Where does America go from here?

BY ZANDER DRYER AND MATTHEW FERRARO

By noon, lower Manhattan was a horrifying moonscape. Twisted hunks of smoldering steel and concrete were all that remained of the towers that had dominated the city's skyline just hours before. And everywhere there was the gray dust—a coating of ash so thick that one observer declared it was "nuclear winter in New York."

Tuesday was, put plainly a frightening day for the United States. Just as most Americans were beginning their morning, terrorists hijacked four passenger jets. They crashed two into the World Trade Center and a third into the Pentagon before a passenger revolt brought down the fourth outside of Pittsburgh. By nightfall, President George W. Bush, DC '68, spoke to a shocked nation and promised swift justice. Even as this issue goes to press, American fighter jets around the globe are on highest alert. On Thursday, an unnamed source in the Bush administration claimed that investigators have gathered "vast" amounts of evidence which implicate the elusive Saudi billionaire Osama bin Laden in the attacks.

But as the U.S. prepares to act, scholars and strategic thinkers across the country are struggling to envision what President Bush has termed the "first war of the 21st century"—a war with no battlefields, against an enemy with no identity. It is war with few absolutes, and beyond a universal condemnation of terrorism, America's experts can agree on little.

Western leaders are framing the coming conflict as one between the freedom of democracy and the nihilism of terror. "America was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world. And no one will keep that light from shining," President Bush said in his Tuesday-night address to the nation. "This is not a battle between the United States of America and terrorism, but between the free and democratic world and terrorism," British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in a similar address to the United Kingdom. He added that the UK stands "shoulder to shoulder with our American friends." Leaders from Spain to Libya joined Britain in an unprecedented display of solidarity. But among academics, there is no such unified front.

Charles Hill, visiting lecturer with the International Studies department at Yale and an accomplished diplomat, agrees with Bush's explanation. "It was an attack on America," Hill said. "But [the terrorists'] target was not just America—it was the global system we helped build. It was an attack on America as a symbol of capitalism, freedom, and openness."

"The New York Times' headline was `U.S. Attacked.' That's insane," said Chalmers Johnson, an historian and former professor at both UC-Berkley and UC-San Diego, and author of Blowback: the Costs and Consequences of American Empire. "The attack was on America's foreign policy." Johnson grimly referred to Tuesday's attacks not as acts of terrorism but as examples of "blowback"—a neologism CIA operatives coined to describe missions that have unforeseen negative consequences. In Johnson's mind, the attacks were a consequence of the United States' Cold War philosophy. He believes that, in its efforts to combat and contain communism, America placed its own imperial aspirations over the needs of others. Some of those peoples are now utterly desperate, and they are resorting to violence. "In many ways," Johnson said, "they rightly identify us as the leader of those who are trying to keep them down."

Johnson dismissed the president's assertion that America was targeted because of its core democratic ideas. "No country was ever attacked in human history... because it was a `beacon of freedom,'" he said. Johnson expressed amazement at the ruthlessness of the attack, but warned that these were not hollow acts of terror, without significance. "Such hatred, it doesn't say anything just to say it's evil—it has a rational foundation."

Thomas Friedman, a columnist for The New York Times and the author of The Lexus and the Olive Tree, disagreed. "Their terrorism is not aimed at reversing any specific US policy," he wrote in today's Times ["Smoking or Non-Smoking, NYT, 9/14/2001]. "Their terrorism is driven by pure hatred... its targets are the institutions that undergird America's way of life, from our markets to our military." Hill conceded that while the political objective that the terrorists espoused may be one that rational people could support, "their means are absolutely criminal."

While the world awaits an immediate military response from the United States, intellectuals and strategic thinkers ponder what course of action America will follow in the weeks, months, and years ahead. Most agree that prosecuting those who aided the hijackers is morally and legally justified. But they differ on what the proper course of action is to prevent similar acts from taking place in the future.

In his address Tuesday, President Bush made clear that he sees no difference between terrorists and the nations that harbor terrorists. While the precise definition of what it means to harbor terrorists remains unclear, Hill sees his statement as sending a clear message to those nations—notably the Taliban government in Afghanistan—that supporting groups that practice terror will not be tolerated by the international community. "The president is appropriately saying that we're going to deal not only with the symptoms but also with the disease," Hill said. The fight against global terrorism, Hill continued, can only succeed if all targeted nations work together to solve this "global problem."

Mary Katherine Barbier, an Olin Post Doctorate Fellow in International Security Studies at Yale, agreed. "I think you'll also see increased cooperation with allies such as Great Britain, possibly Israel, Germany—many countries that have been victims of terrorist attacks." She added that "even Arab nations that may have turned a blind eye to terrorists training and organizing within their borders will be more willing to cooperate, because they do not want the United States as an enemy."

The government may be careening towards large-scale military interventionism, but Johnson feels that such action will be completely wrongheaded and beget even more violence against American civilians, more "blow back." He sites Israel as a country that has failed to end terrorism through massive retaliation. Instead, he believes strongly that America must reconsider much of its foreign policy. "The U.S. should be more oriented towards being a model for the world—more committed to diplomacy, more committed to foreign aid," he said. He added that policy-makers do not have a proper appreciation for history—a history which dictates that, unless the U.S. has a fundamental shift in its foreign policy so that it values peace and prosperity that is enjoyed globally, will suffer more attacks and possibly fall, becoming a victim of arrogance and internal conflict. Today, America is a "rather ordinary empire," Johnson said. "Much like the Soviet Union—but we don't seem to be producing Gorbachev-level leaders."

Johnson's views regarding completely re-engineering American foreign policy are not widely shared. But he agrees with Hill, who warns against the possible challenges American civil liberties will face as the government begins a massive anti-terrorist effort. "We have to be very careful especially in a wartime mentality," he said. "If these attacks result in racial profiling, then we've lost our freedom. Our response should be to reaffirm our values, and not to compromise them. The terrorists can only succeed in taking away our freedom if we help them."

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