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With profound sadness and humility, we have sought to make sense of the September 11 tragedy and this month’s U.S. military strikes in Afghanistan. Those who died in the United States represent a cross section of the human community: 4,000 people from more than 80 nations, people of nearly every ethnicity and religious belief, wealthy …
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(The following is a reply to a number of letters to the Editors, including one by Prof. Louise Weinberg, following Mr. Judt’s November article “America and the War,” replies which were critical of Judt’s views on Israel.) Please note that my article was about the problem of widespread international anti-Americanism. It did not directly address …
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The attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, constituted an attack not simply on America but on the modern world order. One of the proud towers of the modern world is confidence in reason — not in the human power for reason (the ancient world celebrated that power) but rather the powers …
Continue reading “Crumbling Pillars — Anarchy at Home and Abroad”
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Diplomats in New York whose job it is to monitor the welfare of their citizens here say that as detentions of foreigners for investigations into terrorism drag on into the fourth month, they are frustrated by the dearth of information available to them on many cases and concerned by reports of mistreatment of some …
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Step by step, the Bush administration is marching this nation toward an imperial presidency— a presidency with unchecked power. And Congress has shown neither the resolve, nor the gumption to block the dangerous road President Bush has taken. Step by secret step, the administration usurps power that belongs to Congress, the judiciary and the people. …
Continue reading “His Majesty: the President of the United States”
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Christmas break usually leaves the campus of California State University here to roaming roosters and janitors. But the school’s administrators have been busy all week, fielding questions over an incident last week in which a commencement speaker was booed of the stage for calling for the protection of civil liberties in the government’s response terrorism. …
Continue reading “In Sacramento, A Publisher Stirs the Wrath of the Crowd”
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The historian Arnold Toynbee called war "an act of religious worship." Appropriately, when most people enter the cathedral of violence, their voices become hushed. This silence, this reluctance to speak, is based in part on not wishing to trivialize or jeopardize the lives of those who have been put in harm’s way. We want to …
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In exploring the minister’s public obligations, it would seem sensible to bypass the activity of worship and concentrate on the minister’s social service, on the grounds that the latter bears most directly on politics. Politics seems far removed from the liturgical. Politics defines the world of means subordinate to ends, of instrumental complexes, of conflict, …
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Washington — Behind a veil of secret agreements, the United States is creating a ring of new and expanded military bases that encircle Afghanistan and enhance the armed forces’ ability to strike targets through much of the Muslim world. Since Sept. 11, according to Pentagon sources, military tent cities have spring up at 13 locations …
Continue reading “Military Bases Boost Capability but Fuel Anger”
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It was a bad place for a car to break down. A bad time, just before the Iftar, the end of the daily fast of Ramadan. But what happened to us was symbolic of the hatred and fury and hypocrisy of this filthy war, a growing band of destitute Afghan men, young and old, who …
Continue reading “My Beating by Refugees is a Symbol of the Hatred and Fury of this Filthy War”
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The day that the Secretary of Defense left for the Middle East and Central Asia, I spent a morning with John McWethy. One of the senior reporters on the Pentagon beat, McWethy, fifty-four, works out of a windowless cubicle that he shares with Barbara Starr, anABC News producer who does radio. The office measures approximately …
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As allied forces narrow their hunt for Osama bin Laden, the broader mission is creating a stable, secure Afghanistan. That will take time and resources, but President Bush can start now by drawing on one of .the most effective, cost-efficient weapons in the fight against poverty: Providing very small business loans to the poorest people …
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Throughout the month of October the fire continued to burn in the ruin of lower Manhattan, and the numerous politicians who came to look upon the face of apocalyptic destruction never failed to see, somewhere behind the veil of rancid and still-drifting smoke, an American phoenix rising from the ashes…. Almost as soon as they …
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In recent days, sage editorial writers, religious leaders, politicians, liberal pundits, and admired columnists have joined in the Donald Rumsfeld-Condoleezza Rice chorus praising the American war as “just." The Taliban are described as all but defeated. The "noose" around bin Laden grows ever tighter. Afghans are seen rejoicing in the streets, and the women among …
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It is the broadest move in American history to sweep aside constitutional protections. Yet President Bush’s order creating military tribunals to try those suspected of links to terrorism has aroused little public uproar. Why? Because, I am convinced, people do not understand the order’s dangerous breadth — and its defenders have done their best to …
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KABUL The only foreigners not sweeping into Kabul so far are those from the American government. Diplomats from other key countries are in town to set up embassies, but American diplomats are conspicuously absent. The tardiness of the American diplomats is one of several signs that Washington risks repeating its mistake of a decade ago, …
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According to Tony Blair and George Bush respectively, ‘world opinion’ and the ‘collective will of the world’ supported the attack on Afghanistan. Yet analysis of international opinion polls shows that with only three exceptions majorities in all countries polled have opposed the policy of the US and UK governments. Furthermore there have been consistent majorities …
Continue reading “World Opinion Opposes the Attack on Afghanistan”
