Terrorist Attacks on America!
America has been subject to the most serious concerted terrorist attack ever seen. Two planes have flown into the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Centre, and another into the Pentagon in Washington. The havoc and carnage are unimaginable, and the search for the culprits has already begun NOT even the most fevered imagination could have conjured up scenes as terrible as this. At a quarter to nine in the morning, a passenger jet crashed deliberately into the World Trade Centre in New York. The television cameras were already trained on the smoking tower, when another plane careered into its twin. Then news came that, in the suburbs of Washington, a third plane had hit the Pentagon building, part of which subsequently collapsed. Another plane crashed near Pittsburgh. By the time first one, and then the other of the two stricken towers of the World Trade Center collapsed onto the frantic rescue workers below, people could be seen jumping to certain death to escape the horror. Manhattan was a cloud of ash, dust, and debris, and America was in trauma. The White House was evacuated after a “credible threat” had been received. So were the Capitol building, the Treasury and all other federal office buildings in Washington, the Sears Tower in Chicago, United Nations headquarters in New York, and other landmark buildings across America. Air-traffic controllers grounded every aircraft in the country. Incoming flights were diverted to Canada. Security was stepped up at America's land borders with both Canada and Mexico. Trading on New York's financial markets stopped. The casualties, both on the ground and on the planes, which seem to have been hijacked, have not yet been tallied, but must reach into the thousands. When the dust has settled, the statistics will doubtless enshrine the day's events as the bloodiest co-ordinated terrorist attack in history. George Bush, America’s president, made a public statement before the blitz had even ended, vowing to hunt down and punish the perpetrators. At roughly the same time, a caller to a television station in Abu Dhabi claimed responsibility for the attacks on behalf of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a minor Palestinian nationalist group. But experts cast doubt on the idea, suggesting that only a sophisticated, well-funded and daring international terrorist organisation could have mounted such an outrage. AP The streets of Manhattan The last time America witnessed a terrorist attack on anything like this scale, in Oklahoma City in 1995, officials were quick to blame Muslim fanatics, only to discover that American extremists had in fact been responsble. Mr Bush at first spoke only of “an apparent terrorist attack.” But suspicion immediately fell on America’s public enemy number one, Osama bin Laden. There are a number of reasons to suspect Mr bin Laden. First, he has proved himself one of the few terrorists capable of orchestrating such a daring and complicated series of attacks. As a member of one of Saudi Arabia’s richest families, he was able to hide away millions of dollars before becoming a wanted man. That gives him the money to recruit, train and co-ordinate the sort of explosives and logistical experts who would have been required for such a spectacular operation. American investigators have blamed Mr bin Laden for similarly bold attacks in the past, such as the destruction of the USS Cole in Yemen last year, when suicidal militants steered a dinghy full of explosives into an American warship in Aden harbour. In particular, Mr bin Laden’s speciality is multiple attacks. It was members of his organisation, al-Qaeda, who carried out simultaneous bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. He was also responsible for another foiled plot, to bomb several planes and airports around the world in late 1999. Osama bin Laden makes a point Furthermore, Mr bin Laden himself recently released a long video, during which he repeated his usual fulminations against America. An Arab journalist with ties to Mr bin Laden's cadres had reported talk of an “unprecedented” action against America. That fits his habit of circulating virtual advertisements of his attacks before they occur. Islamic militants such as Mr bin Laden have been growing increasingly agitated of late at America’s apparent indifference to the fate of Palestinians under Israeli occupation and Iraqis under United Nations sanctions. Indeed, the American government clearly had reports of some sort of terrorist activity, as it issued a warning of potential attacks in East Asia on September 7th. The World Trade Centre has a particular resonance for the shady international network of Islamic militants, of whom Mr bin Laden is the leading light. It was there that the first big terrorist attack on American soil was mounted, in 1993, when a group of Egyptian, Pakistani and Palestinian terrorists planted a car bomb in the basement car park of one of the twin towers. Although Mr bin Laden himself was not directly implicated, many of his former comrades-in-arms from Afghanistan’s civil war were. It doubtless brings him particular pleasure to see their work completed. AP The Pentagon in flames What will be America’s response? If US officials can identify the perpetrators, or even make a plausible guess, the response is likely to be swift and severe. Like the Israeli government, America’s will be anxious to demonstrate that any such attack will be met with a tough military reply. But who to attack? The Taliban, the Islamic fundamentalists who rule Afghanistan and shelter Mr bin Laden, quickly issued a denial that they were involved. Even if the US finds evidence, or persuades itself, that Mr bin Laden and his followers are the culprits, bombing that country is unlikely to be very satisfying, or effective. War-torn Afghanistan is already a ruin, one of the poorest countries on earth. America bombed Mr bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan after the East African bombings—as well as a pharmaceuticals factory in Sudan that it said was manufacturing and storing chemical weapons for terrorists—but such actions seem to have had little effect. American military planners may also be debating whether to put American troops into Afghanistan temporarily to hunt down Mr bin Laden and his cronies. But such a move has enormous risks, not only of casualties, but also of tipping neighbouring Pakistan into chaos. In the longer term, American investigators stand a good chance of tracking down at least some of those responsible. Starting with no more evidence than a fragment of the van used as a car bomb in the previous World Trade Centre bombing, the FBI eventually traced an entire terrorist ring based in New Jersey. A similar forensic trail led police to the bombers of the US embassies in East Africa. Four now languish in American prisons. Should the US have been better prepared? America, like other western countries, has been on alert for months for some kind of attack. It regularly closes its embassies with little warning or explanation. But most of its efforts to counter terrorism have been abroad, not at home. There have been some efforts in recent years to formulate contingency plans for a terrorist attack using biological or chemical weapons, but there seems to have been little anticipation of the kind of highly co-ordinated, but low-tech attack, featuring a mass hijacking of commercial airliners, that took place today. Ironically, New York was a city with one of the best anti-terrorist contingency plans in the country. But those plans were aimed at a biological or chemical attack. And the situation room where the response was to be co-ordinated was in the World Trade Centre, of all places Indeed, what could US authorities have done once the planes were hijacked? An airliner controlled by a person intent on suicide is itself like a cruise missile. The only thing possible is to shoot it down before it hits its target. Indeed the American air force announced that it had scrambled fighters over Washington. But in preparing the extraordinarily high security used for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, American planners were told that, in such a situation, they would have no legal right to shoot a plane, laden with passengers, out of the sky. It would be impossible to know the true intent of the terrorist in control until it was too late. Until now America has been remarkably free from terrorism. For decades, while Europe and the Middle East suffered bombings and shootings of various kinds, the US experienced almost none. It was only in the 1990s, after the first World Trade Centre attack and the Oklahoma City bombing that American officials first began to plan for more such attacks. And yet America's readiness never approached that of European nations or many other countries, and few Americans seemed to believe that their country would become the target for the kind of mayhem they saw on their television screens from other parts of the globe. Ironically, New York was a city with one of the best anti-terrorist contingency plans in the country. But those plans were aimed at a biological or chemical attack. And the situation room where the response was to be co-ordinated was in the World Trade Centre, of all places. One thing is clear, however. The devastation in New York and Washington is testimony to a massive failure of not only American, but western intelligence. Allied intelligence agencies regularly share information on extremist groups. But no one, despite reports of warnings from Mr bin Laden and others, seems to have anticipated what happened today. Some Europeans will be putting this failure down to America’s hands-off attitude to the Middle East, which many feel has unwisely let anti-American attitudes fester, and so reduced the ability of western intelligence agencies to keep track of what is occurring there. On the other hand, most anti-American attacks in the past have failed not because they have been foiled by western intelligence agents, but because they were botched by the terrorists. At a minimum, this event will mean a huge increase in security at airports, not just in the US—where there has been remarkably little security on domestic flights—but throughout the world. Governments everywhere will now have to ask themselves whether ground security alone is enough, or whether Israel's more radical approach will have to be adopted—assigning armed guards to every flight. AP Can he rally the nation? It is more difficult to predict what today’s devastation will mean for the missile-shield debate in America. Mr Bush’s critics have often said that his plans for a shield against missiles from a rogue nation were the wrong priority. Just this week Joseph Biden, the Democratic chairman of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, had reiterated his position that intercontinental ballistic missile attack is the “least likely threat” to US security. “The real threats come into this country in the hold of a ship, or the belly of a plane, or are smuggled into a city in the middle of the night in a vial in a backpack.” Others, though, will now want heightened defences against any kind of attack, and will point out that a single nuclear-tipped missile would have caused even worse devastation. Once the shock begins to wear off, America seems fated to a prolonged period of painful self-examination—about its security, about its place in the world, about the burdens as well as the benefits of being the sole remaining superpower. Its sense of confidence and well-being, what many outsiders have long viewed as its continuing innocence, seem lost, if not forever, at least for as far ahead as anyone can see through the flames and ruins in New York and Washington. The US State Department provides information on international security and counter-terrorism. The Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness, sponsored by the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, publishes research and provides resources on the threat of terrorism and emergency management, and has a useful list of related websites. The Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews provides links to websites on terrorism and counter-terrorism. MSAnews provides comprehensive information on Osama bin Laden. The International Policy Institute for Counter-terrorism provides background information on Mr bin Laden.