The annual report on global terrorism was issued last April, but – in the wake of the Twin Towers and Pentagon attacks – it is being given prominence in the newspapers today.
At the head of the roster, as "USA TODAY" put it ("America’s Terrorist Enemies Have Bases Worldwide"), is Terrorist "Prophet" and Financier Osama Bin Laden who declared in 1998 that it was the duty of all Muslims to kill US citizens and their allies. If that wasn’t a declaration of war, issued almost three years ago, I don’t know what is. Yet, in legalistic fashion, American lawyers and debaters are still trying to "prove" Bin Laden’s being the mastermind, or at least his guilt by complicity in the World Trade Center sneak attack that claimed, officially, more than 5,000 lives. US President George W. Bush was even roundly criticized for his remark that Bin Laden was wanted "dead of alive." That’s what weakens America: all that talk-talk which they often mistake for democracy.
I’d advise America, if I were cheeky enough, to take heed of what their great General George "Blood and Guts" Patton said long before he punched his Third Army into Nazi Germany. (He would have gotten to Berlin ahead of everybody else, including the Russians, if he hadn’t been stopped by Ike Eisenhower, the supreme commander, and the Allied high command.) The young Patton said as early as 1925: "Hold the enemy by the nose and kick him in the pants." In World War II, Patton drove his men hard. As he quipped, "I am the best damn ass-kicker in the whole US Army!" Almost everything Patton said was unprintable, but he inspired and tongue-lashed his soldiers to fight.
My sister and a cousin, nearby, watched in horror as the first plane smashed into one Tower and a second into the other. My son-in-law Bob, who is a group supervisor in the New Jersey piers, saw both buildings, in turn, imploding and collapsing on themselves. The sight of desperate people falling from the top floors will forever be seared into their memories. Many of those who plunged to terrible deaths below did not jump voluntarily – they were pushed out, screaming or calling out in terror, by the force of the raging inferno ignited by the impact of aircraft, fully loaded with aviation gasoline, creating a firestorm so powerful that it melted steel girders along with the concrete. A man and a woman, it must be said, leaped hand-in-hand, united by love in death as they were in life.
Cable News Network (CNN), in its broadcasts and television reports here, has already been slugging the daily news: "America’s New War." Congress has approved $40 billion for relief, reconstruction, and the armed forces. The USS Theordore Roosevelt carrier battle group has just sailed out of Norfolk (Va.) enroute to the Mediterranean – or, perhaps, the Far East.
Of course, the murderous Taleban Islamic fanatics who’ve been massacring their own captive Afghan population for "crimes" against Islam, will never give up Bin Laden, particularly not to their hated enemy (but former anti-Soviet "ally"), the USA.
The US will have to attack Afghanistan, and, possibly, for all those noises about cooperation, radical Pakistan, too. So what if Pakistan is, like next-door India (its foe), a nuclear . . . well, "power"? He who nukes first may not have time or opportunity to launch a second nuclear missile or detonate another nuke.
When you’re standing eyeball-to-eyeball with somebody, the first one who blinks – loses. Does the Muslim "world’ hate the United States? It surely does. Mujihadeen or "holy warriors," as the angry and resentful Muslims call themselves, won’t be easy to subdue. As for Afghanistan, the graveyard of invading armies as well as warring tribes, the Yanks can’t even threaten (in the fashion of Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay) to "bomb Afghanistan into the Stone Age." Afghanistan is already in the Stone Age, its capital Kabul in the throes of homegrown terror, persecution and despair, its homes and structures gaping in ruin (from civil wars as well past Russian aggression). All the Taleban have had going for them is their fanaticism and their weaponry.
Will the US military, where muscle has turned to fat, be able to re-invent itself to cope with those ragged, determined, "suicidal" fighters. There are those among the US population, while patriotism runs high, everybody displays the American flag here (proudly but sorrowfully flying, atop public buildings and edifices, at half-mast) and bumper signs promise "revenge", who’re worried that the military draft will take their sons away from them and put them in harm’s way. It’s a natural response. Let’s see how an aroused America manages to cope with that.
The US stock market has plunged alarmingly, the Nasdaq in three days of listless trading, is down by 10 percent. But what the heck: Lighten up, America! A "war" is on its way to restore the battered US economy.
Separate pride of place in the terrorist roster is given the Abu Sayyaf Group, listed as located in the Philippines and Malaysia. The Abu Sayyaf’s goal is listed as an "independent Islamic state in the southern Philippines." The State Department paper asserts that "some members fought and trained in Afghanistan." It estimated that the Abus numbered 200 "but could be as many as 2,000."
What? Bin Laden has "bases" in Kosovo and Bosnia? Sus, those two places are where US troops, warplanes and armor rushed in not long ago to "save" the Muslim Bosnians and later the Muslim Kosovars (ethnic Albanians) from being wiped out by the "un-Christian" Orthodox Serbs. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), with America, Britain, Germany and the European Union countries in the lead (certainly not Muslims), charged into the fray to blast the Serbs and "rescue" the Muslims. Not to side with the Slob Milosevich (who’s facing war crimes trial in The Hague), but he’s gotten the last laugh. The Kosovo Liberation Army of Mujahiddeen has refused to disarm, and its "warriors" are threatening next-door Macedonia. As I told the Americans last year: "The Muslim whose life you save today will blow up your embassy tomorrow."
Sounds bigoted, but what the heck: I’m sorry to have been proven, unfortunately, right.
As our United Airlines Flight 80, bound into Newark Airport out of LAX (Los Angeles) swooped to a landing, I had to blink – twice. In the near-distance loomed the familiar Manhattan, New York skyline, but something was obviously missing. There was an aching gap where the proud Twin Towers of the World Trade Center had once stood.
We had to literally claw our way into the passenger list of the United Airlines "shuttle" Flight 2001, flying out of San Francisco (SFO) Airport on a 55-minute commute to Los Angeles where we caught the Newark-onward flight.
Whatever the optimistic news reports say, traffic is not returning to normal in the skyways of the United States. Planes taking off are far fewer and more difficult to get, although air travel has become less attractive (the airlines have lost US $12 billion, some are closing down). Yesterday, 70,000 airline employees learned they will probably lose their jobs. Those prospective mass lay-offs constitute 40 percent of the work force of airlines across the US.
There is talk that eventually 100,000 airline employees will be out of work. The airlines are begging the US government for a $25 billion "bail-out" program. It also costs big money to beef up airport security.
But, as is axiomatic, war is hell. Not only on the battlefront, but in the pocket.