Bob Jensen’s Commentaries, Quotations, and Links Regarding the Latest U.S. War

Bob Jensen at Trinity University

Some possible reasons for the poor showing of Democratic candidates in the Year 2002 elections in the U.S.

Forwarded by Brent Carper in Egypt

AMERICAN DISASTERS - DON'T FORGET!

A little political review---time to think & remember!!

After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which killed six and injured 1,000; President Clinton promised that those responsible would be hunted down and punished.

After the 1995 bombing in Saudi Arabia, which killed five U.S. military personnel; Clinton promised that those responsible would be hunted down and punished.

After the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 and injured 200 U.S. military personnel; Clinton promised that&nbs p; those responsible would be hunted down and punished.

After the 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Africa, which killed 224 and injured 5,000; Clinton promised that those responsible! would be hunted down and punished.

After the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 and injured 39 U.S. sailors; Clinton promised that those responsible would be hunted down and punished.

Maybe if Clinton had kept his promise, an esti mated 3,000 people in New York and Washington, D.C. that are now dead would be alive today.

AN INTERESTING QUESTION: This question was raised on a Philly radio call-in show.

Without casting stones, it is a legitimate question. There are two men, both extremely wealthy.

One develops relatively cheap software and gives billions of dollars to charity. The other sponsors terrorism. That being the case, why is it that the Clinton Administration s pent more money chasing down Bill Gates over his eight years in office than Osama bin Laden? THINK ABOUT IT!

Where was God? (Scroll down the following document)

http://www.oneangel.net/Cards/moon/9/11.html

The goals that Usama bin Laden lays out in his own words are at http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/980223-fatwa.htm
Also see http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17451-2001Sep24.html

"Responsibility for the Terrorist Atrocities in the United States, 11 September 2001," 10 Downing Street Newsroom, http://www.number-10.gov.uk/news.asp?NewsId=2686

I Am Not Robert W. Jensen

Picking Up the Pieces (with quotations and audio links

What Future War Looks Like

This is the same Scott Simon, a Quaker pacifist, whose voice we hear daily on National Public Radio.
"Even Pacifists Must Support This War: Those Who Refuse are Reminiscent of the Oxford Union in 1933." by Scott Simon

The word "Jihad" strangely resembles the yell of Texas cowboys visiting the infamous Chicken Ranch

Message from Amy Ray

Message from Usman Farman

Messages from Don Clark and Eunice Herrington

An Educated Guess as to the Real Prize in Terrorist Leader Bin Lauden's Eyes

A Very Frightening Message from Tamim Ansary

Some Update Messages on a War That Will Never End as Long a Humans Live on Earth

Concluding message (including essays on leadership and prayer) from Bob Jensen

Update Messages

I Am Not Robert W. Jensen from the University of Texas

I have been getting some email messages to a Bob Jensen that should have been routed to a Robert W. Jensen in the Department of Journalism at the University of Texas --- http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/home.htm

Taking advantage of his journalism connections, Robert W. Jensen uses the terrorist attack media coverage on national radio and TV to further his political agenda of bashing capitalism, corporate America, and government leaders. On the September 24 national television show called the O'Reilly Factor, Robert W. Jensen placed the blame of the terror attacks almost entirely at the feet of capitalism. The United States is a free country, and he is free to broadcast his diatribe as he chooses. However, please be aware that the UT Bob Jensen is not the same as the TU Bob Jensen (Robert E. Jensen) at Trinity University in Texas. Messages to UT's Robert W. Jensen should be addressed to rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu .

Robert W. Jensen contends that the United States deserves every terrorist act that can be inflicted upon it and is using the September 11 attacks as an excuse to further ignite the U.S. into a revolution against corporate America and capitalism.

Janet Flatley noted the following from The Wall Street Journal on September 16, 2001 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=95001149 (

Another J-prof, Robert Jensen (that's Robert W. Jensen) of the University of Texas, somehow persuades the Houston Chronicle to publish a scurrilous article arguing that America is "just as guilty" as the perpetrators of Tuesday's atrocity:

This act (attack on the U.S. on September 11) was no more despicable than the massive acts of terrorism--the deliberate killing of civilians for political purposes--that the U.S. government has committed during my lifetime. For more than five decades throughout the Third World, the United States has deliberately targeted civilians or engaged in violence so indiscriminate that there is no other way to understand it except as terrorism. And it has supported similar acts of terrorism by client states.

Janet wrote the following:

Thank you so much for your clarification about the "other" Prof. Jensen. I sent your email to the editor of www.opinionjournal.com Best of the Web because of the item it carried 2 weeks ago (see link above). I don't know if they will publish it, but they have been very forthright about correcting/clarifying previous items.

All these matters are, in normal times, the subject of legitimate dispute. But we are at war. This is not the time to fight old foreign-policy battles.

Janet Flatley

Why individuals on the radical left really hate patriotism.
"CAMBRIDGE DISPATCH Left Back by Jonathan Cohn, The New Republic, September 20, 2001 --- http://www.tnr.com/100101/cohn100101.html

If all this sounds familiar, that's because it is. Since its coming-out party two years ago in Seattle, the anti-globalization movement has been frequently described as a new force in American politics, the product of a new generation with new arguments and concerns. And it is true that the movement's focus on corporations and global finance, as opposed to governments and armies, represented a change from the leftist campaigns of the 1970s and '80s. But last week, when the terrorist attacks put governments and armies back at the center of American politics, the fresh-faced radicals sounded just like their generational predecessors. And so on Friday, when United Students Against Sweatshops pulled out of its planned demonstrations against the IMF and World Bank, it also urged members to participate in "peace-oriented events" over the coming weeks: "We stand firmly against sentiments of military retaliation," the organization said, sounding exactly like the student activists of 1968 or 1991. Last spring a group of Harvard students seemed to break new ground in campus activism when they staged a sit-in to protest low wages for the school's custodial workers. Now some members of that group are starting the Harvard Initiative for Peace and Justice; vigils and letter-writing campaigns against military action are already in the works.

But not all of the anti-globalization left is on board. Mindful of its membership's sentiments--not to mention the police officers, firefighters, and other union workers killed in the attacks--the AFL-CIO not only canceled its planned IMF/World Bank demonstrations, but it also endorsed, in no uncertain terms, military reprisal. "We deplore the assault," said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, "and we stand fully behind the President and the leadership of our nation in this time of national crisis." The AFL-CIO has asked its door-to-door canvassers, initially dispatched to drum up support for the anti-globalization cause, to collect donations on behalf of the terrorism victims instead. On Capitol Hill, some of globalization's fiercest critics, like Marcy Kaptur, the congresswoman from the Rust Belt city of Toledo, are morphing into some of the Democratic Party's biggest hawks.

All of which represents a very serious problem for the left. One of the anti-globalization movement's primary goals--and primary successes--in its short life has been repairing the generation-old gulf between intellectuals and labor. Students have flocked to union-run organizing camps; a group of labor-friendly intellectuals established Scholars, Artists, and Writers for Social Justice. Now, with one awful attack, that alliance is splitting at the seams. The hard hats and the hippies are on opposite sides of the barricades once again. At the teach-in at MIT, activists seemed to be gearing up for their generation's Vietnam--a chance to take on U.S. militarism and imperialism in their own time. They seemed to have forgotten that until last week, that was precisely the debate the American left was trying to avoid.

I think what the authors of the article imply is that there is a difference between "left" and "radical left." The radical left is trying to organize a revolution against capitalism, religion, globalization of trade, and the white race.

The point of the article is that patriotism unites races, religions, and workers with the government and business leaders. Patriotism is a bomb on radical organizers (that is what they are saying themselves in the article, especially in Toledo)

The article does not imply that only conservatives are patriotic.

"The Best and the Brightest: The kids are all right, but too many professors hate America"
The Wall Street Journal, Page A18, October 2, 2001 --- http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB1001979331574643920.htm

Maybe there is something to the old injunction not to trust anyone over 30 -- at least on campus. Within the confines of the faculty lounges where graying radicals are now ensconced, September 11 may be seen as another example of America paying for its sins. Yet students seem to have recognized it for what it is: their Pearl Harbor.

You might not know that from the professors making it into the headlines. At a recent University of North Carolina "teach-in," one lecturer told students that if he were President, he would first apologize to "the widows and orphans, the tortured and the impoverished and all the millions of other victims of American imperialism." Over at Yale, Professor Paul Kennedy asked the audience to understand the reasons people had for their hatred of America -- notably our military and economic power, our culture, and more. University of Texas Professor Robert Jensen (that's Robert W. Jensen from the University of Texas and not Robert E. Jensen from Trinity University) wrote that the attack "was no more despicable than the massive acts of terrorism . . . that the U.S. government has committed during my lifetime."

Imagine, then, what it must be like for such professors to look out at their campuses to see hordes of students with American flags flying from their bicycles, sticking out of their backpacks, stuck in their pockets, or emblazoned on T-shirts with messages that promise, "We Won't Forget."

The jolt must have been even greater at Harvard, where the Crimson, the student paper, ran an editorial pegged to a poll showing 69% of Harvard students in favor of military action against the perpetrators of the attacks. More telling still was the Crimson's forthright response to what it called "bad news": namely, that only 38% of that large percentage who want military action said they were willing to take part themselves. As the editors tartly observed, one worries for the character of a student body that favors a military response "only as long as they can continue to sit comfortably in Cambridge." If students "are willing to enjoy the benefits of the national defense," the paper concluded, "they must not refuse when called to serve."

At the Yale Daily News, the editors put it this way: "After September 11, 2001, we came of age as a generation. We agreed on an agenda. We faced the same enemy. And now the government is asking us: Will we serve?" They concluded by answering their own question: "We must answer the calling of our time -- for if we don't, who will?"

Plainly what these and other bursts of campus clarity suggest is that notwithstanding the decades of effort put in by the thought reformers -- the creators of the language police, the campus harassment codes and the rest -- these people never did capture many hearts and minds. In its more overt forms on campus this ideology tends to manifest itself in Vietnam nostalgia, as it did at the University of Wisconsin at Madison where students chanted "One-Two-Three-Four, we won't support your racist war."

More subtly it appears too in those op-eds indicting an American society whose people have now got their comeuppance. Its adherents seem particularly bothered by an America that continues to celebrate memories and films focusing on World War II.

They have good reason to be bothered by such recollections. On June 12, 1942, his 18th birthday, a young Andover graduate put off his Yale education to enlist in the U.S. Navy. It was six months after Pearl Harbor. The young man's name was George Bush.

Maybe they're not beating down the doors of the Army, Navy and Marine recruiters up at Cambridge or New Haven. But if the reactions of their college papers to September 11 is any indication, America's young have learned something about their obligation to a free if imperfect society -- even if it wasn't in the lesson plan.

Moslems in Bosnia praise the American flag while radical left professors living in the freedoms and comforts of the United States loathe that flag. The thing about that flag is that it is the reason anyone is free to criticize America, spit upon America's flag, and curse America's leaders. And the world media, especially CNN, exuberates wildly amidst the anti-American riots to broadcast these hatreds and flag burnings to the world. Light your torches professors, only call CNN first or the bonfires are no fun! Note the following article:

"Towers of Intellect It doesn't take terror to show the imbecility of professors, but it helps," by James Bowman, The Wall Street Journal, October 11, 2001 --- http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB100223834682375520.htm

"The American flag is "a symbol of terrorism and death and fear and destruction and oppression." (says you)
Jennie Traschen, Professor of Physics at the University of Massachusetts
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB100223834682375520.htm

"Anyone who can blow up the Pentagon gets my vote."
A Professor at the University of New Mexico (who in good conscience later apologized)
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB100223834682375520.htm

. . . Prof. George Lakoff of Berkeley, whose response to an attack on his country was to analyze the phallic imagery of the falling towers or of "the planes as penetrating the towers with a plume of heat. The Pentagon, a vaginal image from the air, penetrated by the plane as missile."
James Bowman, http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB100223834682375520.htm
(That was really intellectual and creative inspiration George. I definitely think it is an Ig Nobel Prize certainty for next year.)

The U.S. Flag is not being burned at Lehigh University, but then again it was temporarily banned until students forced a change in a campus ruling to ban displaying of the U.S. Flag.

See http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=95001149 (Free registration required)

Banner Banners
We read about this one on the Web site of radio talk-show host Neal Boortz. On Tuesday Lehigh University of Bethlehem, Pa., briefly banned the American flag. The Allentown Morning Call reports that Bill Guglielmo, an engineering junior from Davidson, Md., was riding on a campus bus when, in his words, "I hear a call over the radio for them to remove all American flags."

It turns out that one John Smeaton, vice provost for student affairs, "ordered flags removed so non-American students would not feel uncomfortable," according to the Morning Call, which quotes an executive of the school as saying: "We have such a diverse student body and emotions are so high right now. The idea was to keep from offending some of our students, and maybe the result was much to the contrary. The student and the bus driver were understandably angry. A mistake was made." Within an hour, the school rescinded Smeaton's order.

What does it tell us about the state of American higher education that an administrator's first reflex when America is under attack is to protect foreign students from displays of American patriotism, which he only imagines would offend them?

"Lehigh University wavers on flag order," Lehigh Valley News, September 14, 2001 --- http://www.mcall.com/html/frontpage/b_pg001_e14noflags.htm

While acts of patriotism were breaking out across the Lehigh Valley, they were being squashed on the campus of Lehigh University.

But not for long.

It may have been meant as an act of sensitivity, but a Lehigh University official's decision to remove the American flag from a campus bus was met with anger from at least one student and the bus driver.

The backlash struck so quickly that the University immediately rescinded its order.

Young Muslims who wanted to learn about "bone breaking" and how to make explosives won't be able to visit a London-based website anymore, because authorities closed it.
"England Closes Extremist Site," Wired News, October 4, 2001 --- http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47307,00.html

A website offering young Muslims the chance to learn all about explosives and the "art of bone breaking" was shut down this week under a new British crackdown on Islamic extremists.

Police sources told Reuters on Thursday that the closure of the London-based Sakina Securities website followed the arrest on Monday of one of its instructors on terrorism charges.

The 43-year-old alleged Sakina instructor -- police refuse to name him -- is one of two men being held on terrorism charges in Britain as it tightens the net on militants.

Picking Up the Pieces

America is not like a blanket--one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt--many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread.

Henry M. Jackson

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.

At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in.

C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
As quoted in the Parker Chapel Sunday Bulletin on September 16, 2001

With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogances. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace -- a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.

Thy will be done, Almighty God.

President Roosevelt's D-Day Prayer (June 6, 1944) --- http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/fdr-prayer.htm
You can also listen to this prayer as broadcast to the world by radio if you have audio playback on your computer.

O beautiful for heroes proved
in liberating strife,
who more than self their country loved,
and mercy more than life!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
confirm thy soul in self-control,
thy liberty in law.

Verse Two of O Beautiful for Spacious Skies
Words: Katherine Lee Bates (1859-1929), Music: Materna
From the closing hymn that my wife and I simultaneously choked upon in Parker Chapel, September 16, 2001

If you have audio on your computer, PLEASE, PLEASE click here --- http://www.doubtlessdesigns.net/

And here --- http://bayridge.com/tribute.swf

Brotherhood - in memory of the 343 fallen firefighters --- http://www.brotherhoodfdny.com/

"9/11: The Psychological Aftermath," by Sarah Graham, Scientific American, --- http://www.scientificamerican.com/explorations/2001/111201anxiety/

Anxiety is on the rise and experts estimate that 100,000 people in New York alone are at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder.

The count is so high in part due to the nature of the attacks. Studies show that rates of PTSD are greater following events caused by deliberate violence than after natural disasters. "If an airplane had accidentally flown off course in a heavy fog in New York and taken down one of the towers," Marmar explains, "it would have been very traumatic but probably less traumatic than knowing that somebody, or some group, wanted to kill everybody in those buildings." It is this relationship to violence that may explain the higher rates of PTSD observed in women. Compared with men, women are more likely to suffer trauma after a physical or sexual assault.

Email message from Glenn Meyer

Normally, I am not moved to post many URLs but this one I thought was worth it.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,39104,00.html

Glenn Meyer

"Arm the Afghan Women," by Wendy McElroy, Fox News, November 20, 2001

It is commonplace to assume that toppling the Taliban will free Afghan women. But in an unstable country where soldiers celebrate conquest by raping — and where there is currently no guarantee that whatever form of government eventually assumes control will not be equally oppressive toward females — women have to protect themselves to remain free.

Afghan women need to exercise the right of self-defense, including gun ownership. They also need to be recognized as a force of armed resistance against oppressive regimes.

Freedom Fighters

In the 1970's, Afghan women were among the most Westernized and liberated in the Islamic world. Their pre-Taliban role as doctors, bankers, lawyers, and teachers has been well documented. But almost no attention has been given to the part they played as freedom fighters against the Soviets, or to their potential for armed resistance against future oppressors who may again try to hijack the country as the new government takes form. Yet the evidence indicates that many Afghan women would fight to protect themselves and their families.

In October 1996, the New Internationalist magazine interviewed Nooria Jehan, a mother who joined the anti-Soviet mujahideen in guerilla warfare.

"I learned explosive techniques and began supervising and teaching the younger men," Nooria recalled. "We would stick explosives and detonators under the Russians' tables and chairs."

When asked what she would do if the women-hating Taliban captured her city of residence, Kabul, Nooria said, "We will fight them as we fought the Russians."

That is what some women have done. In the Nov. 12 Newsday, journalists Matthew McAllester and Ilana Ozernoy quoted a woman named Malika, a mother whose family lived on the Taliban front line of Bagram just north of Kabul.

Continued at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,39104,00.html

Children have an especially hard time dealing with crises such as a terror attack that dominates the media and brings tears to adults. Some things that might help when dealing with children are given at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/children01.htm
(I thank Marc Raney for calling my attention to this matter.)

The U.S. government takes its anti-Taliban campaign online --- http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,48294,00.html

As we all try to find ways to cope with varying degrees of grief and dismay and fear from the tragic events of last week, you can find a wealth of articles and resources for addressing the emotional effects of this crisis at

http://www.accountingweb.com/item/57811

For a thorough source of links to the latest news and relief efforts from last week's terrorist attacks, go to

http://www.google.com/news/

The weeks following the terrorist attacks yielded the largest spike in Internet traffic yet. Now, a group of scholars are attempting to capture snapshots of how websites responded to the attacks --- http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47184,00.html

Public Agenda Special Report: Terrorism

http://www.publicagenda.org/specials/terrorism/terror.htm

You can donate to the Red Cross by clicking on the link below or by calling 1-800-HELP-NOW.

http://store.yahoo.com/redcross-wtc

Donating clothing and other belongings to charity is a total feel-good process. First, you feel good about emptying your closets and drawers of items you no longer use - the house is cleaner and less cluttered. Also, you feel good about providing useful items to needy people. And finally, you feel good about the fact that you are reducing your income taxes. Your donated items qualify for a tax deduction if you follow these simple rules. http://www.accountingweb.com/item/57552

"Rally Around Economy, as Well as Flag," by Scott Norvell, Fox News, September 17, 2001 --- http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,34378,00.html
Thanks to Debbie Bowling for forwarding this link.

In a memo to employees earlier this week, Ellen Beswick, Editor and Publisher of Virginia-based Intelligence Press, Inc., raised the rallying cry. She beseeched her colleagues to take "the one extremely powerful action that any American can take right now to stem the losses and get us back on track." She told them to buy something. Anything. A stock. A television. A five-year supply of toothbrushes. Whatever.

We should all follow Beswick’s lead. The best signal we can send to those who would bring us to our knees is a Dow graphic on Monday poking through the top of the chart — not unlike a giant middle finger.

Hans Nordemann, president of Norquest Capital, said it best on Fox News Channel Friday morning. "We need to go forward and show what we're made of," he said. "We need to show them that they can wound us, but we’ll come back stronger, not weaker. That’s an enemy to be fearful of: an enemy that comes back stronger."

So instead of staying home this weekend, go out. Take someone to a movie. Go out to dinner. Buy your kid a new toy, or your lover a knick-knack. If you can’t get out, buy something online. Send flowers to your mother. Order that book you’ve been meaning to buy.

And when the market opens Monday at 9:30 a.m., plop a couple buy orders on the table at Schwab or Morgan-Stanley. It doesn’t have to be much. Buy 10 shares of EMC or, better yet, 20 shares of Espeed, a spin-off of Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial firm that lost hundreds of its workers on Tuesday.

Each such act, no matter how seemingly minor, sends a message to those who would revel in our demise. It sends the message those who died this week — and are sure to die in the struggle now confronting us — did not, and will not, do so in vain. It sends the message that this country and its economy, a country of the people, by the people and for the people — to borrow one of our greatest phrases — shall never perish from the earth.

100 Questions and Answers About Arab Americans --- http://www.freep.com/jobspage/arabs.htm

MIT analyzes the media coverage of the terrorism attack and its aftermath
re-constructions --- http://web.mit.edu/cms/reconstructions/introduction.html

re:constructions is an on-line resource and study guide, designed to spark discussions and reflections about the media's role in covering the events of 11 September 2001 and their aftermath. As millions of people around the world sit glued to their television sets, even as we write, we feel it is important to encourage critical analysis of the words, images, and stories which fill the media - as well as the ones we are not hearing or seeing. We hope this site will be used to help inform discussions in schools, places of worship, union halls, civic gatherings, and homes as people struggle to make sense of what is happening and to sort through their competing emotions about these events.

We are not offering answers here so much as encouraging people to ask hard questions before they rush to judgement and action. We do not present these essays as the work of experts - although in some cases we have included pieces from important commentators, past and present. Most of us are still learning how to think critically and theoretically about the media ourselves. All of us are too torn apart by these events to have any certainty about the adequacy of our words and our knowledge to respond to such a situation. But, we want to share what we know and what we think and what we feel. We want to see if these ideas might be useful in helping someone else begin a similar process of exploration and examination.

Everybody talks about Afghanistan, but nobody ever learns anything about it. Despite a Taliban edict outlawing the Internet, there are plenty of sites to find out all you ever wanted to know about the country --- http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,47243,00.html

The virtues - Love, Honesty, Morality, Civility, Learning, Forgiveness, Thrift and Industry, Gratitude, Optimism, and Faith - may seem old-fashioned, but this book instills the reader with

guidance and advice while explaining how simple solutions to life's problems can be found within these virtues.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0812933176/accountingweb

A portion of a message from Diane Graves

In the Sept. 28 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, the "Hot Type" column carried a small selection of recent university press books on issues related to the events of Sept. 11. There was also a link to the American Association of University Presses website, where we found a lengthy bibliography of titles published in the last decade (most of them in the past two years) on broad topics pertinent to current events. The topics include: The World Trade Center Terrorism Grief, Loss and Trauma Catastrophe and Disaster Management War, Peace and Global Issues Islamic Thought and Culture

We reviewed the list of titles, and found that Coates library owns most on the list. Many of those not in the Trinity collection are not yet published or have been outside of our usual scope of collections. The full list may be located at: www.aaupnet.org/news/spotlight.html

Diane J. Graves

University Librarian

Elizabeth Huth Coates Library

Trinity University

715 Stadium Drive

San Antonio, TX 78212

What Future War Looks Like

“What Future War Looks Like,” by Declan McCullagh and Ben pollen, Wired News, September 18, 2001 ---
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46915-2,00.html

A interview with Stephen Sloan
Sloan's books include Simulating Terrorism and the Historical Dictionary of Terrorism. He has also served as a consultant to the U.S. military.

Wired News: President Bush called the Sept. 11 attacks a "declaration of war against the United States." Who have we declared war against? If we're fighting Osama bin Laden, how does the government fight a war against an invisible enemy?

Stephen Sloan: The type of war we are dealing with ultimately is a protracted form of warfare in which there won't be decisive victories. It's often called "dark war" or "war in shadows," because we don't have an identifiable enemy or battlefield. It's not the type of war the United States is used to waging.

The United States and its allies will have to have the resolve to engage the enemy over a long and protracted period. That doesn't mean there shouldn't be immediate strikes. But these strikes, unlike the cruise missiles of the past, shouldn't be merely symbolic. They need to be targeted and strategic. It is far more than solely a military conflict. There will be an absolute need for effective intelligence operations and Internet warfare. It will require our ability to engage in sophisticated warfare technology including a wide variety of clandestine and covert operations.

WN: What are the effects of Bush declaring war against what is, essentially, an unknown enemy?

Stephen Sloan: The positive effects will be that instead of essentially reacting to incidents and viewing them, for example, as a more of an enforcement issue, we now can and will consider engaging in offensive operations. When we use the military, as compared to the police, we will use the maximum amount of force. We won't face the constraints with police, which is the minimum use of force. That will open up more-prepared operations in the long haul.

WN: What about the impact on civilian life?

Stephen Sloan: As you can see now, the National Guard and military are being activated under the concept of "homeland defense." There are serious debates -- should the military be involved in a role in law enforcement or have an expanded mission? This has already taken place in one way, earlier with the War on Drugs, and later with weapons of mass destruction.

With the tragedy just taking place, homeland defense is moving on at very rapid rate. But as time goes on, there will be serious issues of civil and military relations as to what shall be (the) level of military involvement. If it is involved, it would require intelligence for planning, and will it be involved in intelligence collection?

WN: Are we going to have a loss of liberty?

Stephen Sloan: The Civil War period saw what was called a constitutional dictatorship. There was a suspension of civil liberties, including habeas corpus. World War II saw a crisis government. When under massive assault, a democracy will recognize the fact it will have to take measures it would not ordinarily use in peace times, lessening civil rights and suspension of due process. When the crisis is over, the liberties are returned. The problem with this is: Who decides when the crisis is over, or will it be over?

WN: What type of toll will waging this war take?

Stephen Sloan: The American public can anticipate additional incidents against Americans overseas and in the United States. If we get into this battle, which we are, we will be increasingly targeted. We have to recognize that it will be a test of the American public resolve. We will be seeing soldiers subject to casualties and the American public subject to casualties. Also, as a result of these operations, innocent civilians will be killed overseas as a result of the conduct of our military.

WN: What do you think of potential "blowback" as a possible result of our actions in this war? Was this recent act "blowback" from our 1980s involvement in Afghanistan?

Stephen Sloan: Not simply there (in Afghanistan), but for example, in the Balkans, where we chose to support the KLA, the Kosovo Liberation Front. We have to be very, very careful who we support, because it indicates something very significant in the future. When you are engaging in these types of conflicts, we are making short-term tactical alliances with both governments and individuals to run down terrorists. But we need to be careful that we don't provide intelligence or arms so they can't do what the Mujadeen did as (a) form of blowback.

There are those who engage in terrorism as a criminal enterprise to raise money. I'm concerned we will begin to see alliances between terrorist groups and criminal groups who use terrorism to raise money. In the end, terrorism becomes a form of organized crime with a level of violence that one would not see in the past. We are really concerned about that issue in the former Soviet Union, such as the Russian mafia and other groups who are more than willing to sell high-tech weapons, including nuclear weapons, to make money.

WN: What type of a role will electronic surveillance play?

Stephen Sloan: There is no question in terms of our technological capabilities in regards to electronic intercept and sensing. It is a remarkable ability we have to collect out of the air. But increasingly, you are dealing with small free floating independent (terrorist) cells that do not deal with electronic networks. Therefore, how does one collect information on a network that is discussing plans to bomb a building in a safe house in Milan? In that case it's important to have human intelligence to collect information on that level. When you need to know their capability and targets, you can't get that out of the airspace or out of cyberspace.

The rest of the article is at http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46915-2,00.html

See also
The September 11th Source Books: National Security Archive Online

Readers on Terrorism, Intelligence and the Next War

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB55/index1.html

This is the same Scott Simon, a Quaker pacifist, whose voice we hear daily on National Public Radio.

Even Pacifists Must Support This War: Those Who Refuse are Reminiscent of the Oxford Union in 1933. by Scott Simon,
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=95001302
The Wall Street Journal, October 11, 2001

Pacifists often commit the same mistake as generals: They prepare for the last war, not the next one. Many of the peace activists I have seen trying to rouse opposition to today's war against terrorism remind me of a Halloween parade. They put on old, familiar-looking protest masks--against American imperialism, oppression and violence--that bear no resemblance to the real demons haunting us now.

Pacifism has never been exactly popular. But when I became a Quaker as an adolescent in the late 1960s, pacifism seemed to offer a compelling alternative to the perpetuity of brute force. Mahatma Gandhi had overthrown an empire and Martin Luther King had overturned a racial tyranny with nonviolent marches, fasts, and boycotts that were nervy, ennobling and effective. Pacifism seemed to offer a chance for survival to a generation that had been stunted by the fear of nuclear extinction.

I worked as a war reporter, but I never saw a conflict between this and being a Quaker. If my reporting was sometimes drawn more to human details than to the box-score kind of war coverage, those details struck me as critical to explaining war. I never covered a conflict--whether in Central America, the Caribbean, Africa or the Middle East--that seriously shook my religious convictions. In fact, most conflicts seemed to prove how war was rotten, wasteful and useless. El Salvador's civil war killed 70,000 people over nine years. It was hard to see how the political compromise that ended the conflict could not have been reached after just six months.

But in the 1990s, I covered the Balkans. In Sarajevo, Srebrenica, and Kosovo, I confronted the logical flaw (or perhaps I should say the fatal flaw) of nonviolent resistance: All the best people can be killed by all the worst ones. I had never believed that pacifism had all the answers; neither does militarism. About half of all draft age Quakers enlisted in World War II, believing that whatever wisdom pacifism had to give the world, it could not defeat the murderous schemes of Adolf Hitler and his cohorts. It seems to me that in confronting the forces that attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, American pacifists have no sane alternative now but to support war. I don't consider this reprisal or revenge, but self-defense: protecting the world from further attacks by destroying those who would launch them.

Some peace activists, their judgment still hobbled by shock, seem to believe that the attacks against New York and Washington were natural disasters: terrible, unpredictable whirlwinds that struck once and will not reoccur.

This is wrong. We know now that there has been an ongoing violent campaign aimed at bringing down diverse nations, with none being more gloriously speckled than the U.S. People who try to hold certain American policies or culture responsible are trying to decorate the crimes of psychotics with synthetic political significance.

n 1933 the Oxford Student Union conducted a famous debate over whether it was moral for Britons to fight for king and country. The exquisite intellects of that leading university reviewed the many ways in which British colonialism exploited and oppressed the world. They cited the ways in which vengeful demands made of Germany in the wake of World War I had helped to kindle nationalism and fascism. They saw no moral difference between Western colonialism and world fascism. The Oxford Union ended that debate with this famous proclamation: "Resolved, that we will in no circumstances fight for king and country." Von Ribbentrop sent back the good news to Germany's new chancellor, Hitler: The West will not fight for its own survival. Its finest minds will justify a silent surrender.

In short, the best-educated young people of their time could not tell the difference between the deficiencies of their own nation, in which liberty and democracy were cornerstones, and a dictatorship founded on racism, tyranny and fear.

And what price would those who urge reconciliation today pay for peace? Should Americans impose a unitary religious state, throw women out of school and work, and rob other religious groups of their rights, so that we have the kind of society the attackers accept? Do pacifists really want to live in the kind of world that the terrorists who hit the World Trade Center and Pentagon would make?

Pacifists do not need any lectures about risking their lives to stop wickedness. Quakers resisted slavery by smuggling out slaves when even Abraham Lincoln tried to appease the Confederacy. Pacifists sneaked refugee Jews out of Germany when England and the U.S. were still trying to placate Hitler. Many conscientious objectors have served bravely in gritty and unglamorous tasks that aided the U.S. in time of war. But those of us who have been pacifists must admit that it has been our blessing to live in a nation in which other citizens have been willing to risk their lives to defend our dissent. The war against terrorism does not shove American power into places where it has no place. It calls on America's military strength in a global crisis in which peaceful solutions are not apparent.

Only American (and British) power can stop more killing in the world's skyscrapers, pizza parlors, embassies, bus stations, ships, and airplanes. Pacifists, like most Americans, would like to change their country in a thousand ways. And the blasts of Sept. 11 should remind American pacifists that they live in that one place on the planet where change--in fact, peaceful change--seems most possible. It is better to sacrifice our ideals than to expect others to die for them.

Mr. Simon is host of National Public Radio's "Weekend Edition With Scott Simon."

Can you figure out a way to invite the terrorists into "a way of life" that will make them want to abandon the "World Islamic Front Statement?" According to the September 23 CBS show on 60 Minutes, the terrorists are promised 79 virgins and direct entry into the gates of heaven if they succeed in becoming martyrs. Can we beat that offer?

It Appears They Could Not Wait for Their 79 Promised Virgins.
The word "Jihad" strangely resembles the yell of Texas cowboys visiting the infamous Chicken Ranch --- the historical bordello that was later featured in the Broadway theatrical and movie called "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas."

According to OpinionJournal.com on October 10, this is how some of Bin Laden's money for the Jihad (Holy War) was being spent by those deeply religious martyrs.

Terrorist Stag Parties http://www2.bostonherald.com/attack/investigation/ausprob10102001.htm

The Boston Herald reports that one of the Sept. 11 hijackers had a visit from a prostitute in a Chestnut Hill, Mass., hotel room on Sept. 9. The paper quotes an unnamed driver for a pair of local "escort" services--including one service that advertises escorts "for the most discriminating of gentlemen and their most important occasion"---as saying that the escort, a blond woman in her early 20s, had a 20-minute tryst in the hotel room with one of the hijackers and was paid $180 in cash. "The FBI has interviewed the driver and the call girl and has seized records from the two escort services, the driver said. The woman, shaken by her sudden involvement in the international probe, has hired a lawyer, he added."

The newspaper notes that this "is just the latest link between the Koran-toting killers and America's seedy sex scene":

In Florida, several of the hijackers--including reputed ringleader Mohamed Atta--spent $200 to $300 each on lap dances in the Pink Pony strip club. . . .

And in Las Vegas, at least six of the hijackers spent time living it up on the Strip on various occasions between May and August. Marwan Al-Shehhi, who was aboard the second plane that slammed into the World Trade Center, frequently got lap dances at the Olympic Garden Topless Cabaret where he had a reputation as a lousy tipper, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

FBI agents have also reportedly questioned the owners of Nardone's Go-Go Bar in Elizabeth, N.J. Several of the terrorists spent time in nearby Paterson and Newark and reportedly patronized the club.

Good thing the picture was that of Bert instead of Miss Piggie! I suspect Osama and his cohorts were just trying to learn English like most any kid in America --- ABCD EFG HI JK LMNOP

Taliban supporters in Bangladesh may not be as Web-savvy as they'd like to think: Among the photos they lifted off the Internet to paste on posters is an image of bin Laden next to Bert, the Sesame Street character --- http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47450,00.html

Message from Amy Ray at http://www.amyray.com/