Transformation

WBAL ^ | Wednesday, September 12, 2001 | RON SMITH

[COURAGE]

Transformation
Wednesday, September 12, 2001

(September 12, 2001)

It seems futile, almost frivolous to pile more written words on top of all the many millions that have already been typed in wake of the monstrous attack by audacious terrorists on this nation yesterday morning. What else is there to say? Yet this is what all of us who are paid to discuss things publicly must do.

An old Marine buddy of mine, Ed Shea, is a retired NYFD lieutenant. Two of his sons, Brian and Kevin, are currently among New York’s bravest. Kevin was one of the hundreds of firefighters who responded to the World Trade Center conflagration. For a time he was unaccounted for. Because of this, his brother wasn’t allowed to go to the scene. For several hours Ed didn’t know whether Kevin was alive. Then he got a phone call from the Jersey Medical Center telling him his son, though suffering multiple injuries, was in stable condition. Ed’s prayers were answered. We know that thousands of other prayers were not. There has never in American history been such a wholesale loss of firefighters and police officers as happened yesterday in the collapse of the twin towers. We have just begun to grieve. The worst is yet to come.

-0- The coordinated, ruthless, brilliantly conceived and executed attacks on us are the most dramatic examples yet evidenced of what Israeli military historian Martin Van Crevald called The Transformation of War, the title of his 1991 book which radically reinterpreted armed conflict and which warned that military solutions to political conflict may well be a thing of the past. Nuclear weaponry, he argues, has made conventional warfare between nation-states obsolete. Instead, what we now face is conflict with terrorists, guerilla armies and bandits. Aircraft carriers, cruise missiles, armored divisions, and strategic bombers are inadequate to the task of combating the new foe. Eerily anticipating the attack that has us reeling today, Professor Van Crevald reminds us that “in the president global atmosphere, practices which for three centuries have been considered uncivilized, such as capturing civilians, or even entire communities for ransom, have begun to reappear.” His book, published by Free Press, is well worth reading. It has powerful explanatory value.

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The Israelis are sympathetic to what’s happened here, but also experiencing a sense of now-they-know-how-we-feel. Strangely, that seems to be much the same emotion running through the Arab street-world, with the addendum that this is much deserved by “The Great Satan,” as they are fond calling us. Some of the celebrating Islamists are convinced that this marks the end of America. That is delusory, of course, but reason has little part in tribal conflict, which is what this event is all about.

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When Pearl Harbor was bombed, we knew who did it. We declared war on Japan and eventually dropped atomic bombs on two of their major cities. Who did this? Osama Bin Laden, the zealous, fabulously rich American-hater, as so many believe? How does a nation declare war on an individual? Who do we bomb? What is proportionate in response? These are some of the questions laid in the lap of President Bush by the devastation yesterday. There are many others. What will these attacks do to an already shaky world economy? What happens if the Western World is now headed for protracted armed conflict with the Islamic Crescent? Another book leaps to mind, The Coming Clash of Civilizations, by Harvard professor Samuel Huntington who predicted just this sort of thing.

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Finally, the 1990s was a decade full of talk about “new eras,” giddy with post Cold War euphoria. Similar to the Victorians, we were smitten with the idea of perpetual “progress.” The Information Age would change everything for the better. It would empower individuals and drench us in riches. The world would be a better place than it has been under our predecessors. Millions of people had that illusion shattered yesterday when those hi-jacked airliners, laden with fuel and doomed hostages, were flown into America’s economic and military heart. They knew in a flash that the world would be forever different than it had been, but that happy endings would remain as elusive as ever. And the “new era” would be as explosive and unpredictable as any that had gone before it.

[George Frm Br00klyn Park]

"What will these attacks do to an already shaky world economy?"

C, Or, was a recession coming anyway, and a scapegoat {enemy} needed. The insurance payments will be a plus to our new economic indexes. Any monies changing hands are an addition. Peace and love, George.