An attack on the civilised world

THE FALLOUT OF a serial assault by some faceless sky-faring terrorists on the citadels of America's economic and military might is unimaginably devastating. Utterly despicable are the four separate but transparently coordinated acts of terror that rocked America on Tuesday. Hardly concealed is the dastardly political motive of the criminals, but it has not been easy to determine the physical and psychological magnitude of a truly phenomenal tragedy. At least several thousands of innocent people, Americans and presumably many other nationals, are feared to have perished in the stupendous aerial forays. Two separately hijacked passenger planes were `piloted' with deadly precision straight into the upper floors of the imposing twin towers of the World Trade Center along New York city's showpiece skyline. It was not long before the towers collapsed in mighty implosions that were caused by the sheer impact of the aircraft intrusions. With some other terrorists commandeering and ramming yet another passenger plane as a flying missile into a corner of the Pentagon, America's civilian-military nerve centre of power, it became increasingly clear that the perpetrators of the sequential heinous crimes were acting in concert. The terrorist blitzkrieg may indeed mark the beginning of a new defining war on civilised humanity itself. One more civilian aircraft, which too was hijacked, crashed over the U.S. homeland itself, and this completed a viciously bizarre pattern of anti- America vengeance. The number of lives lost in these two other episodes of terror is also far from clear still. It is a poignant aspect of an immense modern-day marvel that the television networks have captured the `live' montage of an eerie aerial attack on the World Trade Center. Also beamed across the world are some real-time pictures of the other acts of terror as well. Those who plotted these suicidal missions could not have planned for more on a clear day of sunshine that turned into darkness for the entire civilised world.

To empathise with the United States and its people and Government in their worst hour of crisis since the Pearl Harbour bombing during the Second World War is to pay the minimal civilised homage to mankind. For the U.S. President, Mr. George W. Bush, a test of truly historic proportions is not simply how to lead and nurse his compatriots during this indescribable trauma. With the borderless terrorists having struck at the heart of American power and pride, Mr. Bush should respond in a manner that will not at all aggravate the escalating instability of the global strategic and political order. He should in fact endeavour to enhance worldwide security in conjunction with all major and responsible countries. For the immediate present though, even as Washington struggles to accurately identify the masterminds and sponsors of this mass-terrorism, the Bush administration must first address the gigantic failure of the American intelligence services to foresee a political calamity of such vast proportions. For the Americans, it has been a discouragingly baffling experience to discover that a hijacked commercial aircraft could so easily invade the Pentagon which is said to be sitting under a canopy of highly protected air space.

In a larger international perspective, the image of the U.S. as a Fortress America has come under a huge question mark. Not that the U.S.' landmarks and interests within its sovereign territory and elsewhere across the world have not been traced on the radar screens of sundry terrorist groups and pounded too in the past. Some of the more significant instances relate to the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 and the ground-level explosion at the World Trade Center itself in New York in 1993. Yet, the apparent helplessness of the U.S. authorities at the height of the latest saga of grief is a manifest testimony to the limits of America's present-day power in the face of terrorists driven by a suicidal `zeal' that may or may not owe its origin to a political or religious crusade. In one sense, commendable indeed is the remarkable ease with which the American military and political authorities swung into action to take some well- conceived preventive measures to protect the President and the other chief functionaries of the world's most powerful democracy as Tuesday's terror strikes began. Yet, at another operational level, the chinks in America's armour have never been worse exposed on a day of terrorist mayhem.

The apocalypse-like carnage in New York as also the wounding scars in Washington seem to have jolted the ordinary U.S. citizens out of any complacent faith in the proverbial American Dream. However, American politicians and opinion-makers have lost no time to reaffirm their belief in a sustainable tryst with democracy and racial-ethnic pluralism. It is uniquely imperative that the Bush administration must not diminish or discount the political liberties and other freedoms of the ordinary Americans in its search for an effective defensive shield against the terrorists of any description. It is to be welcomed that Mr. Bush has also warned the terrorists that they would not be able to blast the democratic foundations of America even if they manage to shake the seismic foundations of its stately buildings. If any political symbolism was at all trapped in the molecular debris of men and materials in Lower Manhattan, it was that the demolition of the twin towers of capitalist pride occurred not far from the hallowed precincts of the Statue of Liberty, an American icon of rejuvenative inspiration. For the many air passengers, who were held hostage as in some fictionalised doomsday situation, the countdown to a horrific end must have been a Kafkaesque nightmare. This, if nothing else, may deeply influence the thoughts and emotional profiles of the ordinary air passengers for some time to come. The ease with which the hijackers managed to hoodwink the security agencies at three major U.S. airports at this time can only weigh heavily on the human psyche.

A firm pledge by Mr. Bush to track the culprits of Tuesday's evil and bring them to justice is unexceptionable. More problematic in a geopolitical sense is his assertive goal of launching military strikes against the terrorists to be identified and the states that might be harbouring them. While no definitive conclusions have yet been reached, the Taliban-hosted Osama bin Laden, the alleged international don of terrorism, is a prime suspect. Others like the Iraqi leader, Mr. Saddam Hussein, may also figure in the U.S.' analysis, given their protracted hostilities with Washington. The enormity of hate as also the logistical thoroughness behind the latest attack on America raise the possibility, too, that two or more anti-U.S. forces had joined hands. Yet, as a former U.S. policy planner, Dr. Henry Kissinger, has argued, a systemic approach may be called for to deal with the terror tactics being directed against the U.S. Now, as the U.S. is not alone in having to face the calculus of terror by external forces (India, too, being a state concerned), Washington should explore the feasibility of suitable consultations and cooperation with other key countries. On an altogether different plane, the proven vulnerability of the U.S. to some unorthodox terrorist strikes, which do not involve weapons of mass destruction, has brought into a sharper focus the debate about a futurist American missile defence system. It is to be designed only to deal with a more sophisticated delivery of the means of terror than a commandeered passenger aircraft.

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