No words can do justice for the human lives lost or grievously affected. For many people around the world, their view of the world has been irrevocably changed for the worse. This must not be.  

If you have a legitimate cause of protest, make your voice heard peacefully. Once you commit violence, the world dismisses your message and sees you only as a threat, returning violence in kind.

Contact your national government officials to learn their positions on international relations. Urge them to exhaust every diplomatic resource to resolve conflicts around the world peacefully.

It is no longer naïve to believe that, soon, people will be free to make their presence known in every corner of human civilization, if only to carry on the most common aspects of their complex, inter-connected lives. This is evident in the fact that many Europeans now commute daily across borders, that practically everything you consume comes from another country – that someone is browsing this site from an Internet café in Bombay. Yet one must hope that the global mobility of people, goods and ideas will not simply lead to mercantilism, colonialism or commercial assimilation (i.e., rich countries exploiting poor countries), as it has been for the past three hundred years. Respect of diversity and self-determination is not just a politically correct slogan; it is a necessary means of existence in the twenty-first century, whose first nine months do not seem very promising to many. 

I grieve for what happened in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, not just for the horrific loss of life but also for the fear, anger and mistrust we survivors must inevitably sustain regarding our shaken places in the world. The terrorists have indeed won on this dark day; they made this planet a more foreign, sinister place.

In Washington, the bulwark of American military might is still smoldering. The politicians rattle their swords, declaring war against enemies swiftly identified by an uncannily efficient coalition of law enforcers.

In Pennsylvania, the incessant media now report of last-minute heroism aboard a doomed flight. Passengers set aside recognition of their certain demise to thwart their hijackers, preventing the plane from harming anyone on the ground.

In California, the churches are full again. Los Angeles, once more, endures the plight of loved ones not returning home on scheduled flights. They remember the plane that fell from the sky off Ventura Harbor nearly two years ago. I remember my friend, Mike, who never makes it back from Taipei last Thanksgiving.

Grieving co-workers, exhausted rescue workers, reporters losing their voice and composure before national television, stranded travelers, all in disbelief and dismay…

One can only wonder what now transpires in the now-forbidden streets of Kabul, Afghanistan, haunted by weary soldiers yet to finish their endless wars amongst neighbors and brothers, ere they embrace the wrath of the West not seen since the armies of Alexander.

Even after a year or more of residing in the U.S., the terrorists still failed to grasp the absurdity of their hatred towards America.

How does one explain the antipathy felt by the September 11^th hijackers towards their perceived adversaries? Now, it’s easy for an Arab in the Middle East to hate America; all he sees there are the American-made weapons Israelis use against the Palestinians, the warplanes over the skies of Iraq, the American warships anchoring at their shores, and television programs via satellite that defy fundamentalist Islam’s puritanical tenets. The hijackers lived for a year or more inside the United States from Maine to Florida, taking flight lessons. How could they not be affected during this time by the open society they easily infiltrated? They had surely enjoyed the unfettered access to information, the integration of diverse communities, the tolerance of dissent, and the freedom to travel great distances – what grievances did they ever have against such blessings?

Did they not already see this country steeling its resolve since Oklahoma City and the car bomb attack on the World Trade Center – that we Americans would not be intimidated by acts of terrorism on our own turf?

Did they not understand they were perpetuating the ugly Arab stereotype as hate mongers and terrorists? Innocent Arab-American citizens and American Muslims -- and Sikhs, who wear turbans and long beards -- are once again victims of hate crimes, harassed and even murdered by upset neighbors acting on the vilest of their irrational instincts.

If the hijackers had minds of their own, they surely would see the utter futility of their diabolical plots, serving no purpose other than to fulfill the wishes of their remote overlords – back in the Middle East bunkers, waging ideological vendettas of their own design, taking credits of heroism for the dastardly exploits of their suicidal underlings.

What grievances does Osama Bin Laden have against America? He is not a Palestinian, living precariously in lands forcibly occupied by Israel. He is not a Libyan, a Syrian, an Iraqi or an Iranian, repressed by the West for the indiscretions of unscrupulous leaders. He is a Saudi patrician, spoilt by a multi-million inheritance and aided by the CIA during the presumptuous proxy war between the United States and then-Soviet Union over the wastelands of Afghanistan. With a private army of clandestine warriors, he fights a jihad not out of desperation, but in pursuit of glory disguised as puritanical zeal, and fueled by regional resentment towards the U.S. military presence around the Arabian Peninsula, deployed for causes that were not his own to begin with – protection of Kuwait, peacekeeping in Somalia.

It is false reassurance to believe that one knows his enemy so well. Even after a year or more of residing in the U.S., the terrorists of September 11^th still failed to grasp the absurdity of their hatred towards America. Our enmity towards terrorism at large will have no such conundrum.

As our country prepares for war against radical Arab terrorists and those harboring and abetting them, the inevitable scenario now is a war in Afghanistan. Saying it’s a daunting task is barely an understatement. Not since Alexander, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane could a foreign army even touch the Afghanis: not the Ottoman Turks, the British Raj or the Russians.

Especially the Russians. Never mind for a moment that they lost nearly 15,000 soldiers supporting a communist regime in Kabul during the 1980s, in what proved to be the last campaign of the Cold War -- which, incidentally, also became the proving grounds of Osama Bin Laden's followers, then "holy warriors" funded and trained by the CIA. It is particularly poignant to see what the Russians tried to do almost immediately afterwards, in the Caucasus. Their first effort to quell the insurgency in Chechnya ended also in failure, and for a short while the Chechens enjoyed a de facto sovereign state, with Grozny as its capital.

Before we go to war, we must ask difficult questions to assess our prospects, even if they seem to challenge our honor and resolve.

After much fighting and gross injustice inflicted upon the Chechen civilians, the Russian army did retake Grozny. Yet they did not completely defeat a rebel force that simply regrouped by blending back into their towns and villages, eluding suspicious Russian garrisons that regularly hunted down any man of fighting age. Relinquishing guerrilla warfare for the time being, the rebels now turn to terrorism, learning from their newfound friends amongst the Islamic militants how to plant bombs in apartment buildings and subway stations in the very heart of Moscow. Meanwhile, bombed-out Grozny is left to rot, turning its remaining residents into scrap peddlers and beggars – misery of medieval proportions.

The parallels between the war Putin has yet to finish and the war Bush is about to start are not exact, but they are considerable. Both nations have suffered greatly at the hands of their enemies: the Russians through protracted attrition, the Americans in singular moments of abject terror. Both presidents justify their war cries as a matter of national security, and command the support of their people. Both leaders represent predominantly Christian nations, and thus project a perilously provocative image of waging a latter-day crusade against the Islamic world -- to which the bearded Mullahs would only respond with more jihads and fatwas to slaughter Americans.

Will we, with our superior technology and resources, prevail in a conflict half a world away, while the Russians stumble before their own borders? Will we also languish in Afghanistan despite initial successes of incursion? Will we become as ruthless and irresponsible towards the ordinary Afghan people – impoverished, disenfranchised citizens who have no say over the exploits of Osama Bin Laden or the Taliban, but are expected for centuries to defend their homeland valiantly against overwhelming odds – as the Russians have been towards the Chechens? Will our military actions abroad only provoke more terrorist reprisals back home, as the Muscovites have so painfully experienced?

Debate is an integral part of our democracy. Before we go to war, we must ask difficult questions to assess our prospects, even if they seem to challenge our honor and resolve. No one wants to lose, certainly not the underdogs of Chechnya or Afghanistan. Up to now, they haven’t.

I now know what it’s like to stand at the proverbial crossroads, making a deal with the devil. Having marched in Washington, DC and Los Angeles to protest our country’s proxy wars in the 1980s and the Gulf War a decade later, I now decide to support our war against the terrorists.

Oh, pity not the wayward soul of this erstwhile pacifist. Many, many people in New York, Washington, California, across this country and around the globe have graver concerns weighing on their hearts: we lost family members and friends, jobs and savings,  a collective sense of security. It’s not as though my decision was difficult, or wrong. The civilized world needs to defend itself against suicidal fanatics whose recalcitrant enmity towards Israel, America and secular Arab regimes (i.e., anyone who isn't an Islamic fundamentalist of their particular sect) leaves no regard for human lives whatsoever; it is a fight long overdue.

We must reform our national policy to recognize and counteract  the very causes of anti-American sentiments in the Muslim world.

Yet, in this Faustian pact, I have my terms for my tacit agreement to the sordid business of revenge. I will demand my satisfaction from this war.

If our campaign against terror is to be total and resolute, it must be more than dropping “smart bombs” and sending the marines to yet another exotic battlefield. We must reform our national policy to recognize and counteract the very causes of anti-American sentiments in the Muslim world – anything that would prompt even the most moderate of Arabs to think that our profound tragedy on the 11^th of September was a “comeuppance.”

We must drag the Israelis and the Palestinians to the negotiation table one last time, making sweeping, unprecedented compromises to end their yearlong conflict. Convince Jewish settlers to return their occupied lands to proper owners – compensate for their trouble of displacement by all means. Disarm the civilian population, Israeli and Palestinian. Make the holy sites of Jerusalem a neutral zone under international stewardship. Advise the Palestinians to create an accountable, constitutional government, and persuade them to build their national capital in Ramallah, not East Jerusalem. Endow both sides with largesse for redeveloping the region.

We must mend and renew our friendships in the Muslim world. End sanctions and “no fly zone” interdictions against Iraq, and resume rapprochement with Saddam, our former enemy number one, provided he is not implicated as a terrorist conspirator. Give generously to the Iraqi people, both the Sunni majority and the Kurdish minority to the north, and the Shi’ites of the south. Reassure Kuwaitis of their national security. Promise the Taliban – or whoever left to fill the Afghan power vacuum after we conclude our business with Bin Laden – that we will rebuild their country. Build factories – create jobs – from Indonesia to Morocco, from Uzbekistan to Sudan. Rebuild mosques in Bosnia.

At home, we must withhold judgment when people assert their world view in the austere terms of their religion. Maintain a constructive dialogue among the different faiths, especially between Christian and non-Christian congregations. Prosecute hate crimes with due fervor.

Are these things too much to ask in exchange of my predisposition towards peace? No, they are not. If they can bring about a greater peace, a world free from terror, I can live with myself – and none of the thousands perished on Black Tuesday will die in vain.

I stayed close to my sister, my personification of hope, continuity and normalcy.

I felt like a looter. Local parents, strollers and whining youngsters in tow, descended upon the chaotic aisles, gleaming whatever they could from the heaps of out-of-fashion fads and ill-conceived merchandising schemes (how many more likenesses of professional wrestlers on lunch boxes can one take?).

5,000 people were murdered last Tuesday. Typhoon Mari flooded Taipei. My portfolio lost 75% of its value since January 2000 and the nation is going to war. My sister is buying Pokemon paraphernalia for other people's children. I sank into a chair, dazed and depressed.

I felt somewhat better afterwards, when we sat at a familiar table in our neighborhood for sesame-coated bread and hearty soup in a clay pot – at an Islamic Chinese restaurant. I stayed close to my sister, my personification of hope, continuity and normalcy, as we went to the market later for milk.

Let our jets soar ever more, bringing souls of goodwill and adventure safely to a brave new world.

Indeed, somewhere between the mere loathing of unpracticed airport security and the morbid fear of boarding another doomed flight, there is the dread of having no plane to get on at all. In reaction to sharply curtailed demand, airlines now announce five-figure layoff numbers and up to 20% reduction of service. Swissair is insolvent, likely rendering direct flights between the US and Switzerland a fond memory for a while. Even with a federal bailout, United Airlines and American Airlines – the two largest in the country – fear they would tread the same plank walked by the once-mighty Pan Am, which bowed out shortly after suffering a terrorist attack just above Lockerbie, Scotland.

Now, more than ever, I covet those giddy Fridays when I leave midday from the office, casually beating the rush hour traffic to hop on a 747 – and to find myself standing on the cobbled streets of the Old World the following afternoon.  

Granted, there are many things that will compensate for the loss of yet another trans-oceanic holiday.  I am grateful for the family members and friends who remain in touch. I am proud of a nation that stands united in the face of calamity. I still continue to roam about my home state of California, keeper of the planet’s tallest, largest and oldest living things (coastal redwoods, sequoias and bristle-cone pines), the highest peak in the 48 contiguous states (Mt Whitney), and the lowest point in North America (Death Valley). At the least, I can certainly shore up my savings, to brave an economy that has been ailing for more than a year.

Yet, as a perennial traveler, I definitely feel quite amiss. My love of the world and my freedom to appreciate its many splendors in first person have been egregiously compromised. While I sustain no grievous injury, as do the loved ones of nearly 5,500 people who perished in September, that which makes me who I am as a person is made a bit less so.

God bless America. Let our jetliners soar ever more, bringing souls of goodwill and adventure safely to a brave new world.

It’s been a month now.  The unbelievable nightmare that seemed to have happened only yesterday is now a daily malaise.  

We learned that true heroes -- our martyrs -- die quietly in the uniforms of firefighters, police officers and paramedics.

Back at the home front, the list of threats to the way of life we once knew – layoffs, failed investments, curtailed travels and sacrifice of civil liberties for greater security – grows by the day.  Someone was spreading anthrax germs at a tabloid newspaper’s office in Boca Raton, Florida, killing a man and infecting two others in a place only minutes away from where several suicidal hijackers lived, took flying lessons and inquired about crop-dusting planes.

1. We learn that true heroes -- our martyrs -- die quietly in the uniforms of firefighters, police officers and paramedics. Their presence on our television screens, where we usually idolize those earning millions in sport arenas and movie studios, injects a much-needed shot of humility in the hyper-commercialized vanities of our popular culture.

2. By seeing our civil liberties compromised to bolster law enforcement, we begin to take our Bill of Rights more seriously, and never for granted. 

3. We realize that America does not stand alone in the world. Before September, the current U.S. administration alienated the global community by rejecting the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gases, abandoning the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in an unilateral pursuit of a missile defense system, and above all, its relative lack of initiatives in resolving the violent conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, now in its second year.  The terrorists certainly will not help us in any of those matters, but they do remind us, in the cruelest manner possible, that actions (or absence thereof) serving our national interests do have global consequences, and that even the richest and most powerful nation on earth is still in need of friends.

4. As we open our minds to the great religion of Islam despite those who commit atrocities in its name, we reflect upon the West’s own lamentable history of subverting ideology in the service of genocide: the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the witch hunts of colonial America, the Holocaust. We will no longer  tolerate any repetition of such grave crimes against humanity: not in the Balkans, central Africa or anywhere in the Muslim world.

5. At the very least, there is yet another war-induced lesson in world geography: those who may not even be able to name all fifty states now know every country that borders Afghanistan (Pakistan, China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran), at least until the conflict’s end.

Blame Aristotle, Shakespeare and television. The Sage defined drama as an orderly catharsis of our emotions, acted out by pro- and antagonists we readily identify, who play their predictable roles in a familiar conflict to reach its inevitable climax and resolution. The Bard raised the ante a few centuries later, expanding drama to become an universal, all-encompassing reflection of human existence. With laughs and tears, history and fantasy, good and evil, the profound and the trivial inextricably intertwined, there can be no complete satisfaction of the Aristotelian formula until every secret is revealed, every wrong righted, every comic character resigned to a bittersweet denouement and every tragic figure slain.

The catharsis of our fear, anger and grief over these difficult weeks -- or months -- will not be declared by George Bush or Tom Brokow, but by the rewards we find in our own everyday lives.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was quite frank on this point: It is going to be a long war, and very difficult to kill or capture Bin Laden. As Ramadan draws nigh, we continue to unleash our absurdly superior firepower onto the hardy Taliban, while Bin Laden is already a living martyr, winning support from the restive, disaffected quarters of the Muslim world whether he is dead or alive. Although the mail-borne anthrax attacks have claimed only three lives, the terrifying prospect of deadly, long-lasting anthrax spores contaminating the nation's entire mail distribution system is far more disturbing than the fear of hijacked jets crashing into nuclear power plants.

While we deem our fight just and our victory inevitable, uncertainty still looms. When will it ever end?  What else will happen until then? Everyone wants these answers. No one has them.

This war on terrorism is not a spectator event confined to our television screens. Every one of us is an actor, playing every bit part there is in this drama, through every word we say and every deed we perform to shape our collective consciousness. It is how we explain the beguiling images of our times -- the ruins of lower Manhattan, the men and women in hazmat suits, Afghani refugees in turbans and shrouded in burkas -- to our children. It is how we adjust our travel plans for the winter holidays. It is what goes through our heads when we open our mail.  Do we carry our lives to defy our cowardly enemies, to pursue the goals we set for ourselves regardless of circumstance, or just that -- to live?

Whether this was an accident or an act of sabotage, the terror, the deaths were all too real.

I then had to remind myself that what happened on September 11^th and November 12^th were very real, too.

Whether this was an accident or an act of sabotage, the terror, the deaths were all too real.

My sister was worried. In five days, she was to drive me to LAX airport for my flight to Melbourne, Australia. She asked about my flight carrier (United), and my destination relative to Flight 587's scheduled landing at Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (half a world away). Not that it made any sense, or should.

There will be no true respite in Afghanistan until its people regain an accountable government that rejects the evils of fanaticism.

Despite the volatility of these rapid developments, the people of Kabul are breathing a sigh of relief. For now, no more bombs, missiles and rockets are demolishing what remains of their battered city. Even more liberating, though, is the negation of the absurd medieval sanctions on daily life imposed by the Taliban's extreme interpretation of Sharia, or Islamic law. Shopkeepers play loud music, men shave their beards, children fly kites and a few women boldly reveal their (beautiful) faces. A Reuters headline said it all: "Afghan men indulge in death-free soccer," in reference to their freedom to play football, in short-sleeved shirts and shorts, on a field once reserved for public executions.

There will be no true respite in Afghanistan until its people regain an enlightened, accountable government that rejects the evils of fanaticism. Until then, amid the Anthrax scare and the crash of yet another jet over New York, we can but vicariously sample the sweet taste of this early victory, in eager anticipation of the next good news: the capture of Bin Laden, Zawahiri and the other Al-Qaeda ringleaders. 

25th August 2002: The War on Terrorism Has Gone Cold

Upon the first anniversary of the attacks, al-Qaeda is uprooted from Afghanistan, the Taliban is overthrown, Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden have eluded capture, and the US administration is pushing for the ouster of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. As the War on Terrorism increases its scope, it deserves some comparison with the last major global conflict of the twentieth century, the Cold War. A history lesson is in order, for the mistakes of the past are being repeated. Click here to read this essay in full.

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