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is generally acknowledged that if there was consolation after Pearl
Harbor, it was that we knew who did it. During those minutes and
hours when all of America watched the skyscrapers crumble, a wing
of the Pentagon dismembered, New Yorkers by the tens of thousands
scrambling for life while hundreds of thousands ached for knowledge
of kin, there was the question incessantly posed: Who did it? Many
other questions flowed from that one. Why did we not know anything
about it? What ails airport security? How might an aircraft transformed
to a torpedo be deflected?
These last questions will take much time to explore. But there
is no reason to deliberate over Osama bin Laden's involvement. He
is probably the aggressor. If it happens that he is not — that
some newborn entrepreneurial terrorist amassed the information and
developed the resources to carry through the September 11 massacre
— we can proceed on the assumption that any nation equipped
to fight a two-front war can fight a two-front terrorist concentration.
If Osama is not hand-to-hand guilty of the events of Tuesday, he
should suffer as though he was. It would not be as though we were
punishing someone blameless. He has gone through the expected formality
of denying sponsorship of the World Trade Center massacre —
while congratulating those who executed it.
A Taliban spokesman speaking in Pakistan reported his government's
position on bin Laden. It is that the government is willing to deport
him, but only after proof is presented that bin Laden is guilty.
More of the same. The Taliban have reassured us that bin Laden's
activities are restricted; the Saudis denied him his citizenship
after earlier terrorist acts; after the 1998 embassy attacks in
Tanzania and Kenya, the United States launched missiles on bin Laden's
training camps in Afghanistan and on a chemicals factory in Sudan;
the United Nations has sanctions against Afghanistan for sheltering
him; the U.S. posted a $5 million dollar reward to anyone who turns
him over. His comment on all the above: "America has been trying
ever since [a 1993 attack on U.S. military personnel in Somalia]
to tighten its blockade against us and to arrest me. It has failed.
This blockade does not hurt us much."
Our challenge is in two parts, the first being the elimination
of bin Laden. The speech by President Bush had the singular feature
of advising the world that the United States would deal equally
with those who perform acts of terrorism and "those who harbor
them." That has to mean, most directly, the Taliban government
in Afghanistan. It is hardly obvious what it is we are in a position
to do. But our movement against Taliban has to come quickly, and
has to be viewed as massive and irreconcilable. It must end in the
end of the life of Osama bin Laden.
The second challenge is to confront the sepsis of bin Laden's brand
of Moslem fundamentalism. Suicide missions are in vogue in the Mideast.
The elimination of bin Laden will lance a boil, but will do less
than eliminate the poison. There were several references on Tuesday
to the cowardly attacks of the aggressors. But that word was thoughtlessly
used, as simply one more weapon in the arsenal of derogation. The
kamikaze Japanese pilots were many things, but not cowards. The
men who guided the airplanes into their final destination were deranged,
and the consequences of what they did were horrible.
But those who are willing to give their lives to their cause aren't
cowards, and the cause that moves them is proportionately grave.
We handled the problem of kamikaze-minded warriors by dropping an
atom bomb on the source of that infestation. There is no corresponding
target for the holy warriors in Palestine and elsewhere in that
part of the world. When it is not possible to reason with holy warriors,
it is necessary to immobilize them or crush them. Lopping off the
head of bin Laden is a gratifying step, but only a first step. Absolute
defensive severity is a necessary defense.
But the broader perspective is indispensable, and it tells us to
seek to honor the memory of Tuesday's innocents by standing resolutely
by the principles that made their country the object of the special
odium of Osama bin Laden.
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