The Dish

The solution to this conflict, Gary Kamiya of Salon suggests, is to hold Israel’s aid hostage until they agree to let the people who celebrated this atrocity march into Jerusalem to conduct their Jihad from a closer vantage point. How anyone can even take a passing look at the developments since the Oslo Accord and blame Israel for unwillingness to take a risk for peace is beyond me. Kamiya’s response to the invasion of Czechoslovakia would be to hand Hitler a nice chunk of Poland. After all, isn’t it the underlying grievances of the German people that need addressing first? They feel alienated and betrayed. We need to pressure its neighbors to make more concessions. Then the German people and their radical leaders will be satisfied. The sheer moral relativism of this article – and its complete ignorance of history – is so eloquent. After a naked act of war by a sub-culture that makes no bones about its unremitting hatred of anything Jewish or American, Salon encourages us all to Blame Israel First. The magazine even equates American suffering with Palestinian suffering in its photo-images. This isn’t just moral equivalence. It’s moral abdication.

Two new pieces on the war’s beginning appear opposite.

CIVIL DEFENSE: I guess official Washington isn’t talking about this so as to prevent panic. But one thing seems pretty obvious to me. Whatever military initiative we now mount, there will surely be a response. If the people behind this attack were smart enough to have come up with this first strike, it’s surely possible that they will have anticipated a response and have at least a game-plan after that for counter-attack. Last Tuesday was a warning: that they can do anything. That “anything” could surely include a devastating nuclear, chemical or biological attack on civilian centers in this country. So shouldn’t we take precautions as a matter of extreme urgency? We need to dust down air-shelters and build many, many new ones. We need gas-masks widely distributed. We need security at reservoirs and any place where chemical or biological agents could be swiftly disseminated. We need mass inoculations against any number of toxins or viruses. I’m not a security expert but there must be a list of civil defense procedures applicable to such a situation. It should surely be in place before our retaliation begins. Why is this not being done?

GRACIOUS OLD LADY: Good for the New York Times. Their lead editorial today acknowledges that this president has grown and will continue to grow during this war. The president should also notice: he’s good informally among ordinary people. Fewer stilted speeches behind a desk with a teleprompter; more impromptu hugs and chats and off-the cuff discussion, please.

APPEASEMENT WATCH I: I’ve resisted taking on the terrorist fellow-travelers too aggressively so far. It seemed inappropriate. Now it isn’t. Take a look at Edward Said’s tirade in the current Observer. He mocks the notion that this is a battle between freedom and terrorism: “Political rhetoric in the US has overridden these things by flinging about words like ‘terrorism’ and ‘freedom’ whereas, of course, such large abstractions have mostly hidden sordid material interests, the influence of the oil, defence and Zionist lobbies now consolidating their hold on the entire Middle East, and an age-old religious hostility to (and ignorance of) ‘Islam’ that takes new forms every day.” There you have it: the classic Marxist cant about freedom merely being an instrument for sordid materialism. With the WTC perpetrators and their backers, Said has long excused violence, even symbolically joining in by throwing rocks at Israel from the border. But with the Western democracies, he cautions restraint, education, and passivity in the face of barbarism. You don’t need to read this piece too closely to see which forces he wants to triumph. And he exploits the freedom his friends want to destroy in order to make his case.

APPEASEMENT WATCH II: Another breath-taking column in the British left-wing press, this time from veteran bigot, Richard Ingrams. Who do you think was responsible for this war? Israel of course! “Noticeable was the reluctance throughout the media to contemplate the Israeli factor – the undeniable and central fact behind the disaster,” Ingrams writes, “that Israel is now and has been for some time an American colony, sustained by billions of American dollars and armed with American missiles, helicopters and tanks.” And his point? He doesn’t need to spell it out. We should be grateful, I suppose, that those who seek the extinction of the Jewish state still feel somewhat hesitant to say so outright. But like all anti-Semites, Ingrams thinks he and the West are somehow victims of the Jewish people. “Who Will Dare Damn Israel?” is his headline. Damn? After an event like last week, Ingrams wants to “damn” a country that has long been the victim of such horror. Dare? Oh, the bravery of Ingrams’ prejudice! And then further in the piece, he casts the usual ugly slur of dual loyalty on Lord Lever, a British citizen of impeccable patriotism: “Mr. Blair’s adviser on the Middle East is an unelected, unknown Jewish businessman, Lord Levy, now installed in the Foreign Office; the fact that this same Lord Levy is the chief fundraiser for the Labour Party; unmentioned also would be the close business links with Israel of two of our most powerful press magnates, Rupert Murdoch and the newly ennobled owner of the Telegraph newspapers, Lord Conrad Black.” One phrase stands out: “unelected, unknown Jewish businessman.” These are the code words of the worst kind of anti-Semitism, and it says much about the decadence of the British left that it allows such claptrap to flourish in its midst. This is the kind of British upper-class anti-Semitism that tried to stop Churchill and will now try to stop Blair from doing his duty. He mustn’t listen. And it looks like he won’t.

MORAL EQUIVALENCE AGAIN: And of course, Ingrams’ statement that no-one has raised Israel so far is untrue. Everyone is acutely aware of the role Israel plays in this crisis. It’s just that no-one but Ingrams would have thought to blame the victim at a moment like this. Except, of course, Arab anti-Semites. Like the Nazis, the fundamentalist bigots of perverted Islam have relentlessly shored up their risible regimes by scape-goating the Jews. They look at Israel and see a country of dynamism and success, of freedom and faith, a society that has created more in fifty years than any of these other satrapies have managed combined. While Israel has rebuilt a civilization, the Taliban have been busy destroying one. We know that the murderers are a tiny minority, and that the overwhelming majority of Arabs have not engaged in such atrocities. But we also know that fundamentalist anti-semitism has widespread support in that part of the world, and it’s time to stop making excuses for it. The Arab hatred of the Jews, and their deranged, envious paranoia about them, is there for all to see. It is as clear as the words in Mein Kampf. It is evil and wrong, and it is not balanced by anything comparable on the other side or justified by anything the West has done. Yes, Israel is not perfect. Yes, it has been responsible for many violations of civilized norms in defending itself from terror. But there is no moral equivalence between a tiny democracy fighting for its existence while allowing countless Israeli Arabs citizenship and prosperity in its midst – and the Arab dictatorships in Syria and Libya and Iraq. We will be subtly and constantly assaulted by the slow drip of moral equivalence in the days and months ahead. Time to start resisting now.

Opposite are my two contributions to thinking about this epochal event. One is written for Americans; the other for Britons. Last night, I attended a bonfire on the farthest beach at the end of Cape Cod, within sight of where the pilgrims first landed. It was for a friend – a proud, brash, funny, gay Englishman who had become an American – and who was killed by the demons who took over the airplane he was on last Tuesday. On the beach, we attached two flags: the Star Spangled Banner and the Union Jack. In the dusk, they enfolded each other, their red, white and blue fusing in the red glare of the sunset. Yes, we must bring the rest of the world together. But it is no accident that the haters of the Middle East hate these two countries the most. As we have before, we must become almost one nation together again. The English speaking peoples who now span every race and color and creed are the indispensable force for the survival of freedom. I make no apology for thinking of Churchill and Roosevelt now. The torch they raised is now passed to us. What a privilege. What an opportunity – especially for my generation and those younger.

As he has before, president Bush is slowly growing into this crisis. His words at National Cathedral yesterday were his best yet. His radio speech today even better. Thank God someone in this administration knows what Churchill knew: words matter. They matter as much as any military might. I believe in my heart that our president will rise to this occasion – and that he is far, far more in touch with most Americans than many of the chattering classes. I read last week with growing dismay that some of my fellow journalists were actually making partisan points about this, glibly assessing president Bush’s performances, spinning and pirouetting as if the world were the same. Rick Berke’s performance on PBS’s Washington Week on Thursday told me all I need to know about this mindset. Mickey Kaus’s staggering comment that this story “will be off the evening news by Thanksgiving” reveals that one element of the chattering class still hasn’t begun to wrap its mind about what has really happened. These failures are not a result of what Mickey calls a faster news cycle among elites. They’re a function of the slower news cycle of elites. These journalists are simply behind the news, behind the curve, immune to what the people of this country already know in their hearts. But these are errors simply of judgment and they will pass. These commentators are decent people, just completely blindsided by events, and no-one should blame them. That doesn’t apply to the comments from the pathological right (Falwell and Robertson et al.) and the vile Left (Michael Moore, Eric Alterman), comments that reveal what many of us have suspected for years: that these elements in our culture are simply depraved. We shouldn’t harbor any illusions about these people and their ilk, and we need not make distinctions between right and left. Crises show you what people are really about. Falwell and Robertson and Moore and others harbor a hatred for many people of this great country and at some level blame America for this atrocity. That they could do so this week is beyond belief. We have a war on now and I’m not going to pursue these people in this space for their divisive, cowardly remarks. To start attacking other Americans now would be to descend to their level. We have far more important things to think about and to do. But let us remember what this moment showed us about these people. And if this war ends, let us ensure that they are cast to the margins of our culture and our society, and never treated with respect again.

I haven’t written today because this is surely a time for prayer not argument. But let me share a report from a small gathering in a small town on the edge of America. Just before 7pm tonight, as people made their way to the center of town, the rain cleared and an enormous rainbow stretched across the bay. People came out of houses and stores and looked upward. And then as we gathered around Provincetown’s monument, and friends arrived from New York, their eyes and faces seared with fear, a welling low sound came from the crowd. With no instruction, we started singing the Star Spangled Banner. Candles were lit and placed around the base of the iron plaque at the base of the monument. And then I realized for the first time the symbolism of where we were. This was the Pilgrim Monument. This is where it all began, where the first pilgrims arrived before moving on to Plymouth. This deeply diverse place – with its fishermen and store-owners, contractors and poets, gays and lesbians and families and children – stood undemonstratively together in grief and resolve. We shall overcome, we sang, the lyrics of the civil rights movement blending with the stirring patriotism of the centuries before in a strangely integrating chorus. Yes, I thought to myself. We shall overcome.

COMING SOON: My two recent essays for the Times of London and the New York Times Magazine will be posted here simultaneously with their appearance on the web pages of those publications.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

– John McCrae

REBUILD IT: Someone sent me this small quote from a book on architecture. It’s from Minoru Yamasaki, the designer of the World Trade Center. Yamasaki wrote: “The World Trade Center should, because of its importance, become a living representation of man’s belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his belief in the co-operation of men, and through this co-operation his ability to find greatness.” No wonder these demons destroyed it. I want Bush tomorrow to say that we will rebuild it – taller, bigger, stronger. And that the flag that was placed by firefighters in the rubble should fly one day on its roof.

FALWELL GOES BEYOND THE PALE: So far relatively few have used this terrible tragedy for political points. Here is what Jerry Falwell said on the 700 Club: “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and 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.'” Pat Robertson concurred: “Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted their agenda at the highest levels of our government.” I cannot express how personally wounded I and so many others are by his attempt to associate many Americans – some of whom were victims of this evil and some of whom were heroes – with the demons who carried it out. It is unspeakably wrong and inappropriate. We are at war. We must stand together or we will fail.

APOLOGIES: I’m sorry for the thin dish today. I have just finished two essays for the New York Times magazine and the Sunday Times of London on this event and its meaning. I’ve written over 6000 words in one day and I’m spent. Worse, it was impossible to think and write honestly about this without seeing the screen blur with the tears in my eyes. In my life as a writer, I’ve never come across an event that I could not somehow professionally analyze and dissect with some enthusiasm and zest. But this was just something I deeply didn’t want to write. I just wanted the event to be undone. I realize more than ever that, seventeen years after coming to this amazing place, I am an American now. When they placed the flag on the rubble, I wept as I have rarely wept before. And then when I saw the Queen’s Guards at Buckingham palace play the Star Spangled Banner, it occurred to me how deeply appropriate this was. Isn’t everyone on the side of civilization an honorary American now? It is hard to realize after this unspeakable act that we are not alone. There is hatred for America and it is loud and powerful. But beneath that, around the world, there is also a quiet reservoir of love and gratitude that foreign national pride will not always allow full expression. We must remember that. And we must not let them down. They are watching now to see what we do and what kind of people we are. We must show them as we have never shown them before that a deep humanity and an unremitting rage are not incompatible. We must show them what we are made of – and keep their hope alive.

“There is sobbing of the strong,
And a pall upon the land;
But the People in their weeping
Bare the iron hand;
Beware the People weeping
When they bare the iron hand.”

– Herman Melville, “The Martyr,” upon the death of Abraham Lincoln.

A classic piece of appeasement appeared today under the guise of restraint and reason. My former colleague and friend Robert Wright argues in Slate against unilateral American action against the forces and states that have just declared war upon the United States. “[K]illing Islamic fundamentalist terrorists (which the perpetrators almost certainly were) can be not just ineffective, but counterproductive.” This is the familiar argument of those who believe that these acts of fanaticism cannot be avenged without spawning more fanaticism. Kill one suicide bomber and you create four more. Wright’s argument is that our new enemies are “simply not susceptible to normal deterrence.” If Wright means by this that the indoctrinated handful of young fanatics who will always remain a threat cannot be deterred, he may be right. That is why these people must be hunted down and assassinated, and why we must kill any and all who surround or abet them. But the states and regimes that survive by fostering this evil surely can be deterred – and not by polite threats or warnings. In fact, the absence of a serious deadly response will only convince them to continue to foster the evil in their midst, and it will only get worse. Wright entertains the fallacy that because we can never eliminate all threats, we cannot eliminate any. His argument is simply defeatism. In 1940, many similarly well-intentioned urged Chamberlain to sue for peace, as whole swathes of the British establishment wanted, and as narrow British self-interest might even have required. Look what the consequences of war were back in 1940: the destruction of almost every major city in Britain. But Churchill was right to fight – even though it meant the deaths of hundreds of thousands of British soldiers and civilians. And he was right to say that there would be no surrender even if the entire city of London were reduced to rubble. A shocking statement that, isn’t it? But it reflects an iron will that we must now summon for ourselves.

THIS ISN’T TERRORISM, IT’S WAR: Besides, this enemy is not simply a band of thugs, but several regimes that aid and abet these people and have celebrated this atrocity. These regimes have declared war on the United States, and it is time we repay the favor. The precedent is not the Sudan under Clinton or even Libya under Reagan. Under Clinton, these regimes were encouraged. Under Reagan, they were scared, but, under Reagan, they had not yet launched this kind of war. Now they have – even daring to target one of the citadels of our democracy: the White House. This is the most grievous declaration of war against America in history. What Wright hasn’t absorbed, I think, is that we are no longer fighting terrorism. We are at war. And we are not at war with any old regime or even a handful of terrorists. We are at war with an evil that will only grow unless it is opposed with all the might at our command. We must wage that war with a ferocity that doesn’t merely scare these monsters but terrifies them. Merely murdering bin Laden is a laughable response. If this new war can be waged with partners – specifically Russia, NATO, China – so much the better. But if not, the United States must act alone – and as soon as we can be assured of complete success. There are times when it is not inappropriate or even immoral to use overwhelming power merely to terrify and avenge. Read your Machiavelli. We must shock them more than they have shocked us. We must do so with a force not yet seen in human history. Then we can begin to build a future of greater deterrence. I repeat: we are not responding to terrorism any more. We are at war. And war requires no restraint, simply massive and unanswerable force until the enemy is not simply defeated but unconditionally destroyed. To hesitate for fear of reprisal is to have capitulated before we have even begun. I don’t believe Americans want to capitulate to anyone. The only question is whether we will get the leadership now to deal with this or whether we will have to endure even worse atrocities before a real leader emerges.

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade;
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night

– W. H. Auden, September 1, 1939.

THE IRAQI POSSIBILITY: Check out this 1995/1996 Public Interest essay on the first World Trade Center bombing. Some of it sends chills down your spine with its prescience. But its most important suggestion is that Iraq might have been behind the bombing. Ditto today. Saddam is not only capable but willing – especially against a nemesis like the son of the first George Bush. More evidence that Colin Powell’s tragic abandonment of the war against Saddam might well be one of the biggest blunders in recent history. If this coordinated massacre needed real state-sponsored support, which nation would you pick as the prime suspect?

THE MOST OBSCENE COMMENT YET: Ignoring Peter Jennings’ constant reiteration of the reasons for Muslim and Arab hatred for the West, the following passage from today’s Slate is the first time I’ve actually felt revulsion at anyone’s reaction to the horror of September 11. Here is John Lahr’s attempt to insinuate that the United States was responsible: “We still don’t really know who killed Kennedy or Martin Luther King; it took us a long time to find out the hidden agenda to the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Gulf of Tonkin “incident,” which tipped us into Vietnam and a war we should never have fought. Perhaps it’s eerie serendipity, perhaps it’s my paranoia, but an acid thought keeps plaguing me. Isn’t it odd that on the day–the DAY–that the Democrats launched their most blistering attack on “the absolute lunacy” of Bush’s unproven missile-defense system, which “threatens to pull the trigger on the arms race,” what Sen. Biden calls today in the Guardian, his “theological” belief in “rogue nations,” that the rogue nation should suddenly become such a terrifying reality. The fact that I could even think such a thought says more to me about the bankruptcy and moral exhaustion of our leaders even in the face of a disaster where any action, in the current nightmare, will seem like heroism. But I do smell destabilizing violence in the wings. In fear, the nation, to my mind, has always proved mean-spirited and violent.”

BIDEN’S BAD TIMING: “Senator Biden’s remarks are expected to mark the start of a concerted campaign, reflecting the Democrats’ belief that Mr Bush is politically vulnerable on foreign and defence policy, which has been characterised by a unilateralist approach, and a belief (ridiculed by Mr Biden as “theological”) in building a missile defence system against possible attacks from “rogue states”.” – The Guardian, September 11. Rogue states a threat? Naaahhh.

I have been unable to think of anything substantive to write today. It is almost as if the usual conventions of journalism and analysis should somehow remain mute in the face of such an event. How can one analyze what one hasn’t even begun to absorb? Numbness is part of the intent of these demons, I suppose. So here are some tentative reflections. It feels – finally – as if a new era has begun. The strange interlude of 1989 – 2001, with its decadent post-Cold War extravaganzas from Lewinsky to Condit to the e-boom, is now suddenly washed away. We are reminded that history obviously hasn’t ended; that freedom is never secure; that previous generations aren’t the only ones to be called to defend the rare way of life that this country and a handful of others have achieved for a small fraction of world history. The boom is done with. Peace is over. The new war against the frenzied forces of what Nietzsche called ressentiment is just beginning. The one silver lining of this is that we may perhaps be shaken out of our self-indulgent preoccupations and be reminded of what really matters: our freedom, our security, our integrity as a democratic society. This means we must be vigilant not to let our civil liberties collapse under the understandable desire for action. To surrender to that temptation is part of what these killers want. And the other small sliver of consolation is that the constant American temptation to withdraw from the world, entertained these past few years by many, will perhaps now be stifled. We cannot withdraw; we cannot ignore. We live in a world where technology and hatred accelerate in ever-faster cycles, and in which isolation is not an option. Evil is still here. It begets evil. When you look at the delighted faces of Palestinians cheering in the streets, we have to realize that there are cultures on this planet of such depravity that understanding them is never fully possible. And empathy for them at such a moment is obscene. But we can observe and remember. There is always a tension between civilization and barbarism, and the barbarians are now here. The task in front of us to somehow stay civilized while not shrinking from the face of extinguishing – by sheer force if necessary – the forces that would eclipse us.