding world community must serve notice that no terrorists can rely any longer on places which profess to offer them refuge. They need to know that their war, ostensibly against America, is in fact a war against the civilised order. And those who assist them, as Mr Bush stated, will have joined the enemy and can expect to be treated as such.
Just how to react remains unclear. In the past, the US has launched cruise missiles against bin Laden's Afghan training camps to little avail; they had been evacuated. A 1998 raid on a Sudanese factory, allegedly the source of terrorist material, may have been the result of an intelligence error. But if the bin Laden organisation is deemed guilty once again, after the evidence is carefully evaluated, the targets of retaliation are likely to be substantially different. Bin Laden's Afghan hosts would then be included, perhaps with ground raids by special units tasked with pursuing Taleban leaders. Missile strikes from afar will not be enough.
The America I rejoin, and probably the modern world as well, will be changed in other ways by these raids. Air travel won't be the same for years, if ever. Security precautions will be intensified, and this will lengthen travelling times, while making airline connections will become even more hectic. Gaining access to government offices or landmark buildings will become more difficult.
What about the public mood across America? Many are now forecasting economic gloom, expecting these strikes at symbols of American military and financial power to be catalysts for a bearish future. But I wonder. The main American response is not panic. Instead, they are helping those most affected or otherwise trying to be useful. Meantime, the Pentagon stayed in operation even as part of it burned and the Federal Government was back in business. Stock markets closed but, like the rest of New York, will soon be back at work.
Americans have a habit of rising to meet tough challenges. These horrendous attacks could cause them to cast off the despondency and despair of recent weeks that had been fed by an accumulation of economic bad news. From afar, Mr Bush seems to lack the gravitas required by such a grim occasion. Yet political, business and other leaders are calling for bipartisan unity behind his efforts to find and destroy the instigators of terrorism and pull life back towards normal. If a feeling grows that America is finally doing something effective about terrorism, then a new sense of national unity and purpose might spread. It is possible, just possible, that people will decide they've had enough bad news for a while and will get on with their lives in a different and more determined mood.
