In 1974, I spent several months in Afghanistan, and several weeks stuck in limbo in ‘no man’s land’ on the Pakistani-Afghani border in the Khyber (because of a visa problem that blocked me from official movement into either country). Part of my lifelong urge to make pilgrimmages to what the current cliché calls forbidding mountainous terrain. Of course you know I’m going to say this: I loved the country, and its people. I’ll try to dig up my slides and get some of them digitized and posted, if I can…

When blogging came of age Charles Cooper at CNET; Second sight: the atrocity through the eyes of webloggers Nick Denton, founder of Moreover, at The Guardian

E-bombs: “In the blink of an eye, electromagnetic bombs could throw civilization back 200 years. And terrorists can build them for $400.” Popular Mechanics [via MetaFilter]

This essay by the editor of The New Republic argues that the honeymoon after the attacks may be over, and political fault lines are reopening around the question, “Does America have the moral authority to go to war?” Widening the cracks, he immediately goes after The Nation for claiming that the attacks were about the U.S.’s support for Israel (“…downright bizarre”) or the sanctions against Iraq (“Longtime bin Laden watchers know he has never been especially concerned with the plight of the Palestinians… Nor has bin Laden been a big supporter of Saddam.”):

In bin Laden’s mind, America’s greatest offense–by far–is its military presence in his home country of Saudi Arabia. (The bin Laden-sponsored attacks on U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam occurred on the eighth anniversary of the dispatch of U.S. troops to the Gulf.) And that’s a harder line for Western leftists to peddle. Because bin Laden isn’t upset at the United States for bolstering Riyadh’s oppressive policies–after all, the Saudi government’s views on individual freedom and the status of women roughly mirror his own. Bin Laden is upset simply because non-Muslims live in the Holy Land around Mecca and Medina. His first priority is banishing Christians and Jews from Saudi Arabia. And his second priority is banishing Christians and Jews from every other Muslim country…

Bin Laden, after all, is an ethnic cleanser. And the United States is the only powerful country on Earth willing to take up arms to make sure that people of different religions and races can live together. The main difference between September 11 and what came before is that bin Laden desires ethnic cleansing on a scale far greater than the Hutus and the Serbs, a scale that has only one true twentieth century parallel.

If Fisk and The Nation really want to argue that America brought the World Trade Center attack on itself, they shouldn’t delude themselves. They are not defending the Palestinians’ right to a state or the Iraqis’ right to medicine. They are defending a Muslim’s right not to live with a non-Muslim. And in so doing they are renouncing this country’s most sacred principles–principles that saved countless Muslim lives in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s…

The Spinsanity site (“countering rhetoric with reason”) singles out malignant conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan for calling dissenting leftists a “fifth column”. For those who don’t know, this scurrilous term has connoted domestic traitors who covertly aid their country’s attackers or occupiers.

On the other hand, it occurs to me, some would say that, in automatically linking dissent to the cause of the enemy, Sullivan may be the true “fifth columnist” [grin]. The message that the terrorists have won if their attack prompts us to dismantle X or Y that is best about America has been bandied about this week. Of course, it ignores the fact that it was almost certainly not merely begrudging the U.S. its ‘best’ attributes like freedom and affluence (the closest Dubya’s speechwriters came in his address to the nation last night to offering any explanation) that motivated the carnage. As much or more, of course, it is some of our unacknowledged baser aspects — our bullying arrogance, our interventionism, our perceived support for corrupt oppressive regimes — that give the fanatics an axe to grind against us.

In another sign of the intolerance of dissent, the President of the University of Texas felt compelled to criticize the expression of just such sentiments by a UT journalism professor who had written an antiwar column in the Houston Chronicle.

Faulkner’s letter begins by stating Jensen made his remarks entirely in his

capacity as a free citizen of the United States, but that “no aspect of his

remarks is supported, condoned or officially recognized by the University of

Texas at Austin.”

Faulkner’s letter then turned to a more personal note.

“Jensen is not only misguided, but has become a fountain of undiluted foolishness

on issues of public policy,” Faulkner wrote in his letter. “Students must learn

that there is a good deal of foolish opinion in the popular media, and they must

become skilled at recognizing and discounting it,”

says Texas coverage of the controversy.

Back in June, the U.S. designated the “Real IRA” as a terrorist organization. Are we going to go after them along with the other infidels? American Embassy London [via MetaFilter]

Not War, Crimes. Says a former State Department attorney and professor of law at Hofstra, ‘The enormity of the attacks has almost inevitably led to war talk, among the people, opinion writers, and political leaders. “We’re at war,” President Bush remarked on Saturday. “There’s been an act of war declared upon America by terrorists, and we will respond accordingly.”

But the ultimate nature of the attacks is more akin to crime than to war, and should to the maximum extent possible be addressed as such.’ FindLaw legal commentary

And Phil Agre on a similar subject [must read]: War in a World Without Boundaries

An odd feature of the new war is the mixture of languages: George

Bush and his staff constantly switch between the military language

of war and the police language of crime. It is, for example, a war

to bring evildoers to justice. This development is relatively recent.

It was during the Clinton years, for example, that the FBI went

global. Congress vastly increased its funding and it opened offices

worldwide. This was reasonable enough, given the globalization of

crime along with the globalization of everything else. The drug war,

likewise, brought complaints that military forces were being used for

police activities. Before the 1990’s, though, the distinction between

military and police activities was relatively clear. The Korean

War was supposedly a “police action”, but it was obviously a war;

the “police” language was universally understood as a legal fiction

to escape the Constitutional demand that US military activity be

authorized by a Congressional declaration of war. Legal scholars

protested this development, but it has now been institutionalized.

Other wars have ended with criminal tribunals, but these tribunals

have been conducted under the law of war, not under peacetime criminal

law.

So something is taking form here — a “war” whose sole stated aim

is catching individuals who have committed crimes — and it raises

questions. The difference between war-talk and police-talk is

not trivial. When a war is over, the victorious party customarily

lets the rank-and-file soldiers go back to their lives; having

been subject to the laws of their nation-state, and they are regarded

as following orders. With a crime, however, one does not let the

soldiers go. To the contrary, one tries them as individuals for the

full extent of their activities and punishes them if they are found

guilty. In the United States, this punishment can include death.

In a war, either party is empowered to use nearly any means to detain

or kill the soldiers of other. Captured soldiers have certain rights,

but others do not. Criminals, however, have rights, and police are

heavily constrained in ways that soldiers are not. The distinction

between “war” and “crime” is particularly important for the attack

on the Pentagon, which would be an ordinary military action in a war,

but it is also matters for the ways in which the World Trade Center

attackers can be brought to justice.

Here, then, is the danger. Does Osama bin Laden, assuming for the

moment that he is the “commander” of the terrorist forces in whatever

sense is relevant, have “soldiers” who are just following orders?

Or is the United States setting the precedent that the winning power

in a war tries all of the losing power’s soldiers for capital crimes?

That would set back the rules of warfare by centuries. An odd feature of the new war is the mixture of languages: George

Bush and his staff constantly switch between the military language

of war and the police language of crime. It is, for example, a war

to bring evildoers to justice. This development is relatively recent.

It was during the Clinton years, for example, that the FBI went

global. Congress vastly increased its funding and it opened offices

worldwide. This was reasonable enough, given the globalization of

crime along with the globalization of everything else. The drug war,

likewise, brought complaints that military forces were being used for

police activities. Before the 1990’s, though, the distinction between

military and police activities was relatively clear. The Korean

War was supposedly a “police action”, but it was obviously a war;

the “police” language was universally understood as a legal fiction

to escape the Constitutional demand that US military activity be

authorized by a Congressional declaration of war. Legal scholars

protested this development, but it has now been institutionalized.

Other wars have ended with criminal tribunals, but these tribunals

have been conducted under the law of war, not under peacetime criminal

law.

So something is taking form here — a “war” whose sole stated aim

is catching individuals who have committed crimes — and it raises

questions. The difference between war-talk and police-talk is

not trivial. When a war is over, the victorious party customarily

lets the rank-and-file soldiers go back to their lives; having

been subject to the laws of their nation-state, and they are regarded

as following orders. With a crime, however, one does not let the

soldiers go. To the contrary, one tries them as individuals for the

full extent of their activities and punishes them if they are found

guilty. In the United States, this punishment can include death.

In a war, either party is empowered to use nearly any means to detain

or kill the soldiers of other. Captured soldiers have certain rights,

but others do not. Criminals, however, have rights, and police are

heavily constrained in ways that soldiers are not. The distinction

between “war” and “crime” is particularly important for the attack

on the Pentagon, which would be an ordinary military action in a war,

but it is also matters for the ways in which the World Trade Center

attackers can be brought to justice.

Here, then, is the danger. Does Osama bin Laden, assuming for the

moment that he is the “commander” of the terrorist forces in whatever

sense is relevant, have “soldiers” who are just following orders?

Or is the United States setting the precedent that the winning power

in a war tries all of the losing power’s soldiers for capital crimes?

That would set back the rules of warfare by centuries. Red Rock Eaters

Why the Spooks Screwed Up: “Bin Laden’s network is much harder to penetrate than previous terrorist groups.” Time

And Spike documents a particularly egregious case of foot-in-mouth disease:

“Anyone wondering how America’s intelligence community could have been so

spectacularly blindsided by last week’s terrorist attacks should look at an

essay written two months ago by former CIA officer and State Department

counterterrorism specialist Larry C. Johnson.

In a July 10 New York Times Op-Ed entitled (ouch!) “The Declining Terrorist

Threat,” Johnson snickers at the idea of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.

“Americans…seem to believe that terrorism is the greatest threat to the

United States and that it is becoming more widespread and lethal,” Johnson

writes. “They are likely to think that the United States is the most popular

target of terrorists. And they almost certainly have the impression that

extremist Islamic groups cause the most terrorism. None of these beliefs are

based in fact.”

“[E]arly signs suggest that the decade beginning in 2000 will continue the

downward trend” in deaths from terrorism, the confident expert continues.

America’s irrational fears can be blamed on irresponsible politicians and

military and intelligence experts desperate to justify their agency budgets.

Also to blame (of course): sensation-seeking journalists.

Change Ahead for Troubled Boston Airport Agency. In trauma, people point fingers; trying by hindsight to take control of the uncontrollable and contingent. So you have to walk a fine line between that tendency and the need to investigate the roots of the disaster. As a Bostonian, I was wary of the assertions that Logan security had been particularly lax. Defensively, “It could’ve ben any major U.S. city.” But what can you say about Massport, the agency that runs the airport, where the security chief was a patronage appointee who had previously been the Massachusetts governor’s driver, and he succeeded a security chief who had been the driver for the previous governor’s wife? Where more than 100 airport security badges have gone missing in the past two years? In fact, now I’m hearing that, after planes were grounded in the wake of the attacks, suspicious passengers who may have been intending to hijack another flight outbound from Boston were allowed to debark with no scrutiny. New York Times [name: “FMHreader”, password: “FMHreader”]

Hunting Osama: interview with Mark Bowden. The author of Black Hawk Down and Killing Pablo says that American special forces have been training to go after bin Laden for years and are more than ready. And more on the shadowy world of special operations. This article suggests that our successful campaign against Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, about which Bowden wrote in his latter book, may be the clearest model for chasing down the terrorist perpetrators. Salon

True patriotism the opposite of jingoism: ‘True patriotism differs from jingoism the same way that healthy

parental love differs from the sick obsession of parents who live

their broken, frustrated dreams through their children. Time

and again it’s been the dissidents among us, those most likely

to be mislabeled “un-American,” who’ve been the true patriots

and done the most to make America a light unto the world. Now

is no different, as we seek to articulate a solution that goes

beyond war to eradicate terrorism at its roots.’ Independent Media Center, Los Angeles

Dept. of State International Information Programs: foreign press commentary on the attacks.

Transcript of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan’s press conference on World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. I’ve been very curious about the Black Muslim reaction but, more generally, the reaction in the largely African American inner city to the attacks and our impending war footing. Will the widespread black cynicism about being “cannon fodder” in the white man’s war that I recall from the Vietnam era, and which temporarily abated during the volunteer Army, rear its head again? Do the most disenfranchised and alienated in American society feel they belong to the ‘we’ who were attacked? Is the widespread grief, outrage, and vulnerability of other segments of our society felt as much in the ghetto? I’ve seen no coverage of this aspect of things. One reason it may be germane is the increasingly dominant role of hip hop in shaping youth style and attitude, both black and white.

To wit: Eerie image pulled from CD:

The cover for the upcoming CD from a popular hip-hop group portrays an eerily familiar sight.

Against a backdrop of morning skies, the towers of the World Trade Center stand engulfed in flame from the impact of twin explosions. Clouds of smoke spew from the upper stories, all but obscuring the tip of what was once the epicenter of the New York City skyline…

The cover design predates Tuesday’s twin attacks on the World Trade Center by months. Wired

‘Infinite Justice’ May Not Stand, Pentagon Says — “The initial

code name for the Pentagon’s response to attacks on the

United States, Operation Infinite

Justice, likely will be changed to avoid offending Muslims,

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Thursday.

The issue arose at a Pentagon briefing when a reporter told

Rumsfeld that several Islamic scholars objected to the name

on the ground that only God, or Allah, can mete out infinite

justice in their view.” Second gaffe against Muslims in a week — cf. Dubya’s calling this a ‘crusade’ — leads to impatient Rumsfeld minimization. As Phil Agre suggests, maybe we should call it ‘Operation Holy War”?

US ‘planned attack on Taleban’ — “Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign

Secretary, was told by senior American

officials in mid-July that military action

against Afghanistan would go ahead by the

middle of October.” BBC

Pakistani sources report: Bin Laden already gone from Afghanistan: “The most wanted man in the US, Osama bin Laden has

silently left Afghanistan for an undisclosed destination and has

moved out of the Afghan territory at least 4 days before the

religious Shura of the clerics issued its recommendation to leave the

country.

Sources in Pakistan, known for their close contacts with Taliban as

well as some officials of the students’ militia confided to The News

that Osama bin Laden was no longer on the Afghan soil since

Monday.”

Where in the world has he gone, if so? Forbes details the global network of groups possibly aligned with bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, and notes some pertinent negatives:

Though accurate information about bin Laden’s grand alliance is hard to

come by, it is clear that it does not include many of the states that United

States regarded as enemies or potential enemies in the 1980s and 1990s.

Iraq, Syria and Libya, for example, are largely secular nationalist regimes.

While they abhor America, and no doubt rejoice at the murder of Americans,

they are mortal enemies of the kind of Islamic fundamentalism represented

by bin Laden and his allies. Iran, meanwhile, practices a Shiite brand of

fundamentalist Islam that is vehemently opposed to bin Laden’s version (the

extremist Wahhabi tendency). Over the past five years, in fact, Iran has been

financing a war against bin Laden and his Taliban allies in Afghanistan.

Officials Told of ‘Major Assault’ Plans. In August, Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad passed on to FBI and CIA officials indications that up to 200 terrorists were planning a “major assault on the United States”, linked to bin Laden. Los Angeles Times Meanwhile, “America and the West are bracing themselves for

another potential ‘Day of Infamy’ this Saturday, when

accomplices of the hijackers are suspected of having

plotted new outrages.

The most solid evidence so far is the discovery that

five associates of the suicide gang had booked seats on

two internal passenger flights, taking them from Texas

to California, in two days’ time.” The Times of London

Secret plans for 10-year war; Generals rule out ‘D-Day invasion’ ‘… Most of the focus of the ten-year campaign plan, the

sources say, is on using military action as a potent

back-up to all the other strands of Operation Noble

Eagle.

However, President Bush, conscious of the demand for

“revenge” from the American public, might sanction

shorter-term military operation by special forces, or

airstrikes, but only if there is sufficient intelligence to

guarantee a sucessful outcome.’ The Times of London