Arab Authors
Editorial from "al-Quds al-`Arabi" Arabic-language daily, London, 12 September 2001. Abdel Barri Atwan, editor.
America is in a real state of war. Americans are dismayed. They don't know what is happening to them. Planes explode into giant buildings. Blasts rip the Department of Defense. The President of the United States disappears from sight in fear and anxiety. All the country's borders are closed, as are the nation's airspace and airports.
The suicide attacks that struck the massive twin towers of the World Trade Center were unprecedented and came without warning, causing a correspondingly enormous psychological and material impact.
The United States is the mightiest state on earth. It has a vast arsenal of nuclear weapons, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and countless tanks and modern warplanes. Thus armed, the US is able to defeat any other giant state. Yet this vast arsenal can do nothing in the face of one person who is willing to blow himself up. Nothing!
American fingers of blame have begun to point to the Sheikh Usama bin Ladin and his supporters. There is talk about a huge American retaliatory attack.
But what more will the United States do than it did the last time, when it fired 75 cruise missiles at targets in seven regions of Afghanistan? Not much.
Afghanistan, which currently hosts Bin Ladin, is already totally ruined. In the entire country there is not a single paved road. The people live in conditions closer to the stone age than to anything else, and on top of all that they suffer from an American economic embargo.
We feel sorry about the killings of the few dozens of victims and we cannot but condemn this terrorist action because such acts cannot serve any cause, however just it might be. But at the same time, we see it as our duty to appeal to the American citizen to ask himself: why among all the western countries were his country's embassies, landmarks, and Department of Defense targeted by these terrorist operations?
American foreign policy sees the whole world purely from the Israeli viewpoint, unreservedly supports Israeli aggression against the Arabs, and targets Arab and Islamic states with its sanctions. All such considerations are reasons why the American administration has become the most hated throughout the world.
We hope that the American administration will behave in a civilized fashion and not be drawn into random acts of revenge, because the victims of these acts for the most part are innocents, just like the victims of the recent terrorist acts.
American missiles were unable to kill Usama bin Ladin. They failed to prevent further attacks on American interests, in particular the destroyer Cole in the port of Aden, and most recently the assault on the World Trade Center in New York.
A rational, objective, and patient review of American foreign policy that yields a new orientation in support of the causes of right and justice, based upon resolutions of international law and the documents of human rights - all of this will lead without doubt to the creation of a better world climate of peace and security.
Once again we feel sorrow and pain over the innocent blood that was shed by the innocent victims of these operations. We hope that the political experts and policy makers in Washington will have the same feelings for the victims of unjust American and Israeli policies.