[19.6% of World's Population, 1.2 billion Muslims]
Literature
1957 Albert Camus
1988 - Najib Mahfooz
Peace
1978 - Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat
1994 - Yaser Arafat
Chemistry
1990 Elias James Corey
1999 - Ahmed Zewail
Medicine
1960 Peter Brian Medawar
1998 Ferid Mourad
[0.2% of world's population, 14.1 Million Jews]
Literature
1910 - Paul Heyse
1927 - Henri Bergson
1958 - Boris Pasternak
1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon
1966 - Nelly Sachs
1976 - Saul Bellow
1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer
1981 - Elias Canetti
1987 - Joseph Brodsky
1991 - Nadine Gordimer
World Peace
1911 - Alfred Fried
1911 - Tobias Michael Carel Asser
1968 - Rene Cassin
1973 - Henry Kissinger
1978 - Menachem Begin
1986 - Elie Wiesel
1994 - Shimon Peres
1994 - Yitzhak Rabin
Chemistry
1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer
1906 - Henri Moissan
1910 - Otto Wallach
1915 - Richard Willstaetter
1918 - Fritz Haber
1943 - George Charles de Hevesy
1961 - Melvin Calvin
1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz
1972 - William Howard Stein
1977 - Ilya Prigogine
1979 - Herbert Charles Brown
1980 - Paul Berg
1980 - Walter Gilbert
1981 - Roald Hoffmann
1982 - Aaron Klug
1985 - Albert A. Hauptman
1985 - Jerome Karle
1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach
1988 - Robert Huber
1989 - Sidney Altman
1992 - Rudolph Marcus
2000 - Alan J. Heeger
Economics
1970 - Paul Anthony Samuelson
1971 - Simon Kuznets
1972 - Kenneth Joseph Arrow
1975 - Leonid Kantorovich
1976 - Milton Friedman
1978 - Herbert A. Simon
1980 - Lawrence Robert Klein
1985 - Franco Modigliani
1987 - Robert M. Solow
1990 - Harry Markowitz
1990 - Merton Miller
1992 - Gary Becker
1993 - Rober Fogel
Medicine
1908 - Elie Metchnikoff
1908 - Paul Erlich
1914 - Robert Barany
1922 - Otto Meyerhof
1930 - Karl Landsteiner
1931 - Otto Warburg
1936 - Otto Loewi
1944 - Joseph Erlanger
1944 - Herbert Spencer Gasser
1945 - Ernst Boris Chain
1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller
1950 - Tadeus Reichstein
1952 - Selman Abraham Waksman
1953 - Hans Krebs
1953 - Fritz Albert Lipmann
1958 - Joshua Lederberg
1959 - Arthur Kornberg
1964 - Konrad Bloch
1965 - Francois Jacob
1965 - Andre Lwoff
1967 - George Wald
1968 - Marshall W. Nirenberg
1969 - Salvador Luria
1970 - Julius Axelrod
1970 - Sir Bernard Katz
1972 - Gerald Maurice Edelman
1975 - David Baltimore
1975 - Howard Martin Temin
1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg
1977 - Rosalyn Sussman Yalow
1978 - Daniel Nathans
1980 - Baruj Benacerraf
1984 - Cesar Milstein
1985 - Michael Stuart Brown
1985 - Joseph L. Goldstein
1986 - Stanley Cohen & Rita Levi-Montalcini 1988 - Gertrude Elion
1989 - Harold Varmus
1991 - Erwin Neher
1991 - Bert Sakmann
1993 - Richard J. Roberts
1993 - Phillip Sharp
1994 - Alfred Gilman
1995 - Edward B. Lewis
Physics
1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson
1908 - Gabriel Lippmann
1921 - Albert Einstein
1922 - Niels Bohr
1925 - James Franck
1925 - Gustav Hertz
1943 - Gustav Stern
1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi
1952 - Felix Bloch
1954 - Max Born
1958 - Igor Tamm
1959 - Emilio Segre
1960 - Donald A. Glaser
1961 - Robert Hofstadter
1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau
1965 - Richard Phillips Feynman
1965 - Julian Schwinger
1969 - Murray Gell-Mann
1971 - Dennis Gabor
1973 - Brian David Josephson
1975 - Benjamin Mottleson
1976 - Burton Richter
1978 - Arno Allan Penzias
1978 - Peter L Kapitza
1979 - Stephen Weinberg
1979 - Sheldon Glashow
1988 - Leon Lederman
1988 - Melvin Schwartz
1988 - Jack Steinberger
1990 - Jerome Friedman
1995 - Martin Perl
(Population Info: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Ill., Britannica Book of the Year, 1999)
WHEN A FEDERAL judge in Michigan ruled earlier this year that the Justice Department's policy of blanketing its post-9/11 immigration cases in secrecy could not be squared with the open government practiced in this country, we offered a modest suggestion: Don't appeal. The government, however, pushed on. In the months since, a second district court -- this one in New Jersey -- has issued a similar ruling (which the government also appealed). And now, a unanimous panel of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals -- ruling in the Michigan case, which concerns a man named Rabih Haddad -- has also determined that the systematic closure of 9/11-related cases violates the First Amendment. "The Executive Branch seeks to uproot people's lives, outside the public eye, and behind a closed door," wrote Judge Damon Keith for the court. "Democracies die behind closed doors."
No more judges should have to rule on this obnoxious policy; it's time that the Justice Department got the message. In the wake of the attacks, authorities rounded up large numbers of Arabs and Muslims whose immigration status had been revealed as deficient in the context of the terrorism probe. Many of these people surely had nothing to do with terrorism. Yet the government slapped on their "special interest" deportation proceedings a particularly rigid set of rules: "no visitors, no family, no press." The cases are kept off the books. While they involve no classified information, they officially -- at least in public -- don't exist.
The government contends that the secrecy is needed to prevent the revelation of information concerning the direction of the investigation -- information including who has been arrested, as well as specific facts that might be disclosed within a given proceeding. But department officials have also argued that the secrecy isn't total, because lawyers for the accused get full access to the proceedings and are entitled to talk about them. As the court pointed out, the ability of the potential deportees to communicate with the outside world -- through their lawyers, family and the press -- renders any secrecy ineffective, as the most sensitive material can be disclosed anyway. It is hard to imagine that those few detainees who are actually al Qaeda operatives need open proceedings to make their capture known.
The public, however, does need open proceedings to get a sense of what its government is doing. And the fact that lawyers can report on the subject does not solve the problem; the public's access to important governmental proceedings is not served by permitting biased secondhand reporting by advocates for one side. If specific information needs to be protected, immigration judges are free to close the proceedings. But that determination must be made on a case-by-case basis, not in advance for an entire group of cases. As Judge Keith put it, "When government begins closing doors, it selectively controls information rightfully belonging to the people. Selective information is misinformation. The Framers of the First Amendment . . . protected the people against secret government." He's right; the Justice Department should stop litigating and accept it.
WASHINGTON ? In the way that Miranda denotes defendants' rights and Roe denotes abortion rights, Hamdi may come to denote an enemy's rights.
Yaser Esam Hamdi is an American born in Baton Rouge, La., raised in Saudi Arabia, and captured by Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan while serving with the Taliban.
After a stay in Guantanamo, he is now in a Navy brig in Norfolk, Va., designated as an "enemy combatant," not charged with anything, and denied legal representation. Federal District Court Judge Robert Doumar in Norfolk ordered unrestricted access to counsel for Mr. Hamdi. That was halted by the appeals court, which told the judge to hear more arguments and get more facts before ruling. When Judge Doumar called for documents, the Justice Department did not provide many.
At a second hearing, Doumar renewed his order that the government furnish more information to justify holding Hamdi incommunicado. The order said, "We must protect the freedom of even those who hate us." The judge offered to review classified information in secret.
The Justice Department, however, gave no sign of receding from its position that anyone it labels an enemy combatant has no rights and, furthermore, that the courts have no power to intervene. The government has once again appealed Doumar's ruling.
The Hamdi case asserts a novel separation of powers between the executive branch and the judiciary that is almost unprecedented. During the Civil War, the Supreme Court prohibited military detention of noncombatant Americans without appeal as long as the courts were functioning.
But what if Attorney General John Ashcroft says that, when it comes to enemy combatants, the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction either?
A 1971 law looking back to the detention of Japanese-Americans without legal recourse during World War II prohibits the imprisonment of American citizens except pursuant to an act of Congress. The administration says that law does not apply to enemy combatants.
If the administration can decide on its own who has rights and who does not, who can have a lawyer and who cannot, who is an enemy and who is not, and further proclaim that its decision is not subject to judicial review, then that endangers the very liberties that President Bush says he is trying to defend against the terrorists.
Daniel Schorr is a senior news analyst at National Public Radio.
WASHINGTON - Nearly a year after the start of America's war on terrorism, that war faces the real risk of being hijacked by foreign governments with repressive agendas. Instead of leading a democratic coalition, the United States faces the risk of dangerous isolation. The Bush administration's definition of the challenge that America confronts has been cast largely in semireligious terms. The public has been told repeatedly that terrorism is "evil," which it undoubtedly is, and that "evildoers" are responsible for it, which doubtless they are. But beyond these justifiable condemnations, there is a historical void. It is as if terrorism is suspended in outer space as an abstract phenomenon, with ruthless terrorists acting under some Satanic inspiration unrelated to any specific motivation.
President Bush has wisely eschewed identifying terrorism with Islam as a whole and been careful to stress that Islam as such is not at fault. But some supporters of the administration have been less careful about such distinctions, arguing that Islamic culture in general is so hostile to the West, and especially to democracy, that it has created a fertile soil for terrorist hatred of America.
Missing from much of the public debate is discussion of the simple fact that lurking behind every terroristic act is a specific political antecedent. That does not justify either the perpetrator or his political cause. Nonetheless, the fact is that almost all terrorist activity originates from some political conflict and is sustained by it as well. That is true of the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland, the Basques in Spain, the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, the Muslims in Kashmir and so forth.
In the case of Sept. 11, it does not require deep analysis to note - given the identity of the perpetrators - that the Middle East's political history has something to do with the hatred of Middle Eastern terrorists for America. The specifics of the region's political history need not be dissected too closely because terrorists presumably do not delve deeply into archival research before embarking on a terrorist career. Rather, it is the emotional context of felt, observed or historically recounted political grievances that shapes the fanatical pathology of terrorists and eventually triggers their murderous actions.
American involvement in the Middle East is clearly the main impulse of the hatred that has been directed at America. There is no escaping the fact that Arab political emotions have been shaped by the region's encounter with French and British colonialism, by the defeat of the Arab effort to prevent the existence of Israel and by the subsequent American support for Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians, as well as by the direct injection of American power into the region.
This last has been perceived by the more fanatical elements in the region as offensive to the sacred religious purity of Saudi Arabian custodianship of Islam's holy places and as hurtful to the welfare of the Iraqi people. The religious aspect adds fervor to their zeal, but it is worth noting that some of the Sept. 11 terrorists had non-religious lifestyles. Their attack on the World Trade Center had a definite political cast to it.
Yet there has been a remarkable reluctance in America to confront the more complex historical dimensions of this hatred. The inclination instead has been to rely on abstract assertions like terrorists "hate freedom" or that their religious background makes them despise Western culture.
To win the war on terrorism, one must therefore set two goals: first to destroy the terrorists and, second, to begin a political effort that focuses on the conditions that brought about their emergence. That is what the British are doing in Ulster, the Spaniards are doing in Basque country and the Russians are being urged to do in Chechnya. To do so does not imply propitiation of the terrorists, but is a necessary component of a strategy designed to isolate and eliminate the terrorist underworld.
Analogies are not the same as identity, but with that in mind one might consider the parallels between what the United States faces today in regard to Middle Eastern terrorism and the crises that America confronted domestically in the 1960's and 70's. At that time, American society was shaken by violence undertaken by groups like the Ku Klux Klan (often in semi-autonomous klaverns), White Citizens' Councils, the Black Panthers and the Symbionese Liberation Army. Without civil-rights legislation and the concomitant changes in America's social views on race relations, the challenge that those organizations posed might have lasted much longer and become more menacing.
The rather narrow, almost one-dimensional definition of the terrorist threat favored by the Bush administration poses the special risk that foreign powers will also seize upon the word "terrorism" to promote their own agendas, as President Vladimir Putin of Russia, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee of India and President Jiang Zemin of China are doing. For each of them the disembodied American definition of the terrorist challenge has been both expedient and convenient.
When speaking to Americans, neither Mr. Putin nor Mr. Sharon can hardly utter a sentence without the "T" word in it in order to transform America's struggle against terrorism into a joint struggle against their particular Muslim neighbors. Mr. Putin clearly sees an opportunity to deflect Islamic hostility away from Russia despite Russian crimes in Chechnya and earlier in Afghanistan. Mr. Sharon would welcome a deterioration in United States relations with Saudi Arabia and perhaps American military action against Iraq while gaining a free hand to suppress the Palestinians. Hindu fanatics in India are also quite eager to conflate Islam in general with terrorism in Kashmir in particular. Not to be outdone, the Chinese recently succeeded in persuading the Bush administration to list an obscure Uighur Muslim separatist group fighting in Xinjiang province as a terrorist organization with ties to Al Qaeda.
For America, the potential risk is that its nonpolitically defined war on terrorism may thus be hijacked and diverted to other ends. The consequences would be dangerous. If America comes to be viewed by its key democratic allies in Europe and Asia as morally obtuse and politically naïve in failing to address terrorism in its broader and deeper dimensions - and if it is also seen by them as uncritically embracing intolerant suppression of ethnic or national aspirations - global support for America's policies will surely decline. America's ability to maintain a broadly democratic antiterrorist coalition will suffer gravely. The prospects of international support for an eventual military confrontation with Iraq will also be drastically diminished.
Such an isolated America is likely to face even more threats from vengeful terrorists who have decided to blame America for any outrages committed by its self-appointed allies. A victory in the war against terrorism can never be registered in a formal act of surrender. Instead, it will only be divined from the gradual waning of terrorist acts. Any further strikes against Americans will thus be a painful reminder that the war has not been won. Sadly, a main reason will be America's reluctance to focus on the political roots of the terrorist atrocity of Sept. 11.
Zbigniew Brzezinski was national security adviser in the Carter administration.
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
The events of Sept. 11 scarred the skyline and jarred the language. From the first moments, the disaster required new terms to describe new facts and feelings. In the last year, a whole glossary has arisen to describe just about every aspect of the terrorist attacks. There's an ABC just for the international aspect (Al Qaeda, American Taliban, Axis of Evil . . .). A longer, more touching vocabulary has arisen specifically from the destruction of the twin towers, one reflecting strong human needs for utility and respect.
The event. At first, people spoke of the World Trade Center disaster or of the hijacked planes in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania or of the terrorist attacks on America. All the terms were either cumbersome or, by being selective, risked ignoring bravery and suffering elsewhere. The language needed shorthand. Within a few weeks, it had evolved: 9/11. The term, variously pronounced "nine-eleven" or "nine-one-one," had been used in some places from the beginning. The New York Times 9/11 Neediest Fund, for instance, began on Sept. 12. The number of times the term appeared in The Times rose steadily, reaching a peak in December. By then, as if by informal national consensus, 9/11 had become universal shorthand for the whole event.
The people. The bland term "first responders" quickly morphed into "heroes" as the shocking loss of 343 firefighters and 23 New York City Police and 37 Port Authority officers sank in on the public. The world came to visualize firefighters climbing upstairs hefting heavy hoses or trudging downstairs carrying people in wheelchairs, and the respect radiated so widely that people soon associated "heroes" with emergency workers everywhere.
A different kind of respect showed in the words used to describe those unaccounted for in the World Trade Center. At first, they were "the missing," a term that was then merely accurate. Who knew whether a loved one might turn up, for instance, in a New Jersey hospital across the Hudson. Later, what had been accurate became considerate. To avoid the blunt finality of "dead," people referred to those "lost' on 9/11, out of respect for families still hoping against hope.
How, meanwhile, did one refer to the 25,000 or so people who got out of the towers? "Escapees," they were called at one brokerage firm. "Evacuees," people at the Sept. 11 Fund said. Others spoke with grim imprecision of "survivors," even though that term encompasses not only those who made it out but also the families of those who did not.
They were all, in any case, "victims," a word that 9/11 made newly acceptable. A shadow had passed over the word because of its connotation of weakness and passivity. Indeed, in June 2000, New York's Victim Services Agency, which did such a monumental job helping victims' families at Pier 94, changed its name to Safe Horizon. In the wake of 9/11, there seems to have been no such hesitation. "Victim" has been used freely to describe not only those lost but also those injured, displaced, financially ravaged or subject to the psychic effects of 9/11 shock.
Therapists working with traumatized rescue workers learned that there is one word not to use: "patient." The events were so overwhelming as to weaken traditional police and firefighter resistance to therapy, but only if those being helped were called, for instance, "people affected by 9/11."
The place. Terms for the location also evolved quickly, in part reflecting the enormity of destruction and the speed of the cleanup. "Ground zero," the term for the exact location of a nuclear explosion, was applied immediately. Until 9/11, it had also been used carelessly to mean Square 1, a starting place. Now a new generation absorbed the grimmer meaning.
As work progressed, "the pile" became "the pit" and then "the site." The larger area was called, variously, "below Canal Street" or, while the deep fires burned on, "the hot zone." It was also referred to as "the frozen zone," reflecting the closed streets and paralyzed businesses, or "the liberty zone," New York State's term, and then simply "the zone." Smaller areas developed their own nomenclature. The biggest tent for rescue workers was "the Taj Mahal." The need to distinguish the exact sites of the twin towers soon put the term "footprint" into New York's vocabulary. Cleanup crews soon exposed the "bathtub," the 70-foot-high underground retaining wall that kept the Hudson River out of the trade-center basement. It held, after the workers shored it up with "tiebacks."
The public also learned some unfamiliar engineering terms like "progressive collapse," the pancaking of floors on top of one another, and "eutectics" among others. "An outstanding mystery from the scrap heap is why some of the steel melted in fires that did not seem to have been hot enough to do more than soften steel," says James Glanz, a Times reporter. "One theory is that contaminants in the smoke formed 'eutectics' with the steel -- new compounds with lower melting points."
The consequences. Before 9/11, trauma often referred to the horrible physical injuries seen on "E.R." Now the psychiatric use of the term may be just as likely, referring to the time bombs that 9/11 lodged in the minds of thousands. Indeed, that semantic change may be a positive consequence, says Dr. Spencer Eth, vice chairman of the psychiatry department at St. Vincent's Catholic Medical Centers in downtown Manhattan: "There is a growing acceptance that the emotionally injured have a valid claim for psychiatric care. Nine-eleven may make an important contribution to the national campaign for mental-health parity."
What is called, for short, "9/11 shock" has reverberated. A study done for the New York City Board of Education estimates that 200,000 public-school children show signs of post-traumatic stress, agoraphobia or depression. Dr. Randall Marshall of the New York State Psychiatric Institute cites a study of Canadian adults one month later that found that barely half of those interviewed felt comfortable about flying.
Some terms in this glossary have arrived with more than one meaning, notably "recovery" and "closure." For eight months, while the site was still open, "recovery" had a chilling literal meaning as firefighters and others combed the debris for human fragments. Now that the site has been closed and with the anniversary just days away, the two words portend for some people the start of ''closure'' and the beginning of "recovery" in a hopeful, healing sense. Even so, just as the shock and pain are burned into memory, the words of 9/11 remain chiseled into the language.
Jack Rosenthal is president of The New York Times Company Foundation, which created The Times's 9/11 Neediest Fund. This is his 21st annual pinch-hit appearance for the vacationing William Safire.
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
http://198.64.129.160/rumors/rumors.htm
This page is a list of all those rumors that are going around regarding 9/11 and our current war. Check it out to see which ones are real.
Between the field where the flag is planted there are 9+ miles of flower fields that go all the way to the ocean. The flowers are grown by seed companies. It's a beautiful place close to Vandenberg AFB. Checkout the dimensions of the flag.
The 2002 Floral Flag is 740 feet long and 390 feet wide and maintains the proper Flag dimensions as described in Executive Order #10834. This Flag is 6.65 acres and is the first Floral Flag to be planted with 5 pointed Stars comprised of White Larkspur. Each Star is 24 feet in diameter; Each Stripe is 30 feet wide. This Flag is estimated to contain more than 400,000 Larkspur plants with 4-5 flower stems each for a total of more than 2 million flowers. You can drive by this flag on V Street south of Ocean Ave. in Lompoc, CA.
The latest ploy to drive the Taliban and Al Queada out of the mountains in Afghanistan is to send in a team of North Carolina Special Forces. Billy Bob, Bubba, Boo, Scooter, and Cooter are being sent in with the following information about the Taliban:
As the anniversary of Sept. 11 approaches, terror-related urban legends are running rampant. Luckily, Snopes.com is on the case.
Osama bin Laden lives in Salt Lake City, because his many wives aren't conspicuous there.
Terrorists fund their operations using a telemarketing scam peddling information about an upcoming nuclear attack.
And, if you drink Coke after Labor Day, well, I hope your will's up-to-date.
A year after Sept. 11, rumors like these still circulate on the Net, threatening to turn a vigilante mob of telemarketing-phobic Coke boycotters loose on Salt Lake City.
It's all the husband-and-wife team of Barbara and David Mikkelson -- who run Snopes.com, the Urban Legends Reference Pages -- can do to keep pandemonium at bay with their levelheaded debunking of these well-meaning but often goofy warnings and too-good-to-be-true stories.
Late last year, in an interview with Salon, Barbara Mikkelson discussed what the rumor frenzy said about our fragile psyches. Today, even though the constant threat of terror appears to have abated, she explains why the Sept. 11 rumor mill still churns on.
What are the biggest terrorism rumors circulating right now?
A version of the "helped terrorist" tale. The one we're seeing now features Coca-Cola and sometimes Pepsi.
A fellow of Middle Eastern appearance is in a grocery store or a convenience store or a McDonald's or a Wal-Mart, and he comes up a couple of dollars short in his purchase. And the woman standing behind him in line simply ponies up the two or three dollars that he needs to finish his business. And he meets her outside of the store, and says: "You did me a good turn. I'm going to do you one. Don't drink Coca-Cola after the 15th." Or "Don't drink Coca-Cola after Labor Day." Or "Don't drink Coca-Cola after July 4th" was also heard.
And this is a version of a rumor that we were seeing last fall in cities all over the country: Stay off the bridges on the 12th, don't be in the subways on the 24th, don't go to the boat show, or whatever.
The story itself actually dates back almost two years prior to Sept. 11, where a version of it first appeared in England.
It had to do with an Irish fellow presumed to be IRA warning against Christmas week in a large shopping mall in Britain.
What do you think is the significance of this particular legend? Why does it have staying power and keep morphing?
The major reason is that it makes the threat of terrorism something that can be dealt with and combated. The harsh reality of terrorism is that it is anywhere, anytime and in any manner.
And that is a very frightening thing. It's completely beyond our abilities to deal with.
So rumors like this tend to simplify things down for us. It makes keeping your family safe simply a matter of not drinking Coca-Cola after Labor Day, right? And that is so much easier to deal with than constantly looking about you everywhere you go. And that's one of the reasons such legends have a great appeal: because they take something that is just too large and reduce it down to something that can be handled.
As the anniversary of Sept. 11 approaches, has there been any uptick in these rumors at all? Has there been any change in the kinds of rumors you're seeing?
Right now, we're seeing a surge of "slack-tivism" requests. That's the joy of participating in something without doing anything -- slack-activism.
An example: the idea that everyone should turn on their headlights on Sept. 11, as a way of mourning the dead and showing solidarity throughout the land.
How much effort does it take to turn on your headlights, as opposed to going out and buying a flag and actually flying it that day?
Basically, it's an attempt to find some way of recognizing the importance of the day, but at the same time not doing anything that really takes you out of your armchair.
There is a need to mark the day. People are confused as to what they should do or how they should handle it. And this seems to offer a very simple easy solution.
We don't know who's winning, because President Bush -- for political reasons -- has never defined our aims or enemies.
The word "war" seemed to make perfect sense as the embers of the World Trade Center still burned. The United States had most certainly been attacked, and when you're attacked, you fight back. Though some argued that a response to 9/11 couched in the terms of global policing made more sense than a military reaction -- this was an international crime we were fighting, not a legitimate battlefield enemy -- the Bush administration chose to rally the nation behind a standard of war. The president first used the phrase "the war against terrorism" in his speech on Sept. 11, and we have been at war ever since.
Yet now, as this war passes its first birthday, its terms remain a perplexing and increasingly disturbing enigma. When President Bush told us, in his speech to Congress on Sept. 21, that we were engaged in a "war on terror" that would "not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated," we might have figured he'd fill in the blanks before much longer. But somehow, a year later, we're still sitting here wondering: Who exactly are we fighting? How do we define our enemy? What are our goals? And are we winning or losing?
By refusing to clarify these questions with any kind of precision, Bush and his administration have created a void in the public arena. They've left Americans confused and uncertain about the nature of the war we've been asked to support, and increasingly suspicious of the constitutional rule-bending taking place under its banner.
If fate had treated the U.S. more kindly, we would have a leader today who was able to answer these questions, to articulate why we're fighting -- and what we're fighting for -- as well as FDR explained the Second World War to his nation, or JFK explained the Cold War to his. We don't. But the questions still demand answers. We need to try to fill in the blanks ourselves.
The closest to a definition of our opponent in this war that the president has provided is "every terrorist group of global reach." We can assume a national consensus that the list of such groups begins with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida. Does it include other groups? Who knows? As the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has flared since 9/11, Bush has increasingly applied the "terrorist" label to a wider swath of Palestinians, and the cruel campaign of suicide bombing aimed at civilians has certainly earned it. But this terrorism remains confined to Israel and the occupied territories; "global reach" does not seem to be within its aims or grasp.
On Sept. 21, Bush specifically said, "Our war on terror begins with al-Qaida, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated." So what and where are these other "terrorist groups of global reach"? Are they all Islamic extremists, or are there other types? Shouldn't we have heard a little more about them over the course of the past year?
The president also said that "we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism," but though the number of such nations is probably in the dozens -- and certainly includes some of our allies -- Bush has so far left us in the dark about what exactly puts a nation on his "axis of evil" list. What criteria mark an Iraq as in need of immediate "regime change," while an Iran or a North Korea, not to mention a Saudi Arabia or a Pakistan, are free to continue to develop dangerous weapons and harbor terrorist organizations? Bush refuses even to acknowledge the question.
Saddam is surely a brutal and murderous dictator. But the case that the war on terrorism that began on Sept. 11, 2001 -- the effort to end the threat of future 9/11s -- demands an immediate invasion of Iraq remains tenuous at best. The conflation of "war on terror" with "war on Iraq" remains the Bush administration's most unconvincing maneuver since 9/11. In fact, it's hard not to suspect that Bush has been so reluctant to define the war's terms precisely because he wants to blur together these two different enterprises -- one that was forced upon him by circumstance (terrorism was low on the administration's priorities before the 9/11 attacks), and one that has long been close to his heart.
Before marching on Baghdad -- before another bombing campaign, another shooting war, another wave of international turmoil steal the headlines and turn our minds away from the recent past -- we need to stop and take stock of the war so far. No matter how hard Bush has made this for us, by failing to define our enemy or our goals, we owe it to everyone who has died so far and everyone who may die in the future to do so.
For the sake of clarity in discussion, let's consider our prime enemy in the war on terrorism -- at least its first phase -- to be al-Qaida. They, after all, started it. Here are some of the goals we can assume are, or ought to be, on the White House blackboard, along with a scorecard of how we're doing. This is a pragmatic exercise, looking at the practical realities of the war to date, rather than an idealistic brainstorm.
1) Prevent further terrorist attacks on American soil or citizens.
Bush and his team have so far been successful here, and they deserve credit. But of course it's the sort of achievement that can be shattered at any time. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld says he's quite certain there will be more attacks. Every sundown without another attack is a win; every sunrise is an opportunity for another defeat. Score: Provisional U.S. victory.
2) Apprehension of parties responsible for the 9/11 attack.
Al-Qaida is in disarray but has not been obliterated. Osama bin Laden remains a giant question mark; even the leadership of American special forces charged with hunting him down in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan remain divided in their assessment of his fate.
Elevated by President Bush to mythic status as "the evil one," he remains an inspiration to our enemies until and unless we can capture or kill him, or confirm his death. Score: Mixed.
3) Elimination of state-supported havens for al-Qaida terrorists.
Al-Qaida's Afghan hosts, the Taliban, have been routed from power, but their leader, Mullah Omar, remains at large. Afghanistan's fledgling U.S.-backed government has not been able to rein in warlords who control most regions of the country. Meanwhile President Bush's "axis of evil" nations -- Iraq, Iran and North Korea -- each pose threats of varying kinds, but their status as havens for "terrorism of global reach" remains impossible to evaluate until and unless that nebulous phrase receives a better definition. Score: Mixed.
4) Rebuilding Afghanistan to win international support for future anti-terrorist campaigns.
Having muscled out the Taliban with a speedy victory, the United States must live up to its rhetoric of supporting freedom and democracy -- for the sake of our allies and the general public in the Muslim world, both of whom are watching closely. "Nation-building" turns out to be not just an ethical responsibility but a realpolitik necessity -- particularly as this week's barely foiled attempt to assassinate Afghan President Hamid Karzai shows just how unstable the country remains. It has taken the Bush administration a long time to accept this, but there's been grudging progress -- including recent willingness to expand the role of international peacekeepers outside of the Afghan capital. More money is also unavoidable. Score: Mixed to positive.
5) Preventing the spread of Islamic radicalism and support for bin Laden.
One of al-Qaida's goals is to kindle anti-American fervor throughout the Muslim world, and thwarting that aim must be high on any list of U.S. priorities.
The defeat of the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan have sparked no mass movements or leadership changes in Islamic countries that would harm American interests or provide more recruits for bin Laden and his allies. So far, so good. But the U.S. remains vulnerable -- both because our support for repressive Arab oligarchies makes our pro-democracy rhetoric sound hollow, and because our nearly unconditional support for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's campaign against Palestinian terrorism is hardly winning over Muslim hearts and minds. Score: Mixed.
6) Protection of the U.S. economy as the backbone of our war effort.
The terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, and one of their goals was to disrupt our economic system. Let's set aside the political debates here -- was the Bush tax cut the right prescription for the recession? what should be done to restore trust in corporate leadership? and so on -- and just look at the bottom line. On the one hand, 9/11 itself didn't wreck the economy the way many feared it might. Markets dove and then recovered; consumers kept buying. On the other hand, the economy has been essentially stuck in the same rut it was in before the towers fell, and nothing Bush has done has sparked a recovery yet. Meanwhile, the disastrous collapse of faith in the fairness of American business continues to eat away at our global standing and our confidence. Score: Mixed to negative.
7) Preservation of the ideals of our open society in the face of terrorist threats.
Terrorism, by its nature, aims to disrupt daily life and force the target society to make rash choices out of fear. (That's why it's called "terrorism.") So far, I'd say that the American system has -- despite the occasional autocratic lunge from the Justice Department and the Bush administration's pathological secrecy -- proven its resilience, as it always has in the past. Whatever excesses have been committed in the name of the terrorism war, we do not live in anything like a police state. This goal will be further tested, of course, if future attacks rattle our nerves. Score: Mixed to positive.
8) Keep dangerous weapons and material -- nuclear, chemical and biological -- out of the hands of terrorists, and restrict their funding.
This is an essential goal, and also one that is almost impossible for civilians to evaluate -- or even to know whether the government can properly evaluate it. If Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld know how we're doing in this area, they aren't telling. Maybe Tony Blair will enlighten us, but until then, the scorecard has to be left blank.
9) Cut American dependence on Mideast oil to reduce our exposure to instability in the area and our dependence on despotic regimes there. This is the one goal on my list that won't be found scrawled on any White House blackboard. To the oilmen of the Bush team, plainly, it's anathema.
That's too bad, because kicking our imported oil habit could give us extra room to maneuver in all sorts of useful ways: No more kowtowing to the Saudis and their support for extremists; reduced need to support undemocratic governments of oil-rich nations; and hey, it's good for the environment too. Score: Total defeat.
Most people will disagree with one or another of the judgments on this scorecard. My purpose in the exercise is simply to point out how negligent Bush and the rest of the U.S. leadership have been in failing to publicly conduct it themselves -- and that includes congressional leaders who should be screaming at Bush by now for some answers.
Why hasn't Bush done so? I think there's only one plausible explanation: As long as the war's goals are unstated, Bush remains free to redefine the war itself on the fly -- to grandfather in other, preexisting goals that have little or nothing to do with the real war on terror, but that can borrow support from it. Iraq is the biggest example, but there are surely more to come.
Andrew Sullivan has argued in these pages that, somehow, because Bush has been clear all along that he wants to take out Saddam, you can't say he has "grandfathered" Iraq into the war on terror -- as New York Times columnist Frank Rich has said. But of course you can. No one ever said Bush tried to hide his desire to attack Iraq; the "grandfathering" lies in the president's opportunistic attempt to retrofit the nation's anger over the World Trade Center attack onto the substantially different campaign against Saddam Hussein.
By not telling the American public exactly who we're fighting or what we're fighting for, in other words, Bush is able to try to dragoon some of the energy and resolve that 9/11 crystallized in service to his prewar wish list. As he shoehorns incongruous policies into the "war on terrorism" box -- "regime change" in Iraq, an oil-friendly energy policy, lopsided tax cuts -- the gambit becomes more and more difficult to hide.
There's nothing wrong with a president trying to promote his policies, to be sure, but the underhanded tactics Bush is employing won't wear well as this war wears on. Stoking a wartime mentality without explaining the war's scope -- without giving the public any sense of how we'll know when we've won -- is a recipe for disaster. (We've been there before -- in Vietnam, the longest war in American history, and one that our government labeled as a mere "police action.")
Piggybacking on that wartime mentality for partisan political goals that actually hurt the war effort can only backfire once people catch on to the game.
Carl von Clausewitz famously defined war as "an extension of politics [in German, politik, or 'policy'] by other means." In a war as complex and unorthodox as the war with al-Qaida, one that leaves old concepts of battlefield engagement far behind, that definition, with its reminder to keep one's eye on ultimate goals, provides a valuable compass.
Unfortunately, President Bush seems to be simply reading Clausewitz in a self-interestedly literal-minded way. For him, the war on terror -- the war that he has framed as a noble crusade for freedom -- has become just a crude extension of his political agenda, "by other means."
About the writer
Scott Rosenberg is Salon's managing editor.
Amid the hoopla surrounding the anniversary of Sept. 11, three questions seem apt: Why did the Bush administration veer off the course it set for itself a year ago, when President Bush promised to "rally the world" to fight a war against terrorism and then did so magnificently -- but only for a while?
Why has the administration now chosen to neglect its friends as it pursues its enemies -- or rather, the enemy most easily targeted, Saddam Hussein?
Why is the United States flirting with a new doctrine of preemptive war so radical it has no precedent in international law or American history -- and why hasn't this flirtation provoked our politicians to conduct a serious national debate, first of all in Congress?
We're still too close to these events to see them all clearly, but it's not too soon to see that the Bush administration's initial sure-footedness has given way to a stumbling clumsiness. This has been a bad summer for American diplomacy. It isn't easy for the world's leading power to alarm all of its allies in a matter of months, but this is what the United States has done, for purposes that remain mysterious.
The administration has accomplished this despite the successful beginning to the military campaign set off by the attacks on New York and Washington a year ago. Not only did President Bush rally allies on every continent to join an elaborate, efficient international coalition, but the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, used Sept. 11 to finally abandon the pretense that Russia and America could revive their Cold War rivalry. He allied his country firmly with the United States, then with the NATO alliance. Two Central Asian republics, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, former parts of the Soviet Union, welcomed U.S. bases on their territory, creating a new geopolitical reality. No government on Earth openly took the side of al Qaeda.
That first phase was triumphant. The anxiety of last fall that somehow America and its allies would be stymied in Afghanistan, as the Soviets were two decades earlier, now seems silly. Routing al Qaeda and its protector, the Taliban regime in Kabul, proved remarkably easy. Watching joyful Afghans dancing in the streets was a joyful experience.
The first phase has cost more than $30 billion and 51 American lives, but the initial mission was accomplished: no more Taliban, no more safe haven for al Qaeda. But the campaign stalled in early December, when American commanders decided not to send U.S. troops into the mountains around Tora Bora, and Osama bin Laden escaped -- at least that was the conclusion of American intelligence.
Since then the war hasn't gone very well. Key al Qaeda leaders remain at large, presumably including bin Laden, though he may be dead. With or without him, our enemy can still operate. A new U.N. study concludes that "al Qaeda is by all accounts 'fit and well' and poised to strike again at its leisure." It is sobering to consider how much we still don't know about al Qaeda. German investigators have apparently established that the Sept. 11 plot was hatched in Hamburg in a cell led by Mohammed Atta, pilot of one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center. Who was Atta's superior? Unknown. Who in al Qaeda's hierarchy helped plan the attack, or approved it? Unknown. What was bin Laden's personal role? Unknown. What did the plot's authors hope would be its result -- what are their strategic goals, if any? Unknown, though bin Laden's past comments suggest some answers, such as pushing the United States out of Saudi Arabia.
"Know your enemy," soldiers like to say, but we've still got a lot to learn about al Qaeda.
The U.S. government has repeatedly advertised its own inability to penetrate or understand al Qaeda by issuing any number of brightly colored alerts and warnings that a new attack was imminent. Those wrong predictions suggest grave deficiencies in American intelligence, a subject our public figures have generally avoided.
Multilateralism was critical to the administration's early successes in the war on terrorism, which makes it all the more surprising that the Bush administration abandoned it so quickly. Beginning with the December decision to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a succession of policy choices revived the administration's reputation for unilateralism and infuriated old allies. Why did this happen?
The answer begins with the White House itself. If we know remarkably little about al Qaeda, we should also acknowledge ignorance about many of the inner workings of the administration. This is a secretive American government. In its eight months in office before Sept. 11, it took, out of public view, a series of decisions that made allies wonder if it cared about their concerns. One of those, shortly before Sept. 11, was to scuttle the long-negotiated enforcement protocol of the international convention on biological weapons -- ironically, now a dead letter as the world gets increasingly antsy about biological weapons.
The ABM Treaty decision particularly upset the French and Germans, who considered the pact the foundation of nuclear arms control. It was followed in January by Bush's announcement in his State of the Union speech that Iran, Iraq and North Korea constituted an "axis of evil." This infuriated Europeans trying to build bridges to Iran, and South Koreans and Japanese trying to work with North Korea. The administration stuck by the term, although it never explained how these three unconnected nations constituted an axis -- "an alliance of two or more countries to coordinate their foreign and military policies," according to one dictionary definition.
But the most important decision that fed our allies' anxiety about revived American unilateralism was last June's change of course on the Middle East. For many years the United States and its allies have differed on how best to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian peace; the United States has long been more sympathetic to Israeli governments than many Europeans have. But there was a qualitative change during the last year. The context for it was the war on terrorism.
President Bush has said from the outset that the terrorists responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks hated America because "they hate our freedoms." But the available evidence does not support this explanation. Bin Laden's own statements and the personal histories of participants in the Sept. 11 plot suggest there are more specific reasons for the terrorists' hatred. They include American support for regimes that they detest in the Arab world; American bases on Arab territory, especially in Saudi Arabia; and American support for Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory and for Israel's military campaign against the Palestinians. Psychological alienation from modern Western culture and a radical interpretation of Islam add spice to this deadly stew.
By ignoring the items on this list and denouncing an enemy that hates us for what we are, not for what we say and do -- or what they think we do -- President Bush has created an all-purpose bad guy whose existence allows him to sidestep any examination of American policy. But al Qaeda is led by Arabs from the Middle East and is deeply rooted in Middle Eastern politics and intrigue. Its grievances, however irrational, come from there.
The administration acknowledged the Arab connection early on by recognizing a need for improved "public diplomacy" in the Middle East, to better explain U.S. policy to Arabs and improve America's image in the region. But the problem, as American specialists and Arabs pointed out, went beyond imagery and explanation. Arabs have real grievances against the United States, first of all connected to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
This past spring, the intensification of violence from suicide bombings and Israeli retaliations created a Middle East crisis. Ariel Sharon and his colleagues used the crisis to press their view that the Palestinians killing Israelis were no different from the Egyptians and Saudis who flew airplanes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, "is our bin Laden," Sharon said. Israel's objective, obviously, was to persuade America to make Arafat its enemy, too.
The Bush administration initially resisted, but by June, when Bush declared that Arafat had to be replaced, the United States had aligned its policy with Sharon's on virtually all operational questions. The administration continued to say it favored early creation of a Palestinian state and opposed Israeli settlements in occupied territory, but this rhetoric had no visible effect on Sharon, who has demonstrated no interest in a compromise with the Palestinians.
Judging by the public statements and published commentaries of Arab officials and analysts, they now see no significant difference between Bush and Sharon on the Palestinian issue. Bin Laden himself could have written this script, it so suits the goal of dividing the United States from the Arab world, including the Arab states that we have long considered our friends.
Potentially the most significant act of American unilateralism this year was President Bush's declaration -- at West Point, in June -- that the United States would reserve the right to act preemptively against groups or nations with terrorist intentions: "The war on terror will not be won on the defensive. We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt its plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge .... The only path to safety is the path of action. And this nation will act."
Thus began a summer of talk about preemptive war against Iraq. Israelis and Tony Blair of Britain showed some sympathy for the idea, but dozens of other international leaders expressed doubts. So, remarkably, did a long list of senior Americans who had served in earlier administrations, including George H.W. Bush's two secretaries of state, James A. Baker III and Lawrence Eagleburger, and his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft. Their unusual public statements were evidence of profound disquiet in the upper reaches of the American establishment, where the idea of a unilateral, preemptive war caused deep alarm.
Last week the ground began to shift somewhat. Bush said he would make a speech on Iraq to the United Nations and would consult with the other permanent members of the Security Council. He promised to ask Congress to approve any military action, though his lawyers had argued earlier that such approval wasn't necessary. He also promised to build the case against Iraq in public, which politicians in both parties said he had to do. But all this had the flavor of after-the-fact cosmetics; Bush gave no hint he was prepared to change his mind about forcing "regime change" in Iraq.
What is the purpose of poking an American finger in the eye of just about every country in the world? What does the administration hope to gain by emphasizing unilateral options, from declaring war without Congress to telling other nations to sign up or get out of the way? Does such bullying ever pay off in politics, domestic or international?
In a democracy, voters want to participate. In a community of nations, governments want to participate. The issue isn't whether or not to fight terrorism -- a new poll of Europeans and American released last week showed strong support for military action against terrorists. But the same poll [see William Drozdiak's article today on Page B3] showed equally strong sentiment that any such action should be taken in concert with allies, and with the support of the United Nations.
The Americans questioned in this poll demonstrated a lack of enthusiasm for this administration's foreign policies, a warning in an election year. Only 20 percent of Americans favored invading Iraq without the support of our allies and the U.N. On question after question, large majorities preferred acting with allies to acting alone. But public opinion hasn't yet been a factor, because the country hasn't had a debate about its global status. The United States became the only great power a dozen years ago, but we have never really confronted the implications of this fact. Our political class has largely taken a bye on the biggest questions of our time: How should the United States relate to other countries, and to international institutions? On what terms should we engage with the rest of the world? With what kind of armed forces? And what sort of diplomacy? Has preemptive war become acceptable?
The attacks of Sept. 11 announced a profound change in the world. They set us on a new course. But our politicians have let us down by failing to engage the country in a great discussion of the huge questions we face. On Wednesday, when we mark the anniversary of the horror of last Sept. 11, we still won't know where we are going, or why.
Robert Kaiser is an associate editor and senior correspondent of The Post.
September 11, 2002 is soon approaching. On that day, please wear red, white and blue to work or school to show your support for those who lost their lives on 9~11~01 and to honor the heroes who worked to save them and the families left behind. At noon your time on September 11, 2002, no matter where you are or what you are doing, stop, put your hand on your heart, and say the Pledge of Allegiance~ out loud or to yourself~ and say a prayer for our nation. If all of us do this together in every time zone around the world, we will have a powerful chain of thoughts surrounding us.
God Bless the U.S.A.