Has there been any good/informed commentary yet?

I'd be very cautious about these so-called "experts" right now. There are already certain of the most right-wing Congressmen screaming on cable TV, blaming Clinton (yes, you read that right) for allegedly gutting the FBI.

My thought, which I haven't seen elsewhere, is that this is the transition of the Middle Eastern conflict to 'the mainland' in the same way that the Northern Irish conflict went to the UK mainland with the London bombing campaign.

Please can we see an end to stupid rhetoric about freedom and democracy and thinly veiled ethnophobia and rascism (terrorist threats)? I doubt it!

So shoot me.

"At least 100 of my colleagues were murdered today at least five of whom I can call close personal friends were they (and their families) have stayed at my house and my wife and my family have stayed at theirs. In the scheme of things it was a small office in Trade Tower 1 (North) and given that we employ 120,000 people globally it was the tiniest of entries in the directory. I was last there three weeks ago and I remember we had one great night out and put the problems of the world to rest. I also knew many of the people at Morgan Stanley who occupied circa. 50 floors of Trade Tower 2 (South). As I write this in tears gripped with horror and fear (for what we have become) I can do no more than remember the good times. Their bodies may never be recovered what is there to grieve for. My flight to Washington tomorrow has of course been cancelled and I don't think that I ever want to get on an aeroplane ever again. I am now back at my house... we shut our offices when the security people arrived at about 3pm. I intend to drink copious amounts of alocohol tonight and subject to the green light from our contingency planning people will arrive at my office tomorrow. But it will never ever be the same again."

agree, not intended as humour but to highlight how glib commentary can be from apparently informed sources

this 'irrationality' (excuse term) is somewhere near the heart of Zizek's Lacanist interpretation

for what it's worth

U.S. Must Strike Back - But At Whom? 2355 GMT, 010911

By George Friedman

Sept. 11, 2001, will go down as one of those rare days when everyone remembers where they were when they heard the news. It is also a day that will change American behavior in fundamental ways.

Most of these changes we cannot yet begin to fathom. How does the air transport security system function in the wake of Sept. 11? How do the scars of the World Trade Center wreckage affect the psyche of Americans? How does the sense of vulnerability now in place translate into policy? That there will be consequences in these and other areas cannot be doubted, but it is impossible to see the outcomes clearly yet.

Other consequences, however, are more obvious and inescapable. We know someone planned and executed this attack and did so superbly. We know the United States will respond and will respond violently. But the central fact is that we actually do not know who attacked the United States today. The logical suspect is, of course, Osama bin Laden. He is certainly most commonly mentioned. It may well have been him. But there are problems with that assumption -- or with ascribing it only to bin Laden.

Bin Laden has been followed by U.S. intelligence for years. He has been under the highest scrutiny, with all necessary resources devoted to him. His movements have been tracked, his conversations monitored, his visitors noted. Or, even if this is not the case, bin Laden has had to assume -- along with everyone around him -- that this is the case. Therefore, the assumption would be made by any sensible operative that any operation in which bin Laden was complicit would be compromised.

There are, therefore, two possibilities. The first is that bin Laden directly authorized and planned the operation -- heedless of the risks involved -- and that U.S. intelligence committed an egregious act of omission by allowing the operation to go forward or, worse, by not knowing it was planned. The second possibility is that the operation was the act of someone other than bin Laden.

This does not mean that he was not indirectly involved in some ways. From all reports, bin Laden -- having studied the way in which Israelis decapitated and penetrated Palestinian movements in the 1970s and 1980s -- created a different sort of organization. It is one united in doctrine but with a diffused command and control capability. That means that groups could split off from the main organization and operate independently, without coordinating with the main group. It is our best guess at this moment that one of these groups, having split off quite a while ago and gone to ground, re- emerged and carried out the mission -- without any recourse to bin Laden himself.

This creates a strategic dilemma for the United States. In the past, U.S. policy on terrorism was to strike against the perpetrators. In this case it is not clear who the perpetrators are. In one sense, it could be said to be bin Laden. In another sense, bin Laden may not have had any knowledge that this was taking place. This would explain why U.S. intelligence had no early warning.

Clearly, the old U.S. formula -- which requires guilt and punishment - - does not work. It is impossible to identify the perpetrators. It is not impossible, however, to identify the locus of perpetration, if you will. Bin Laden may or may not have known, but he set in motion the process that ended in the worst one-day disaster the United States has known since the Civil War. As at Pearl Harbor, the issue was not which pilot or carrier attacked, but that the corporate entity of Japan bore collective responsibility.

Thus far the United States, following U.S. legal principle, has not been prepared to assign corporate responsibility where no formal corporate entity existed. That is what will change now. The United States will now, in effect, impose a corporate identity and strike against it. In all likelihood, that corporate identity will include the nation of Afghanistan, which houses bin Laden, but it will not be confined to it.

The normal U.S. response will be a low-cost air attack. This will be insufficient, if necessary. The real response will be to launch a covert war of annihilation against bin Laden and his allies. The model will be similar to the Battle of Europe, which followed the 1972 Olympic massacre of Israeli athletes. In that scenario, Israeli intelligence waged a systematic war of annihilation against a combination of Palestinian organizations.

The likely response of the United States will be to abandon the law prohibiting assassination by U.S. intelligence agencies, freeing U.S. special forces and intelligence services to hunt and kill -- and to be hunted and killed themselves. In this war, the combination of U.S. technical intelligence with U.S. Special Forces will provide a unique capability. The weakness will be human intelligence, something the United States has neglected.

One inevitable outcome of all of this will be a much closer strategic alignment between the United States and Israel, precisely because of Israel's superior human intelligence capabilities. We can therefore expect a high-low response of extremely sophisticated intelligence systems managing both advanced precision munitions and special operations.

One thing must be understood clearly. This is not a war that will end quickly, nor is it a war in which there will not be counterattacks. The opening salvo was just that -- an opening salvo. It will be followed by other attacks against both forces operating in the field and targets in the United States and abroad. Like Pearl Harbor, this is the beginning -- not the end.

George Friedman is the founder and chairman of STRATFOR.

Andrew

Has anyone actually stood up (like, a leader) and asked people not to start scapegoating their foreign/Muslim neighbours? Can't help thinking Clinton would do this.

I heard Mayor Guiliani mention that in one of his many, many statements to the press, albeit in non-specific terms. Something to the effect that people shouldn't take justice into their own hands.

Does anyone have any alternative sources for blood donation info? The Red Cross site - http://www.redcross.org - is down (probably due to enormous amounts of site traffic).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,550445,00.html

Of course, I guess people feel the need to kick a man when his nation's down, even if they're a member of the nation - this is one of the more inexplicable and immature attacks (granted, from a music website, who cares, but, still):

I imagined him crawling under a bed. "Mr. President, please come out, you need to be a role model. You need to stand tall. Stop crying. Please, come out. No one's trying to get you."

Yes, my political leanings are "liberal", but this isn't a time to bother with niggling distinctions between right-wing and left-wing. The potshots illustrated here are as constructive as the ranting & raving espoused by conservative-minded folks wanting to bomb the Middle East back into Genesis.

"Today's attacks were major atrocities. In terms of number of victims they do not reach the level of many others, for example, Clinton's bombing of the Sudan with no credible pretext, destroying half its pharmaceutical supplies and probably killing tens of thousands of people (no one knows, because the US blocked an inquiry at the UN and no one cares to pursue it). Not to speak of much worse cases, which easily come to mind. But that this was a horrendous crime is not in doubt. The primary victims, as usual, were working people: janitors, secretaries, firemen, etc. It is likely to prove to be a crushing blow to Palestinians and other poor and oppressed people. It is also likely to lead to harsh security controls, with many possible ramifications for undermining civil liberties and internal freedom.

The events reveal, dramatically, the foolishness of ideas about "missile defense." As has been obvious all along, and pointed out repeatedly by strategic analysts, if anyone wants to cause immense damage in the US, including weapons of mass destruction, they are highly unlikely to launch a missile attack, thus guaranteeing their immediate destruction. There are innumerable easier ways that are basically unstoppable. But today's events will, nonetheless, be used to increase the pressure to develop these systems and put them into place. "Defense" is a thin cover for plans for militarization of space, and with good PR, even the flimsiest arguments will carry some weight among a frightened public. In short, the crime is a gift to the hard jingoist right, those who hope to use force to control their domains. That is even putting aside the likely US actions, and what they will trigger -- possibly more attacks like this one, or worse. The prospects ahead are even more ominous than they appeared to be before the latest atrocities."

FUCK ME, I SOUND LIKE I FELL OFF "The Real World". AAAAAARGH.

Somebody admit they were actually WRONG somewhere? What a thought!

Agreed. However, when I'm getting on a plane, I will happily submit to an overtly invasive frisking and rifling through my personal belongings if: a) doing so reduces the number of dangerous objects brought onto a plane; b) everyone else has to ge through the same procedure (including the plane's crew). Are you familiar with the security procedures at Logan International? They're laughable, particularly at the terminals where American and United Airlines are located. Any halfway-determined (or absent-minded) person could bring any number of sharp objects onto the plane and no one would blink. Plus, they've added an extra level of chaos by tearing the entire airport up with construction.

As for Said, he is most well known for his book Orientalism, a withering study of how Western culture/academia/politics/what have you constructs and perceives the Middle East as the romanticized Other. I would suggest his book Covering Islam in terms of his own thoughts on how the media portrays the Israeli-Palestinian conflict among many other issues.

My personal opinion is that I think the use of terror tactics is deplorable under almost any circumstances. They have also been used or funded by virtually every Western or Islamist state sometime in the last sixty years. The first priority has to be helping the victims and families. The second priorities should include retribution and yes even revenge, but if a side-effect is a greater understanding by the US of what their own foreign policy has occasionally included then so much the better. Tuesday's incident was an aberration only in its scale and level of success.

A mighty, mighty big 'if,' I fear. But we will see.

Two ways presumably not intended:
a. "We" know how to dish out violence.
b. "We" live cheek-by-jowl w. tolerated violence (N.Ireland for UK-ers; crimes rates and gun laws in US)

"THE ONLY LANGUAGE THEY UNDERSTAND IS VIOLENCE" = false
However we don't in fact understand the entire language "they" DO understand, and possibly it includes "violence" as a term and a concept in ways we doubly fail to comprehend (especially when it's far from clear that we in fact even understand the ways "we" use and tolerate violence, so have no menas to compare or distinguish). [this is perhaps more me than you, dave, but this interpretation of yr sentence seems very plausible]

Chomsky incidentally sees his role as indicating "our" uses and tolerances of violences against "them", especially how these are differently labelled (our patterns of surely self-interested distinctions and comparisons). eg Clinton-ordered attack on Sudan chemical factory NOT routinely explored (in Western media) as (his argt: my off-the-cuff paraphrase) a "terrorist act against bystander civilians" (Sudan's so- called justification trumps its on-the- ground reality, at least in most everyday coverage).