----- Original Message -----
From: william m mandel <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2001 12:14 AM
Subject: A LONG VIEW

                by William Mandel
                Oakland, California

                11 September 2001 5:36 PM
                The attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center
 are the most important event in world history since the collapse of the
 Soviet Union.
                The disappearance of the USSR ended a half century in
 which two powers dominated the world. The casualties in New York,
 Washington, and in the skies made an end to the belief that the United
 States could continue waging wars costing us no blood, whether in
no-fly  zones over Iraq, in Kosovo, or anywhere else on any continent.

                For fifty-six years Washington has successfully conducted
 mass murders of noncombatant civilians from the air with no fear of
 retaliation. In 1945, when Japan could no longer strike back, there was
 Hiroshima, 75,000 killed. Then Nagasaki, 40,000 killed. The Korean War
 cost that country, with no possible means of harming the United
 States, 4,000,000 dead [Encyclopedia Brittanica] versus 34,000
 Americans, or more than 100 Koreans per American. Most of the Korean
deaths  were caused by American carpet bombing (white phosphorus,
napalm,  explosives)to break the will to resist, and therefore were
 predominantly civilian.

                The numbers in the Vietnam War were of the same orders of
 magnitude."Desert Storm" has slaughtered an average of 6,000 Iraqi
children  each month since the end of the fighting, due to the embargo
against  necessities.

                Until now the vast majority of Americans have clucked
 their tongues over these things and gone about their business.
No more. The deaths in the collapsed New York towers, the Pentagon,
and the plane  crashed in Pennsylvania total 6,000. [Number corrected
at later date]. The super-expensive, space and information age espionage
technology of the National Security Agency, as well as the more
conventional activities of the CIA and FBI are now the laughing stock
of the world. As to the Defense Intelligence Agency in the Pentagon,
I wonder if it was accidental that the plane striking that building hit
exactly the section where that agency was housed.

                There is simply nothing Washington can do to restore the
situation existing before this morning. Even if it decides to blame
Saddam Hussein and nukes Baghdad off the face of the earth, it will
accomplish nothing in a world of suicide bombers and underground
organizations capable of working in complete secrecy and with perfect
coordination. Undoubtedly U.S."intelligence"(?!)operations will be
multiplied. That guarantees absolutely nothing.

                The Korean War was accompanied by the rise of
McCarthyism. It is possible that today's events may bring similar
hysteria and suppression of civil liberties. Not only would that further
diminish the civil liberties that are one of this country's proudest
achievements, but by so doing it would reduce the ability of the
citizenry to ask the necessary questions about the policies responsible
for the hatred of the United States expressed in this catastrophe.

                The time has come to realize that the motivation that
brought about our Revolutionary War in 1776 is the strongest single
force active in the world today. Peoples will be independent, no matter what
Washington, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley want to do with and in their
countries. The United States must either adapt to that or suffer the
fate of ancient Rome.

               William Mandel, Oakland, California
                (37 years [1958-1995] on Pacifica Radio stations

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Do you teach in the social sciences?  Consider my SAYING NO TO POWER
(Creative Arts, Berkeley, 1999), for course use.  It was written as a
social history of the U.S. for the past three-quarters of a century
through the eyes of a participant observer in most progressive social
movements (I'm 84), and of the USSR from the
standpoint of a Sovietologist (five earlier books) knowing that country
longer than any other in the profession.  Therefore it is also a history
of the Cold War.  Positive reviews in The Black Scholar, American
Studies in Scandinavia, San Francisco Chronicle, forthcoming in Tikkun,
etc.  Chapters are up at http://www.billmandel.net
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