Ready to go to war – against what ‘enemy

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., USA – We were on the third floor of the VIRGIN Megastore on Market Street, which passes for San Francisco’s main street. It was midmorning yesterday. Suddenly, one of the VIRGIN staffers, identified by his black t-shirt, rushed upstairs on the escalator, calling out in a loud voice: "We’d like everybody to evacuate this building immediately – there’s a bomb threat!"

You bet we evacuated the building pronto. When we got to the street, police patrol cars had already blocked off the approaches to that establishment, even from Stockton and Union Square.

The "explosion" never came. But that’s the way things are in America today – as that nation girds for war. There are scores of called-in "bomb threats" in every major city, and every major airport. It’s impossible that all could be the work of the same bunch of terrorists who destroyed four buildings in the World Trade Center, particularly the Twin Towers in which thousands perished. Many of the bomb "warnings" must have come from the usual crazies and loonies – but the authorities here were taking no chances, where America, over-confident end easy-going had been lax before, security is now super-tight. The paranoia has reached such an extent that, to date, all international flights emanating from foreign countries are barred from landing on American soil. In this, the terrorists have achieved their aim: They’ve forced America to button itself up tight, to suspend all major activities – while the stock market (meaning the "Dow") won’t reopen for trading until Monday, and it’s very iffy that the alternative stock exchange, the Nasdaq, will – since One Liberty Plaza, the building near the destroyed Twin Towers which houses the Nasdaq, has been so damaged that it is in danger of falling down, too.

However, to ban all incoming international flights – except the ones stranded in Canada for days – from entering the US airspace? This demonstrates the panicky state in which the Superpower US finds itself, as Americans mourned their dead in a day of prayer and sorrow yesterday (Friday), and American flags flew, in a show of patriotism, from every flagstaff, most buildings and factory walls, and from many cars.

President George W. Bush has just called up 50,000 US National Guardsmen and has been mobilizing military "reservists." The Chief Executive asked Congress for $40 billion for the rescue effort and help for the families of the dead and for military purposes. In approving the "use of force resolution", which virtually grants Bush the right to start a war, "Opposition" House Minority Leader Rep. Richard Gephardt (Democrat, Missouri) explained why the House of Representatives had voted 420 to one, in a show of unanimity, to give a Republican President, Bush, such powers. Gephardt declared this was a time for "unity." That says it all. Americans have come together, and are spoiling for a fight.

What’s admirable, I must say, of Americans in this hour of pain, grief, humiliation and anger, is their ability to roll with the punch – and come up barefisted, ready to resume everyday business, and strike back at the "enemy." In a poll, 93 percent of the respondents voted to invoke military action. For all his stammering, 86 percent of Americans polled backed up their President in whatever he decided to do, even if this led to "war."

War against whom? There’s no evading it. For all the official reticence about absolutely naming Islamic terrorist financier and plotter Osama bin Laden, a Saudi of Yemeni origins holed up in Afghanistan, the chief of the assassins, everybody knows where the irate administration is headed: to get Bin Laden and, for all the diplomatic flimflammery, his protectors the fanatical rulers of Afghanistan, the Taleban.

The US has asked the original sponsors of the Taleban, the Pakistanis, to help track down Bin Laden. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf (a former commanding general and still dictator) has pledged "unstinted cooperation."

Don’t kid yourselves: Pakistan whose name means "Land of the Pure" will hem and haw, and nothing will be done. General Pervez cannot possibly be seen by his fundamentalist countrymen and supporters as doing the bidding of the United States. Pakistan, for all its so-called "alliances" with the US and the West, has for long been a terrorist exporting nation, abetting, for instance, our own Moro rebellion in Mindanao. Pressure the Taleban? What a laugh: Pakistani officers and mentors invented years ago the Taleban, piously calling that murderous bunch of mad Mullahs, simple "Islamic scholars." Under their vicious "scholarship," an already backward Afghanistan has become a desert hell on earth, where women have no rights, TV sets are prohibited (not necessarily a bad thing), and eight foreign aid workers with 16 of their Afghan employees (from "Shelter International") are currently in chains, undergoing a trial which could involve the death penalty. Their heinous "crime"? They are alleged by the Taleban authorities to have preached Christianity and attempted to convert devout Muslims to the Christian faith! Salamabit. And yet, the usual dumb-dumbs and bleeding hearts still yelp about the "tolerance" of Islam. Give us a break.

Finally, if the Pakistani leader "helps" the US, which he is not inclined to do, he runs the risk of being assassinated by the fundamentalists who surround him.

The same is true of the Palestinian chief, Yasser Arafat. He can’t really cooperate with the Americans. He cannot possibly make "peace" with Israel. He cannot rein in Hamas, or the other Islamic Jihad groups; he would promptly be assassinated as well. It’s a cruel world. I submit, where only the law of the gun – and the "suicide bomber" – prevails.

If America goes to war, I hope that George Walker Bush isn’t like old dad, the elder President George B., who defeated Iraq’s Dictator Saddam Insane – uh, Hussein, by marshalling a grand coalition in Operation "Desert Storm", then stopped short of crashing into Baghdad and hanging Saddam up by his balls. Thus, he managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Is this the same kind of America, the once-Jolly Green Giant, that will wage war now? I hope not. I pray not. He may have made grievous mistakes in his imperious career, but the late General Douglas MacArthur was right: "There is no substitute for victory."

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The past few days have seen American journalism at its best – and demonstrated the power of television. Day in and day out, fantastic and heart-wrenching TV images of those two passenger jetliners crashing into the Twin Towers, the crumbling of those proud skyscrapers, the horrifying vision of people leaping from windows to their deaths a hundred floors down, the tales told by tearful family members of last-minute cellphone calls, not only from doomed executives and office workers, but from some of the 266 equally-doomed passengers aboard the four jet planes rushing to collision, have filled TV screen nationwide. TV news anchors have been plumbing the depths of every emotion, narrating every story of heroism and heartbreak.

Listenership ratings have gone as high as the astronomical statistic of 60.5 million Americans – on Sept. 11, the day of the attack – being glued to their TV sets. Nielsen figures say 79.5 million viewers watched 11 networks from 8 to 11 p.m.

The print media, too, has run vivid photographs and graphic reports. Blared forth the San Francisco Chronicle Friday: "PRESIDENT ASKS CONGRESS FOR SWEEPING WAR POWERS." The Los Angeles Times bannered: "BATTLE LINE: Bush Declared That War on Terrorism ‘Is Now the Focus of My Administration’; Hijackers Identified."

PEOPLE Weekly deserves kudos for being the first to deliver a 20-page cover story and pictorial on the disaster: The cover headline for a dramatic photo clearly showing the second aircraft speeding towards the South Tower as the North Tower is engulfed in smoke and flame was a succinct: "SEPT. 11, 2001: The Day That Shook America."

It’s said that journalism is history written on the run. America is now running hard: Its final goal is in the far distance, but already glimpsed. Will an aroused America avenge its dead? Will victory, for which there is no substitute, be achieved? In the past, Americans went to war reluctantly, but finished with a bang. This time, there is no reluctance. Where will it all end?

In the Philippines, we’ve been fighting that fight for years. America, welcome to the Club!