NOAM CHOMSKY WRITES:
“…The crime is a gift to the hard jingoist right, those who hope to use force to control their domains.”
NY TIMES: “Web Offers Both News and Comfort.”
PONDER-AGE #1: I believe there likely won’t be another big terror attack of this sort within the next weeks or months. The state-of-seige measures now in place or considered are a matter of locking the barn door after the horse has gotten out, a universal human reaction but one which, in this case, should be guarded against. We don’t want the defense of American property to become an excuse for the destruction of American freedoms.
PONDER-AGE #2: Besides the immediate destruction and mass murder, the attack (and the reactions to it) could very well destablize an already teetering economy.
At least one airline, Midway, has said it won’t resume business; this week’s suspensions had been the last of its many fiscal woes.
Also, “just-in-time” manufacturing and distribution systems (not to mention catalog and e-commerce retailers) have made American business even more dependent on its air freight system; even as budget-cutting companies have reduced their use of passenger business flying. The lack of air-transport options means truck and van delivery systems are glutted and sluggish.
Not only have movie theaters and other entertainment attractions been closed one to three days, but the lack of TV commercials means movie openings this and near-future weekends will face diminished attendance.
On the almost-positive side, four days without the NYSE and NASDAQ might provide an overdue breather from the past year and a half of irrational selling that had followed four years of irrational buying.
PONDER-AGE #3: I really wish Harper’s Magazine had an adequate website, because I’d love to link to editor Lewis Lepham’s big essay a month or two back on America’s contradictory image of itself as all-powerful AND all-innocent. It’s precisely this national self-image might’ve helped lead to the bombings.
In Lapham’s argument, the U.S. (or at least its top management and the punditocracy) likes to think of itself as both The Only Superpower and The World’s Peacemaker. Thus, everything done in the country’s name is unquestionably Good, from backing the Contras and Pinochet to bombing Belgrade.
This is not to justify the terrorists but to understand the feelings they successfully exploited among their suicidal foot soldiers. From at least the Spanish-American War on to the present day, the U.S. has instigated, supported, and/or sponsored all manner of terror attacks, coups, counterrevolutions, proxy armies, covert actions, etc. etc.
Yes, superpowers (Rome, Japan, Spain, England, Russia, the Ottomans) have historically and regulalry abused their power as means of maintaining it. But if that’s what it takes to be the world’s single most powerful entity, we should ask if we really want to keep being it.
