Today's Winner Of The Nobel Prize In Economics

I took away from my talks with the professor that the solution to world poverty and crisis is simple: remove the bloodsuckers.
© 2001 Award-winning investigative reporter Greg Palast writes, Inside Corporate America, fortnightly in the Observer (London), Sunday paper of Britain's Guardian. At http://www.GregPalast.com you can read and subscribe to Greg Palast's columns

The What-If's Of Sept. 11
By Robert Parry

Since Sept. 11, the trivial pursuits of American politics have been set aside. Even the national news media, which obsessed about Gary Condit for most of the summer, has put on a serious face.

There’s been nothing comparable to the "wag the dog" pundit prattle that undercut President Clinton in 1998 when he first went after Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terror network.

But there’s also been little or no reflection about how the feckless behavior of Washington’s political-journalistic elites over the past decade contributed to the deadly crisis the world is now facing. There’s been little or no self-criticism for letting the problems of the Middle East fester while pundits and journalists romped through juicier stories of Paula, Monica, JonBenet and Chandra.

One indictment of today’s political-journalistic elites is the undeniable fact that on Sept. 11, a blind-sided American people knew far more about Chandra Levy’s disappearance, JonBenet Ramsey’s death, Paula Jones’ allegations and Monica Lewinsky’s sexual techniques than they knew about the roiling political conflicts of the Middle East.

Today’s changed tone also doesn’t mean that any long-term lessons have been learned. Indeed, the media’s patriotic uniformity today can be viewed as a kind of mirror image of yesterday’s trivia-obsessed herd mentality, even starring the same TV talking heads.

Just as few journalists bucked the tabloid trend before, few will risk their careers now by offering up anything but adulation for George W. Bush’s post-attack performance, though it’s arguably as shaky as his stewardship of the country prior to Sept. 11.

Bush’s flip-flops on core foreign-policy positions go virtually unnoticed. For instance, his long-standing disdain for Bill Clinton-style "nation building" – repeated as late as Sept. 25 when Bush declared "We’re not into nation building" – transformed into a sudden commitment to nation building in Afghanistan, pronounced at his Oct. 11 news conference.

"We should not just simply leave after a military objective has been achieved," Bush said, foreseeing a possible United Nations role in constructing a stable Afghanistan. Bush made this 180-degree turn without acknowledging that he had made great political hay out of ridiculing the same nation-building position that he was now embracing.

'Evil One'

Stylistically, Bush’s Oct. 11 news conference also was marked by his usual disjointed performance. He mixed a disembodied somberness during an opening speech, with abrupt flashes of folksiness, calling bin Laden "the evil one" and giving a flip response to a question about what kind of suspicious behavior Americans should be on the lookout for.

"If you find a person that you’ve never seen before getting in a crop-duster that doesn’t belong to you, report it," he responded with a chortle, apparently unconcerned that the sentence made no sense.

While some viewers found Bush’s behavior jarring and unsettling, especially compared to the polished oratory of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other world leaders, NBC’s Tim Russert and other American commentators hailed Bush’s press conference as a bravura performance. The New York Times’ headline read: "To Reassure World, Bush Flies Confidently and Forcefully Without a Net." [NYT, Oct. 12, 2001]

Beyond reassuring Americans about their leader’s stability in a time of crisis, major news organizations also sought to avoid fresh doubts about his legitimacy. Leading news outlets, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, postponed indefinitely the results of a comprehensive examination of about 175,000 disputed ballots cast in Florida last November.

Earlier press examinations of the Florida ballots, when viewed together, suggested that Democrat Al Gore would have won the state and thus the White House, under three of four standards for judging votes.

But in the wake of the Sept. 11 tragedy, the vote-counting consortium of major news organizations chose not to revisit the issue, citing limitations on manpower and space. Though the news outlets insisted they had no idea what the Florida recount results were, some sources claimed the big newspapers feared the fallout if their findings pointed to Gore as the rightful winner.

Court Intrigue

If that is what the recount study were to show, it also might have stirred new interest in a story by Newsweek correspondent David A. Kaplan.

He reported that the U.S. Supreme Court nearly decided in December that a full and fair recount in Florida, with a common standard for counting disputed ballots, was the only proper decision. Justice David Souter felt he was on the verge of convincing swing vote Anthony Kennedy to adopt that position, which already had the support of four other justices, Kaplan wrote.

History might have been changed if Souter had succeeded. Instead, Kennedy stayed with the four conservative Republicans who handed Bush the presidency by blocking a recount of Florida ballots in a 5-4 decision. Kaplan’s story was beginning to gain public interest when the terrorists struck on Sept. 11. [See Newsweek, Sept. 17, 2001, which went on sale days about a week earlier.]

Doubts about the outcome of Election 2000 have contributed to other what-if questions, circulating in private conversations and on the Internet, though not in the mainstream press.

Those questions include: Was Bush’s ascension to power somehow connected to the Sept. 11 attacks, given his father’s close ties to the Persian Gulf’s oil sheikdoms that are bin Laden’s principal targets? Did those Bush family relationships and America’s diminished image as a beacon of democracy, following the election debacle, embolden the terrorists to strike?

Though it’s impossible to know how a different history might have played out, the weight of the evidence suggests that the terrorist attacks would have gone forward regardless of who was president.

'Wag the Dog'

It can be argued that Bush’s family background and the policies of his first seven months in office worsened an already tense situation in the Middle East. But militant Islamic fundamentalists despised Bill Clinton as well as George W. Bush and his father, George H.W. Bush. All three were put on a hit list read by bin Laden’s spokesman, Suleiman Abu Gheith, on Oct. 13, according to CNN.

In 1998, Clinton tried to kill bin Laden in retaliation for bombing American targets in Africa. Cruise missiles hit an al Qaeda training base in Afghanistan, killing some inhabitants but missing bin Laden. Those were the attacks, along with the war in Kosovo, that prompted smirking media commentaries about Clinton trying to distract attention from the Monica Lewinsky scandal with a "wag the dog" public-relations ploy.

It’s also recently been revealed that Clinton authorized covert plots aimed at eliminating bin Laden and his inner circle. The United States and Uzbekistan collaborated on covert operations against Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban regime and its terrorist allies for at least two years, the Washington Post reported on Oct. 14.

Islamic militants condemned Clinton, too, for maintaining President George H.W. Bush’s embargo against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, a policy that has been blamed for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children due to poor medical treatment and malnutrition.

Clinton also continued the stationing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, bin Laden’s homeland. Bin Laden has denounced the presence of those U.S. troops and their defense of the corrupt Saudi royal family. Presumably, the hatred of Clinton would have carried over to his vice president, Al Gore.

It’s clear, too, that bin Laden’s network planned attacks against targets inside the United States during the Clinton-Gore administration, but was thwarted by effective police work. One foiled plot planned to detonate explosions during the millennial celebrations at the start of 2000.

Flying Lessons

Another argument for believing that the Sept. 11 attack would have happened anyway is that its early planning dated back about two years, as several of the conspirators arrived in the United States to take flying lessons.

The initial bank transfer of $100,000 was sent to Mohammed Atta, the presumed ringleader of the hijackings, in June 2000. [Wall Street Journal, Oct. 16, 2001] At that point, Bush may have led in opinion polls, but his selection as president was not settled until the Supreme Court ruling on Dec. 12.

On the other hand, a case can be made that Bush’s actions as president – and his father’s complicated entanglements with Middle Eastern intrigue over the past quarter century – could have contributed to the terrorists’ determination to see the Sept. 11 project through to its tragic conclusion .

One of the assault’s chief tactical difficulties would have been assuring the continued fervor of all 19 participants in the months leading up to the attack.

No previous terrorist attack had rivaled the Sept. 11 operation in the need for choreographed coordination among four separate groups mounting four distinct terrorist operations, the hijacking of four different planes. A single lapse could have foiled the entire operation.

Determination

Assuming all 19 men understood the full scope of the plan, the attacks required their solid determination to slash the throats of strangers, aim the jetliners at the targets, and murder large numbers of innocent people, including Muslims. The attackers also faced certain death themselves.

To keep this large a group committed to this extraordinary course of action could not have been easy, even if the 19 participants were carefully selected. If a single attacker wavered and betrayed the operation, the attacks could have been stopped.

The terrorists also seemed divided into two operational groups, those who had trained as pilots, who arrived earlier, and the musclemen, who entered the United States later, around June 2001.

Some participants seemed to have known each other for years, while others appeared to be relative newcomers with no known history in militant activities. According to witnesses who knew the men, some were anti-American but others seemed to like the United States and Americans. [WSJ, Oct. 16, 2001]

Middle Eastern events – whether positive or negative – might have shaken or reinforced their level of commitment. For instance, it is unclear whether a comprehensive peace settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians might have dissuaded some of the attackers from their course of action.

For his part, Gore likely would have continued some form of Clinton’s strategy of pushing the Israelis and the Palestinians toward a negotiated settlement – while trying to present the United States as a negotiating partner that could be trusted by both sides. However, Islamic militants surely viewed Gore and his Jewish running mate, Joe Lieberman, with great suspicion.

Bush Baggage

Bush carried a different kind of baggage as far as the militants were concerned.

Many Middle Easterners view his father as the classic Western manipulator of events. The elder Bush earned this reputation from his career in the oil business, his year running the CIA, the Reagan-Bush administration’s meddling in Lebanon, Iran and Iraq, and his own his presidency, which reached its zenith in 1991 with the bloody rout of Iraqi forces in Kuwait and the triumphal celebrations back home.

The elder Bush is seen as especially close to the Saudi royal family and other oil-rich sheiks. They have done lucrative business with Bush’s inner circle both before and after the first Bush presidency. The ascendance of Bush’s son, especially through an undemocratic process in the United States, may have exacerbated concerns among dissidents in Saudi Arabia and other oil states.

Once in office, George W. Bush confirmed many of the suspicions about him, by adopting what was viewed as an arrogant unilateralist foreign policy that set protecting U.S. interests, such as oil supplies, above all else. Through his first several months, Bush made clear that Washington would do whatever it felt was in its interests with little regard to the sensibilities of the rest of the world.

Bush also repudiated Clinton’s Middle East negotiations. Beyond disinterest in an active U.S. role in the peace process, Bush showed open disdain for the Palestinian cause. As the violence worsened and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon unleashed U.S.-built helicopter gunships against Palestinian targets, the Bush administration issued only muted protests.

Personally, Bush toed a line drawn by conservative American commentators, such as Charles Krauthammer and Michael Kelly, publicly blaming Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat for the escalation in violence. In early September, when a United Nations conference on racism debated an Arab resolution likening Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to racism, Bush ordered his diplomats to walk out, rather than fight for more moderate language.

Bush may have thought his tough stance against the Palestinians was playing well to his conservative base at home. But he also offended many Muslims who saw the comments as proof of Washington’s anti-Palestinian bias.

If any of the 19 terrorists preparing to die on Sept. 11 were inclined toward doubts about their mission – if there was a weakest link in the conspiracy – that person received little reason for second thoughts from Bush’s Middle East policy over the summer.

Window of Opportunity

The other what-if imponderable about Sept. 11 is whether the bureaucratic transition in the United States created its own window of opportunity for the terrorists.

After gaining the presidency as the first popular-vote loser in more than a century, Bush rebuffed calls for a bipartisan administration, choosing to staff his new government with staunchly conservative figures who had little respect for their Democratic predecessors.

In his first seven months in office, Bush also focused on domestic policy, primarily his $1.3 trillion tax cut, while investing his personal attention heavily on the issue of stem-cell research. In August, he retreated to his ranch in Crawford, Texas, for a working vacation that mixed relaxation with his stem-cell policy speech and visits to several cities to promote what he called "heartland values."

Before Sept. 11, Bush’s biggest foreign policy initiative was his determination to implement Ronald Reagan’s dream of a national missile shield, even in the face of critics who argued that the far-greater danger was from a non-missile terrorist attack. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other administration officials assured Congress that they were not neglecting these so-called "asymmetrical threats."

Without doubt, the Bush administration was unprepared for Sept. 11, though a Gore administration might have been caught just as flatfooted.

Lessons Learned?

A separate historical question is whether the slaughter of 6,000 people in New York City and at the Pentagon has taught the political and media players of Washington any enduring lessons about their responsibilities to the nation – and the importance of serious information about world problems.

As for Bush, he may deserve some commendation for turning a deaf ear to the most belligerent calls for a widespread war against a string of Middle Eastern governments, a course favored by conservative columnists such as Krauthammer and Kelly.

For the moment, Bush seems to have accepted the advice of more seasoned foreign-policy hands who stress the need for a coalition strategy to isolate and punish al Qaeda and its Afghan Taliban protectors.

But many U.S. allies wonder if Bush really has jettisoned the unilateralist hubris that colored his first seven-plus months in office. In describing his post-Sept. 11 policy to Congress, Bush asserted that the world was divided into countries that are "with us" and thus worthy of U.S. friendship or "with the terrorists" and thus deserving of destruction, with Washington the sole judge and jury.

"Close U.S. allies and many inside the administration itself are uncertain whether the doctrine really means what it appears to say – that the United States will be the unilateral judge of whether a country is supporting terrorism, and will determine the appropriate methods, including the use of military force, to impose behavioral change," wrote Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post on Oct. 16.

Those worries are well grounded. On the issue of terrorism, Washington has long subordinated facts to ideology and politics, giving the world little confidence that the U.S. selection of countries deserving retribution would be fair.

These ideological judgments are demonstrated by this year's choice of seven nations that the State Department officially designated terrorist. One is Cuba, though the State Department report cites no examples of Fidel Castro’s government engaging in terrorism, accusing it only of providing safe haven to alleged terrorists from the Basque region of Spain and having links to guerrilla groups in Colombia.

By contrast, the State Department’s terrorist list did not include Afghanistan. This glaring omission comes although the Taliban regime was aiding and abetting bin Laden and his al Qaeda network, which was believed responsible for the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa and was allegedly behind terrorist plots aimed at the United States.

Fingering Afghanistan, however, might have embarrassed the Saudis, the Pakistanis and the CIA, all of which had a hand in creating the current mess in that country.

As for the national news media, there’s little or no indication that the talking heads feel any remorse about fiddling for a decade – concentrating on the most trivial of political issues – while a strategic part of the world smoldered.

Nor is there much reason for optimism that journalists now will seize this opportunity to unravel, finally, the hidden history of the U.S. relationships in the Middle East, a history that might cast a dark shadow over the political legacy of the Bush family.

Most likely, the American people can expect one more drawn-out morality play, with white hat George W. Bush "smoking out" black hat Osama bin Laden.
© 2001 Robert Parry. In the 1980s, Robert Parry broke many of the stories now known as the Iran-Contra scandal for the Associated Press and Newsweek.

Sunshine Patriots
By Paul Begala

Who are the patriots in times of national crisis? For decades Republicans have questioned the patriotism of Democrats. Richard Nixon got elected to the Senate by calling his Democratic opponent, Helen Gahagan Douglas, "pink right down to her underwear." George H.W. Bush attacked Michael Dukakis's patriotism throughout the 1988 presidential-election campaign. Rich Bond, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, once said that Democrats were not "real Americans." And we all remember the elder Bush darkly hinting that Bill Clinton's student-backpacking trip to Moscow in the 1960s somehow made his patriotism suspect.

But in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States, it is enlightening to examine who has been patriotic and who has been partisan. Though there have been plenty of policy disagreements, the Democrats have stood behind their commander in chief, whatever their doubts about his fitness for office or how he attained it. Senate majority leader Tom Daschle and House minority leader Dick Gephardt issued statements of unwavering solidarity. Former President Bill Clinton called on all Americans to rally behind George W. Bush. In a rare public statement, Al Gore put patriotism ahead of the fact that a majority of Americans had wanted him to be president—and he bear-hugged Bush. Even a hard-core partisan like Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, ordered a cease-fire, going so far as to remove any criticism of Bush from the party's Web site.

To be fair, most Republicans, too, have set aside their partisan fervor. The Bush administration wisely pulled two controversial nominations. And House Speaker Dennis Hastert pledged to extend unemployment compensation and health insurance to laid-off workers.

But there have been cracks in the patriotic veneer, ugly moments in which vicious partisanship has supplanted patriotism. And every one of them has come from the right.

In the days after hate-filled fanatics murdered thousands of innocent people on American soil, the Reverend Jerry Falwell described those cowards as instruments of God's divine retribution. Appearing on the 700 Club (hosted by the Reverend Pat Robertson), Falwell uttered this gem about the mass slaughter: "God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve." He went on to say that the American Civil Liberties Union has "got to take a lot of blame for this," then added to his indictment judges and others who are "throwing God out of the public square."

Then Falwell got specific. "The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked," he said. "And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way—all of them who have tried to secularize America—I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.'"

A spokesmouse for George W. Bush called the remarks "inappropriate."

Inappropriate? I thought Junior knew what inappropriate was. Inappropriate is using the wrong fork during salad. Inappropriate is getting too loaded at the fall mixer and hurling all over your girlfriend's shoes. This is not inappropriate. This is unpatriotic, un-Christian, un-American.

I have yet to hear any of the judgmental blow-hards of the right distance themselves from Falwell. If Louis Farrakhan had said the same thing, every Republican in America would be screaming for his head.

Speaking of inappropriate, get this: The American Conservative Union, ever-sensitive to the carnage of September 11, ran an ad in Democratic Congressman John C. Spratt's South Carolina district saying that Spratt "doesn't want to help President Bush defend America"—because Spratt, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, disagrees with the president's funding for Star Wars (Bush's faith-based missile-defense system).

This time, no comment from the White House. Not a peep from the punditocracy. No stern lectures from Republican Party elders to keep partisanship out of a national crisis. Why should the fact that we're at quasi-war keep you from kicking a good guy in the rocks?

One of the most reliable rules in Washington for the past decade has been that if you want to hear a truly idiotic statement, all you need to do is stick a microphone in Dick Armey's face. Armey (R-Insanity) is the House majority leader. Two weeks after the terrorist attacks, when it had become clear that the Bush recession was causing massive layoffs, Armey announced that he was going to back away from Hastert's commitment to unemployment and health benefits for Americans who've been laid off. "The model of thought that says we need to go out and extend unemployment benefits and health insurance benefits and so forth is not, I think, one that is commensurate with the American spirit here," he said.

You want more? How about Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and the principal organizer of the right-wing coalition? After lamenting that the bad thing about war is that it makes governments bigger (others might think that death, dismemberment, dislocation, and disillusionment are bigger downsides of war), Norquist suggested that people who support expanded funding for Amtrak in the wake of concerns over air safety "should be hanged as war profiteers."

Can we have the hangings in stadiums, Grover, so we can be just like the Taliban?

Of course, the official gasbag of the kook right is Rush Limbaugh. He took to The Wall Street Journal's editorial page to savage—the Taliban? al-Qaeda? global terrorists? Naaaah. He attacked Bill Clinton. Even the slaughter of thousands of innocent souls doesn't deter Lardbutt from going after Clinton. He even tried to blame the former president for the September 11 crisis.

But the truth is that Clinton tripled the budget for counterterrorism, increased FBI counterterror manpower by 500 percent, tried repeatedly to capture or kill Osama bin Laden (efforts the right wing denounced at the time), asked for new law-enforcement tools (which the GOP-controlled Congress denied), and appointed Al Gore to propose sweeping improvements in airport security (which the GOP Congress failed to enact fully).

The surest proof that Limbaugh puts partisanship ahead of patriotism in attacking Clinton's antiterrorism record comes from none other than George W. Bush. Of all the talented people in the Clinton administration, Bush saw fit to keep only two on the job: Dick Clarke, who ran counterterrorism for the National Security Council, and George Tenet, director of the CIA.

There is a pattern here. Once again, we see that the Democrats and Republicans are more than two different political parties. They have two fundamentally divergent ways of looking at the world.

Democrats are children of the Enlightenment. They believe in the perfectibility of humanity. They revere systems even more than they do results. And so, in a crisis, they exhibit a nonpartisan patriotism that would make George M. Cohan proud.

Republicans are not process-oriented; they are results-oriented. Hence, Florida 2000 and the Supreme Court's theft of the election. And hence, the party's casting aside of a long-standing American tradition of eschewing partisanship when American lives are in danger.

Knowing all that, I shouldn't have been shocked by Falwell, Armey, Norquist, and Limbaugh. But I was. I suppose that, with my Democratic rose-colored glasses, I at least expected them to wait until the rubble was cleared and the funerals had been conducted.
© 2001 Paul Begala

Killing Them Softly: Starvation And Dollar Bills For Afghan Kids

Among the leadership qualities most appreciated by editorial writers is the Bush administration's aptitude for shameless propaganda. While the Pentagon keeps dropping tons of bombs, it scatters some meals to the winds. While the U.S. government persists with a bombing campaign that shows every sign of resulting in mass starvation, the president urges the young people of the United States to send in dollar bills -- "to join in a special effort to help the children of Afghanistan."
© 2001 Norman Solomon writes a syndicated column on media and politics. His latest book is "The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media."

There’s Nothing Funny About These ’Wingers

Even Bob Barr and Tom DeLay should be able to figure this out.
© 2001You may reach Joe Conason via email at: jconason@observer.com.

Orwell's Example

But that's not the end of the discussion. It's the beginning. The real message of Orwell's work, as well as of his heroic personal example, is that intellectual integrity is more far crucial to an embattled democracy than orthodoxy. Without vigorous dissent, there's no creative thinking. Honest people can change their minds; demagogic bullies, alas, almost never do.
© 2001 Gene Lyons

Dead Letter Office

Heil Bush,

Dear Propaganda Ansager Brokaw,

Congratulations you have just been awarded the Vidkun Quisling Award for 2001. Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, Vidkun Quisling and last year's winner Volksjudge Antoni (light-fingers) Scalia.

Without your help shilling for us, spinning the truth, telling out right lies and ignoring the real news, holding onto power after our Coup D' Etat would have been impossible. With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Media Whores," you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account.

Along with this award there will be an Iron Cross 2nd class presented by our glorious Fuhrer Herr Bush at a gala celebration in der Fuhrer Bunker (formally the White House) on 12-15-2001. We salute you Herr Brokaw! Sieg Heil!

Signed,
Deputy Fuhrer Cheney

Heil Bush

Long Arm Of International Law
By Molly Ivins

AUSTIN, Texas -- Actually, this is pathetic. And I say this as one who supported military action in the wake of the attacks. I still think we're dealing with a crime, not a war, but it wasn't a crime Interpol could solve. Who could we send but the military? If we could just find an enemy.

As The Onion put it, "U.S. Vows to Defeat Whoever It Is We're at War With." Here we are bombing not just a poor country, but quite likely the most miserable place on earth, and creating a tidal wave of starving refugees in the process. There has to be a better way.

Sissy Farenthold, the Mother Teresa of Texas liberalism, says her reaction to the attacks was, "If not now, when? When are we going to try the law?" International law is not in a high state of development. Just bringing Slobodan Milosevic, a remarkably hideous specimen, to trial took several years. Nevertheless, when you stand back and look at it, the development of international law is one of the few things that will give you hope for Earth.

I know this freaks out the Right, which thinks that U.N. black helicopters are about to take over; and the Left, which thinks globalization benefits only vile, big-league capitalists. (I'm not neutral here: globalization will benefit only vile, big-league capitalists unless we get hold of it.) Nevertheless, growing up through all the paranoia, the ancient enmities and the conflicting ideologies, like grass pushing up through cement, is a substantial body of international law. The reason it exists is because it is so necessary.

It may seem as though the opportunity is now gone, but we can still reconsider, and announce that we (the most powerful country in the world, as we keep reminding ourselves) are willing to submit our grievance against Osama Bin Laden and Co. to the World Court. As I have pointed out before, this is not only a good idea on its own merits, but has the happy effect of making it far more likely that we will actually get Bin Laden. The country in the best position to find the terrorists is Pakistan and its government, as we have seen, has to deal with its own Islamic fundamentalists.

The Libyans who blew up Pan Am 103 were tried at the World Court and Libya gave them up precisely because they were tried in a third country. Both the United Nations International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings and the Montreal Sabotage Convention are on point here. Those who recommend following the law seem to be regarded by most of the media as two-headed freaks, but I think the media do a disservice by reducing this debate to a simplistic false choice: either we nuke 'em or we engage in some tedious, years-long process which ends not with a bang but a whimper. Again, the question is, what works? When Timothy McVeigh committed a terrible act of terrorism, we did not go bomb the right-wing nut camps in Idaho for the very good reason that it was A. illegal and B. would have created a pile of martyrs, in the style of David Koresh, and thus a whole new set of citizens who think the government is the enemy. This is the Catch-22 of "nuke 'em," the endless daisy chain of reaction that keeps creating more terrorists, who then strike and cause more reaction, creating more terrorists, etc. If killing more people were the answer, there would have been peace in the Middle East 50 years ago. The answer is justice, and there is nothing weak-kneed about it.

The second drawback of the "nuke 'em" argument is that Afghanistan is the graveyard of invading armies. It has swallowed the armies of mighty empires three times, Britain twice, the Soviet Union once. It may boast the most hostile topography on the planet and, as in Vietnam, you can't tell the good guys from the bad guys. Speaking of bad guys, we need to take a close look at the Northern Alliance: according to RAWA, the almost unbearably courageous Afghan women's group, the Northern Alliance is as bad as the Taliban. There's nothing left to bomb -- the country only had 18 miles of railroad to begin with -- so now we start the chopper war. But as we know from Somalia, choppers can be brought down with rocket-propelled grenades, practically a pea-shooter in terms of modern weaponry.

Right after the attacks, Secretary of State Colin Powell was actually taken to task by the armchair warriors for pledging to "bring those responsible to justice." A point made by Jeff Cohen of Fairness and Accuracy in Media is that a bombing campaign does more than undermine the rule of law. "It isolates the U.S. instead of isolating the terrorists." There is a better way.
© 2001 Molly Ivins

Learning Disabilities
By Tally Briggs

"The federal government should consider aviation security as a national security issue, and provide substantial funding for capital improvements. The Commission believes that terrorist attacks on civilian aviation are directed towards the United States, and that there should be an ongoing federal commitment to reducing the threats that they pose." ... Final report, February 12, 1997 ... Gore Commision

The airline CEOs were the first and loudest to whine after September 11th, and the first to get a hand out; yet still they laid off thousands of employees without severance or respect for upcoming retirements, refused to tighten security, and still kept all of their obscene multi-million dollar retirement packages in place. It is now more than one month later, they have received far more money than they needed, yet they are still cutting flights, laying off employees, and whining about money, and the troubles and cost of enhancing airport security. Yet if airport security had been more stringent, if there were professional screeners in place, workers trained in profiling, able to see psychological signs of someone about to commit suicide along with mass murder, might September 11th not be such a part of the new modern vernacular?

Granted, before September 11th, everyone thought the best course of action in regards to a highjacking, was to cooperate with their demands, and get the aircraft on the ground. We all know just how much that way of thinking has changed. To my thinking, everything about travel changed on 9/11/01, especially by air, and tighter, much, much tighter security should have been priority number one immediately, even before a single bailout was a glimmer in anyone's mind. The security problem is by no means limited to air travel. Trains, busses, even ships all have target appeal, but not as clearly as American commercial aircraft. They are easily, and quickly maneuvered to almost any destination if there is a trained pilot available, and are capable of much more "collateral damage". Not only by being a weapon of mass destruction itself, but the ripple effect it causes throughout the global economy. When flights are cancelled, so is mail and freight delivery, which are not limited to those big UPS and FedEx planes. The entire travel industry as well as everything remotely touched by it, is also effected. Hotels go with empty rooms, car rental counters are vacant, restaurants, shops, ski resorts, beaches, theme parks, movie theatres, and even those guys who sit along Sunset Blvd in Hollywood selling Star Maps lose business. Corporations who have come to rely on business travel are not untouched, even nationwide seminars and corporate training classes lose out.

Truthfully, it should not have taken the events of September 11th for us to wake up. Signs of security trouble were evident long before, but the airlines along with the federal government, both of which should have National Security and safety as their highest priority, chose to do nothing. The countless highjackings to Cuba and the Middle East were not considered a big enough threat, even though lives were lost, to hire better trained, and paid security personnel. But the downing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie Scotland, which made the whole of Europe move to screening each and every bag, and also matching it to each and every passenger who boards the aircraft, seemed of little concern to anyone here. After all, that all happened "somewhere else".

Even though "somewhere else" has come home, there are still those in control of our safety and security who have painfully obvious learning disabilities. Federalizing airport security, upgrading all scanning equipment, as well as having federal control over each and every person who comes into contact with aircraft, from food service to the cleaning crew is a must. Yet still there are those who believe that it should all remain in the private sector. Hasn't it been proven time and again that privatizing such an important part of national security doesn't work? If it is such a great idea, why aren't the whole of the Armed Forces a private entity?

Riddle me this Batman: If you are making less than $14,000 per year working in airport security, live in a major metropolitan area such as DC, New York, or Los Angeles, can barely pay rent even though you are sharing an apartment, how likely are you to take a bribe to look the other way? How more likely are you to take that same bribe knowing that not only do the government and the airlines not care enough to pay you a living wage, but the future of your current job right now, today, is in question? Hell, it could be easier and far more lucrative than selling crack.

For years the airlines have fought against bag matching and tightening security. Whining that it will cause long delays and higher fares, even though studies have shown the delays would be as long fourteen minutes, and the fare increase forty cents per ticket. Well, thanks to their way of thinking we have much longer delays now, don't we? With the longer lines at airports here in post 9/11 Los Angeles, it is now less of a hassle to drive to Las Vegas than it is to fly. It takes about the same amount of time, and might be safer as well.

It may not be the sole reason, but because we failed to put into place well trained, well-paid personnel, and let corporations be more concerned for their bottom line than the public it serves, it has resulted in thousands of lives lost, billions of dollars in damages, and countless extra hours to get through security. If the airlines, along with the government could be found negligent in their responsibility to the public to ensure the safety of air travel, and were held legally responsible for the breech in security on September 11th, do you think they might look at their bottom lines a little differently?

Since 9/11, there have been countless reports of weapons, including box cutters and a loaded gun that have gotten through the current system. It doesn't take an FBI agent to see that the National Guard, as welcome as they are at our nation's airports, are no more than window dressing, especially since they apparently do not even have ammunition to go along with all the firearms. They certainly aren't helping to screen baggage, or profile passengers, and everyone knows they aren't crosschecking flight manifests against checked baggage. No one is. But they sure look impressive, eh? Ya think looking impressive is going to stop a plane from crashing?

So what's it going to take? Hundreds of aircraft, all loaded with anthrax powder, crashing into, or exploding above every football stadium on Thanksgiving Day when the entire country is tuned in, or a massive nationwide lawsuit suing for punitive damages, along with pain and suffering of every single citizen who has been affected in anyway whatsoever by the tragic events of 9/11? And I mean from the loss of lives, business, and property to hate crimes and the loss of sleep due to anxiety.

There is currently a bill in Congress addressing these very issues, yet there are certain Republican senators along with the selected administration who oppose federalization and want to keep airport security in the private sector, (I mean, it works so well!) and are doing everything in their power, including, but not limited to filibustering, to make sure they get their way, and their precious campaign contributors do not have any inconvenient expenses. What the hell do they care? It became painfully obvious they never take commercial flights when they went to such great lengths to say they were actually going to take commercial flights themselves (Imagine!), to help regain the public's trust in air travel. "See, we are just like the flying public!" Spare me!

The great modern philosopher George Santayana said, "Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

My questions is, how many times?

For years the airlines have fought against bag matching LINK and tightening security. Whining that it will cause long delays and higher fares, even though studies have shown the delays would be as long fourteen minutes, and the fare increase forty cents per ticket. Well, thanks to their way of thinking we have much longer delays now, don't we? With the longer lines at airports here in post 9/11 Los Angeles, it is now less of a hassle to drive to Las Vegas than it is to fly. It takes about the same amount of time, and might be safer as well.
© 2001 Tally Briggs email Tally at: bardgal@yahoo.com

The Cartoon Corner

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of Glenn McCoy

Masters Of War
By Bob Dylan

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs

You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy

You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe

But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher

You hide in your mansion
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world

For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned

But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could

I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die