FINANCIAL AND MILITARY CENTERS IN US ATTACKED

The twin towers of the World Trade Center burn after being struck by two jetliners, September 11, 2001. Photo by Greg Ruggiero.

Compiled by Sachie Godwin and Sean Marquis

Sept. 12— Following the shocking collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center (WTC), New York City is under a “terrorist state of alert” and lower Manhattan is under martial law. Two hijacked passenger flights carrying a total of 157 people flew straight into the towers Tuesday morning, causing massive explosions, an untold number of deaths, and ultimately resulting in the complete demolition of these Manhattan signature buildings and symbols of the world financial system. The towers housed some 50,000 workers and the offices of leading international finance firms.

More than 1,500 “walking wounded” are being treated in makeshift medical triages around the city, 600 in hospitals and 200 additional victims in critical condition. Many of the wounded and suspected fatalities include medical staff and firefighters who were at the base of the WTC before the buildings collapsed.

Minutes after the attacks against the WTC, the Pentagon near Washington, DC was also hit by a hijacked passenger airplane. The Pentagon was evacuated immediately after the attack on the Defense Department headquarters, as were all federal buildings in Washington including the White House, the State Department, and the Treasury Department. Government office buildings around the country were ordered to close.

At press time there was still no official count of how many people have died in New York or Washington.

“That this was a horrendous crime is not in doubt,” said Noam Chomsky, professor emeritus at MIT. “The primary victims, as usual, were working people: janitors, secretaries, and firefighters.”

Another passenger plane destined for the West Coast requested a flight path change to Washington, DC, reversed course and subsequently crashed near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The plane’s possible target is still unknown.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) closed all US airports to out-going traffic for the first time in US history. International flights scheduled to land in the United States were re-routed to Canada. Trans-Atlantic flights were suspended for over 24 hours.

On Wednesday night, emergency workers at the Pentagon finally isolated the fire at the nation’s military headquarters.

Although the Department of Defense was open Wednesday, employees described their presence as a show of resolve, but acknowledge that little work was being accomplished. Many stood at windows in the inner ring watching in disbelief as firefighters on the roof struggled against the smoking blaze.

“Normal good-hearted Americans will weep for the suffering that today’s events exacted and hope to create a world in which such hate and callousness disappears,” said political commentator Michael Albert. “But I fear that America’s leaders will cynically bulk up their ammo belts while seeking to make ubiquitous their listening devices -- trying to relegate public freedoms to an incinerator.”

New Yorkers flee dust and smoke after the collapse
of the World Trade Center towers, Sept. 11, 2001.

Although no group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, top-level US officials as well as people on the street are already pointing to Osama bin Laden, Islamic fundamentalists and pro-Palestinian rights groups.

“[These events are] likely to prove to be a crushing blow to Palestinians and other poor and oppressed people,” said Chomsky. “It is also likely to lead to harsh security controls, with many possible ramifications for undermining civil liberties and internal freedom [in the US].”

Brandon Gates, a student at Apex technical School in New York City, said, “I hate to say it but the US is all about greed and money. How do you expect somebody to give you respect when your backyard isn’t clean, especially when you take from every other country to supply your own country. But it is really sad that all these people died.”

A heavily armed FBI team searching for suspects in the attacks on New York and Washington stormed a Boston hotel Wednesday, and a witness said someone was seen being put in a van.

Law enforcement officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said a hotel room in the Boston area believed to have been used by one of the hijackers was searched but no arrests were made. The officials said that in the room there was information linking it to a name on the manifest of one of the hijacked flights.

Economic repercussions

The United Nations and New York Stock Exchange were evacuated after the attacks. Stock exchanges have been closed since Tuesday and may not re-open until next week.

Despite assurances from the Bush administration, private economists expressed widespread concern that the terrorist attack could send an already weak US economy over the edge to recession.

Economists said a global economic contraction was almost assured as world stock markets plunged, the US dollar spiraled lower against the yen and euro, and oil and gold prices soared after attacks on landmarks in New York and near Washington.

“A full-blown global recession is highly likely,’ said Sung Won Sohn, chief economist at Wells Fargo & Co. in Minneapolis. “Recently, the economy has been on a high wire act, straddling between a recession and an anemic growth; (this) damage to confidence will push us into a recession,” he said.

The Nikkei stock index in Tokyo opened Wednesday’s trading sharply lower, plumbing levels not seen in 17 years and losing more than 6 percent.

Sohn said he expects a “stampede’’ of sell orders once American stock markets reopen, and a run on insurance companies, possibly crippling the financial system and forcing the US Fed to cut interest rates even further.

Calls for military response questioned

Editorials, commentators and politicians across the nation are calling for a massive military response as soon as an enemy can be identified.

In an address to the nation Wednesday, President Bush said, “The deliberate and deadly attacks, which were carried out yesterday against our country, were more than acts of terror. They were acts of war…The United States of America will use all our resources to conquer this enemy… make no mistake about it, we will win.”

But not all Americans share such sentiments.

“We shall live in a state of fear and terror or we shall move toward a future in which we seek peaceful alternatives to violence, and a more just distribution of the world’s resources,” said David McReynolds of the War Resisters League. “As we mourn the many lives lost, our hearts call out for reconciliation, not revenge.”

Others fear a military response may be in haste and perpetuate a cycle of violence.

“I think the very worst thing would be responding militarily to the wrong country, as the US has been known to do, not too long ago, in fact, when it knocked out a vaccine company in the Sudan claiming that it was tied to Bin Laden and only six months later saying we got the wrong place. I think it would be worse to respond militarily than to be cautious… and to stop for a moment and think about why is it that people around the world are starting to hate symbols of the US as symbols of oppression,” said Phyllis Bennis, of the Institute for Policy Studies.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said in response to the attacks, “Once again…we see terrorists, people who don’t believe in democracy, who feel that with the destruction of buildings, with the murder of people, they can somehow achieve a political purpose.”

Others assert that the policies deplored by Powell have been employed by the US in the past.

“The policies of militarism pursued by the United States have resulted in millions of deaths, from the historic tragedy of the Indochina war, through the funding of death squads in Central America and Colombia, to the sanctions and air strikes against Iraq,” said McReynolds. “This nation is the largest supplier of ‘conventional weapons’ in the world and those weapons fuel the starkest kind of terrorism from Indonesia to Africa.”

International reaction

In a statement released Wednesday afternoon by human rights experts from 12 Asian countries, they condemned Tuesday’s attacks as crimes against humanity. They were gathered to gain more support for the International Criminal Court (ICC), “We call it a crime against humanity because it is so, not one that affects only the US, but all of us. It is an assault of such magnitude,’’ added Ahmed Ziauddin, advisor at the Asian Network for the ICC.

However, the statement also cautioned the US government against “indiscriminate unilateral military reaction -- which has been a response to past terrorist acts -- and which could result in more innocent deaths and a cycle of recrimination, revenge, and terrorism.’’

It argued, furthermore, that the crime underscored the need for the US to recognize the merits of international legal measures to bring those responsible to justice through cooperation within the international community “in outlawing, investigating, (and) prosecuting those who commit these most serious crimes against humanity.”

“We share the grief of the relatives and friends of the victims and we convey our condolences to them,” the Belgium Worker’s Party said in a statement. “At the same time, we are deeply shocked by the hypocrisy of the US government, which bears an enormous responsibility for what has happened today.

“We support the appeals aimed at preventing the US government and their allied governments from using these attacks as a pretext for attacking countries that have nothing to do with this terrorism, but which have been at odds with the US government because of their independent policies,” the statement continued. “Such a reaction would only increase the dangers of war.”

For the head of the largest Muslim country in the world, Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri, the attack was “brutal’’ and a “great shock.” From Kashmir, India’s predominantly Muslim state, there was a similar reaction of shock. According to media reports, both civilians and leaders of Kashmir’s separatist groups condemned the devastating attacks. Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, in a letter to President Bush, described Tuesday’s attack as a “heinous crime.’’

Reactions from China, however, were mixed, with people in the capital Beijing being quoted in media reports expressing sympathy, and others saying the US had brought it on itself for its “arrogance.’’

Muslim and Arab Americans face harassment

Arab and Muslim peoples in the United States are reporting that they are facing racial harassment in their communities, on their jobs, at mosques, and have received threats by phone and email.

Hazim Barakat, owner of the Old Town Bookstore in Alexandria, VA, said he arrived at his shop today to find two bricks had been thrown through the front windows. One of bricks was wrapped with a paper on which was written, “Death to Arab Murderers,” Barakat said.

“I am in shock because I have other books, not just Islamic books,” said Barakat, a Muslim Palestinian. “I’m very sorry about what happened. I don’t know why [people] are running to conclusions.”

Comparisons of the attacks to the bombing of Pearl Harbor garner concern, in the implications they hold for people of Arab descent.

“One of the first things the US did after Pearl Harbor was to round up all the Japanese-American citizens and put them in concentration camps -- in this country,” said Bennis. “I hope that’s not what anyone in the US is thinking about when they talk about responding the way we did to Pearl Harbor. But it’s a very dangerous precedent. We’ve already heard about death threats against Arab Americans and Muslim organizations in the US.”

Local reactions

Local residents, in an impromptu gathering at Vance Monument in downtown Asheville Tuesday afternoon, mourned the loss of life in New York City and Washington, DC. They also called for an end to retaliatory language and acts of war as an response to violence. One sign proclaimed, “Have compassion, the enemy lies within.”

Also in Asheville, USA Today newspaper boxes were stuffed with an unauthorized supplement criticizing US government policy. The supplement condemned the loss of life and also puts the events of Tuesday in the context of US policies at home and abroad.

The flier said, in part: “We feel deep sadness and our thoughts are with the families and friends of those who were killed in the recent bombings. The loss that we feel today is not any different, however, than the loss we feel every day for those killed in systematic violence worldwide, often perpetuated by the US government. As North Americans it may seem shocking to us to see this happening within the US, and we tend to mourn more deeply because we feel we have lost ‘some of our own.’ But in reality, we as human beings have been losing too many of our own for too many senseless reasons for many years.”

Sources: Associated Press Indymedia NYC, Indymedia DC, , IPS, International Action Center, Reuters, The Washington Post, ZNet

If you are interested in signing or distributing a petition urging the US government to employ a peaceful response to the 9/11 tragedy, contact Lynn Johnson at greenmistrel@hotmail.com

There will be a public discussion on the World Trade Center attack and related issues Friday, Sept. 14, 6:30pm at the French Broad Food Co-op Movement and Learning Center, 90 Biltmore Ave. For more information, call Rusty at 683-6859.